Arnie Potter couldn't wait for the weekend when he would travel from Gaithersburg to the Washington Mall to protest on No Kings day. The buses taking him downtown would meet at Ryder Center in front of the McDonald's. People would come from all over the Maryland suburbs, joining others from Washington and Virginia to protest Donald Trump's assault on democracy.
When asked to articulate his concerns, Arnie always answered with passion, annoyance, and frustration. The man in the White House was patently evil, a corrosive, divisive, anti-democratic traitor and must be stopped before he completely dismantles democracy and destroys the body politic.
When asked for specifics, Arnie just shook his head in disbelief. 'Have you got an hour?', he would sarcastically reply, incredulous that the question even needed to be asked. Such treachery, such malign intent, such anti-social, elitist convictions, such misogyny, homophobia, and patent racism need no explanation. These were evident, clear, and unequivocal characteristics of a dictator, a hateful, insidious threat to the republic.
Arnie turned away from the questioner and stepped on to the chartered school bus and took a seat in the middle. He wanted to be in medias res as he liked to put it, right in the middle of things, center cut, cheering partisans behind and in front of him singing liberation songs, the Internationale, and Blowing In The Wind.
Arnie had been on many rides like this to demand women's rights, to champion Black Lives Matter, to march in lockstep with gay, lesbian, and transgender fellows, and to demand environmental sanity; but this one was different. The fate of the nation was at stake, liberty itself was in play, the very demise of democracy was perilously close.
There was a youthful joy on the bus which reminded him of his summer day camp days, ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall, bloviating lips on the window at passing drivers, hijinks and carrying on with no concerns, no arrière pensées nor thought to the future except for the archery range, swimming in the lake, and hotdogs and hamburgers on the grill.
As the bus approached downtown, the jubilation intensified - in a few minutes they would be on the Mall in sight of the Capitol and the Washington Monument, thousands strong marching, chanting, demonstrating for freedom, justice, and righteousness.
The sun was shining brightly, the day was warm for mid-October, the grass on the Mall had recently been cut and groomed since the last demonstration - an expectedly pitiful show of hands for some minor issue, Polish-American kielbasa rights (the spike in pork prices had put Polish grocers out of business) or some other irrelevancy - and Arnie and his friends jumped out of the bus like excited schoolchildren and hugged the first people they met.
A band was playing in the distance - more Dylan and Springsteen - and the banners, festoons, and colored balloons gave the event a festive, holiday feel. Arnie felt good and wanted to hug everyone he met - the gray-haired matron dressed in rainbow silks, the gay man holding a Queers For Freedom sign, all done up in sequins and pink boas, Rasta Man, little choirmasters, topless women, Vietnam Vets Against The War.
It was Woodstock and I Have A Dream all wrapped up in one, a marvelous, exuberant, delightful assembly of likeminded people, all chanting arm in arm and in unison for justice.
The real purpose of the demonstration was to enjoy a sense of solidarity and a camaraderie of like-minded people, progressives who refuse to capitulate to the retrograde, destructionist, bullying of Donald Trump. It was hatred of the man that fueled the joy of the event. The bilious, hysterical, incontinent rage felt good to express - to yell and scream finally after so many months of tamped down, frustrated, and inchoate anger.
The joy at these marches and demonstrations is palpable. Those that concern women have an additional note of bonding, communal love, and belonging. Demonstrators are not angry but happy, for they are shouting in unison with their sisters, hugging and kissing in exuberant displays of female solidarity. Their soprano voices, loud and choral, might never be heard by the men that decide, but that is of no consequence. It was femininity, femaleness, feminism expressed joyously and with abandon.
It all comes down social collectivity – an expression of concern for a common cause which unites thousands into a community of ideas – an identity community with markers, banners, logos, doctrines, and liturgies. Belonging feels good, feels important, feels useful, and most importantly reflects one’s own goodness.
The marches all have a stated purpose, and while they may be well intentioned, their objectives are far too vague and diffuse to have any impact on policy; and this march of protest against Donald Trump was perhaps the most centripetal, airy, and breezy of them all.
The marchers on the Mall had been so badly infected with the fabulist concoctions of the progressive Left - that Trump was a homophobic, racist, misogynist and oppressor of the weak and disadvantaged - that hatred had become endemic and ingrained, nebulous and unspecified.
This was not a protest with one clear, definable, achievable objective - to pass a Civil Rights Bill, to remove Johnson from office, to stop the war in Vietnam, or to force Richard Nixon to resign - but one of generalized feelings of outrage that needed no explanation.
The No Kings rallies were marketing genius - no specific Trump policy need clog up the more fundamental hatred of the man. 'No Kings', with its suggestion of autocracy, imperialism, colonialism, and aristocratic rule was the perfect cover for the event. Everyone knew what the slogan meant and never questioned it. All the bits and pieces of complex policy issues were simply rallied under one banner, one phrase, one ethos.
The jamboree on the Mall would never have been so joyous, so universally happy and in tune if the organizers had cluttered the event with Trump agenda and muddied the waters with immigration, tax reform, and litigation. No Kings was the perfect, unmatched title for an inchoate, purposeless, meaningless, but happy as can be gathering of deliberately self-inflicted deniers.
Arnie went home to a backyard barbecue for his closest associates who had been with him on the bus, a warm, congenial affair for those still exhilarated but dog tired from the effort of so much enthusiasm.
He hugged his wife, Corinne, and smiled as he looked over his guests. 'A noble crowd' he said to her. She nodded, nuzzled him, and said, 'Yes, dear, indeed.'
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