I’m back! We went to Madison, Wisconsin for our granddaughter’s 7th birthday, and also for brats (vegetarian style) and cheese curds and the fall colors and Kwik-Trip and all that Wisconsin stuff, but also, unfortunately, for a 7 hour drive each way, which was not fun. It was worth it, though, we wish we could see our kids more often, but most likely we won’t be seeing any of our children for another year, since winter is about to clamp down and trap us at home for a while.
Next weekend, we have closer plans. The No Kings rally is taking place right here in Morris on Saturday. You know, that communist antifa plot? The administration has it’s own characterization of the event.
n criticizing the rallies, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said,
No Kings means no paychecks. No paychecks and no government.
I guess we’ll be poor if we don’t have any kings.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy stated separately that the expected millions of attendees will be
part of antifa, paid protesters. It begs the question (of) who’s funding it.
Except that we’ll be paid for protesting! Or will we? I didn’t get a check for the last one.
I don’t think it’s at all a question who’s funding it. Even far-right wackos have noticed some data.
The name, on its face, is unobjectionable, even vaguely noble: “No Kings.” Americans, after all, did declare independence from one. But the historical overtones here mask something more recent and considerably less authentic. For all its revolutionary rhetoric, the ‘No Kings’ protest movement is not a spontaneous uprising of civic-minded dissidents. It is a coordinated, well-funded, tightly stage-managed campaign, backed by nearly 200 far-left NGOs, labor unions, and donor networks, many of which are directly tied to the Democratic Party’s power infrastructure. It operates not from the street, but from the spreadsheet.
200 far-left NGOs, labor unions, and donor networks
? Why, that sounds like a distributed grass roots network with many donors. The organization actually lists all their donors, and doesn’t pay protesters.
I didn’t use a spreadsheet to figure out that I have to oppose this president and his incompetent cronies. I’m doing it for my kids.
I’ll attend our local No Kings protest on Saturday. 4,000 attended the last one in June, which was considerably more than the George Floyd rally in 2020. I was toying with the idea of getting an Antifa t-shirt just for the hell of it. But, after careful consideration, I decided not to play into the MAGA fever dream about a vast, leftist conspiracy to undermine Trump, though that is where my heart is.
nationem Americam ab initio reges habuere.
It’s always telling that these guys can’t imagine protesters not being paid. Clearly, they would ever do anything except for the money.
Kind of make you want to audit the books of the next, well, not big, but Trump rally, just to see how many “supporters” turn out to be paid to be there. Since, as we all know, everything they accuse others of is almost always an admission of guilt.
And “crooks”…don’t forget the crooks. Incompetent crooks are the worst.
cartomancer @ #2 — That may be the case. Perhaps it’s true everywhere. All the more reason we should have “No Kings” protests, and frequently. We’ll never come close to getting rid of them otherwise.
They have a point about the “No Kings” label. How about calling it the “No Fuhrers Rally?”
Projection.
That’s the real reason that you hear all this nonsense about big-money backers and insidious networks paid for by a few wealthy Democrats funding No Kings and other left-leaning efforts. It’s because that’s the way the Republicans have actually operated at least since the Koch brothers astroturfed the Tea Party into existence. Like most underhanded things they do, they just can’t imagine that their opponents wouldn’t do the same, regardless of how unethical, anti-democratic, or shady any such effort must be.
The far left despises No Kings as canned opposition.
Although I saw that Refuse Fascism, a pretty far left organization, just sent me an email supporting No Kings.
Naw.
I/we despise Trump, the GOP, and the fundie xians for free.
I’m one of the opposition donors.
So far two checks to a legal defense fund and a political candidate in Illinois, Kat Abughazaleh. Also $30 of cat food to an associated food drive.
Nothing like the hundreds of millions, Musk spent on the GOP.
“Elon Musk spends $277 million to back Trump and …”
Then again, he can afford to spend a quarter of a billion dollars and I can’t.
One of my minor complaints about the Trump/GOP regime is that they are costing me a lot more money.
Food at the grocery store is noticeably way up in price, especially fresh fruits and vegetables. It’s obvious those persecuted farm workers were an important part of our economy.
Plus donations to the political opposition and my other causes such as the animal shelter and Wikipedia.
This will be my 7th demonstration so far this year against the GOP fascists.
It is worth going to these.
Governments fear demonstrations and people in the street for good reasons. It means they are losing control. It also means if the demonstrations are big enough and go on long enough, they are going to lose their jobs.
You can tell by the GOP reaction to the No Kings events that they know this and they are getting nervous.
I’ve seen more than a few comments on the internet that these demonstrations are useless wastes of time. That is just wrong and what the GOP wants you to think. They want you to be depressed and apathetic.
It’s how the Soviet Union fell, the Vietnam war ended, and the civil rights movement succeeded, among many others.
Xpost from a few days ago.
Actual studies by real scholars show that nonviolence is twice as effective as violence at regime change.
No nonviolent campaign that had more than 3.5% of the population participating has ever failed.
There are a lot of reasons for this but one fact stands out.
.1. More people will be in nonviolent protests than in violent uprisings.
Most people just aren’t all that interested in violence in the first place. And, a huge number of people aren’t even able to be effective guerrilla soldiers. There are a lot of not physically fit and/or people with medical problems in the USA. Some of my Boomer friends have a difficult time making it to the grocery store and back. One guy has a Medicaid helper for that.
If you have small children or pets at home, that effects your risk tolerance. You can’t afford to get killed or sent to a concentration camp.
.2. That 3.5% rule is a maximum. At that point, you are going to win.
But you don’t need 3.5% of the population in the streets to win.
Kagehi @ #4
Off the top of my head, I remember two occasions when Trump did exactly that. One was a campaign stop with supposed auto workers and another when Vance visited Greenland.
The 3.5 ‘rule’: upping the estimated population of the US to 350,000,000 in order to have a nice margin, dividing by 100, multiplying by 3.5, we get 12,250,000 people. So, what we need are repeated examples of 12 to 13 million people politely showing up in the streets….
Good luck with No Kings Day.
Speaking of arthropods leaking orange goo…
“We no longer go to the entomologist’s house for Halloween”
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/treat-2
If you gradually can increase the turnout for the future protests it seems realistic to reach 3.5% before midterms.
BTW I see a lot of Dem senators threw LGBTQ issues under the bus in a recent vote… while that was not as important as the budget, it is still an indication that those Dem senstors have not changed
. They are just opposing the budget because they are facing an existential threat, and would be primaried if they backed down.
So, on top of everything else, Dem voters need to do to their congresscritters what Republican voters always do to their politicians: make them scared of getting primaried. Otherwise they will immediately slid back into the usual center-right sludge even after Trump and MAGA are gone.
.
Their indifference over the last 40 years paved the way for Dubya and Trump. Remind them of what happened to wossname Cuomo.
That isn’t impossible.
The estimates for the last No Kings demonstration were 5-7 million people.
Don’t forget that the 3.5% rule is a maximum.
Most social and regime changes never reached that level and worked anyway.
I doubt that the Civil Rights movement or the anti-Vietnam war protests ever reached that level.
And, I doubt if millions of people in the streets is going to be enough anyway. It should be in combination with the next elections at the least.
Where’s the organization & protest against people who misuse the phrase “beg the question?” I want in!