WARNING: this post features an abundance of words that may be, shall we say, offensive to some. Read at your own discretion.
The third No Kings Day protests occurred Saturday, March 28. An estimated 8 million turned out nationwide, making it the largest mass protest in U.S. history. I attended two of them, in northern Kentucky, and across the bridge in Cincinnati, Ohio. (I’m the bloke with the “Disgusted” sign. And I’m not smiling, I’m grimacing.)
The milquetoast mainstream news networks gave the event some attention, which was nice, although they, as usual, felt compelled to include Trump’s by-now-expected snotty comeback (while golfing in Florida while his war of distraction drones on). Didn’t bother to subject myself to FOX News’s crypto-Nazi coverage.
I’ll just say that, two things have become apparent to me. First, at this unfathomable stage in this young republic’s history, the anger quotient is like nothing I’ve ever seen. (Just look at the signs.) In the ’60s, the anger was primarily generational. This is multi-generational. Second, if we ever wake from this fascist Trump-Republican nightmare, it will be women who have led the charge.
While marching can shine a light and maybe embolden others, that’s really all it can do. It takes voting (and by electing these motherfuckers in 2024, we jeopardized even that basic right). Still, it was a huge psychological boost to be with so many people whose values reflect my own. We may still be a highly vocal minority in this massive nation – the midterms in November will be revealing – but the numbers are growing, and whatever happens, we’re not going to let democracy die, and human rights wither, without a fight.
But enough of my yakkin’. Enjoy these big beautiful photos:
Last article I wrote about the members of the White Rose and how they resisted Hitler and his National Socialist (Nazi) Party, courageously sacrificing their lives in the process.
This Saturday, March 28, many Americans will engage in a less life-threatening but no less desperate form of resistance. They will converge on U.S. streets en masse for a third “No Kings” (NK) protest. Millions are expected to participate (at least, those who haven’t been dragged without due process into concentration camps, now politely known as “detention centers”). My email inbox is overflowing with No Kings alerts.
A recent email emphatically stated: “Kings are not in our DNA!” (That’s correct; violence is in our DNA.) The NK website also claims that America does not belong to “greedy billionaires,” but to “us, the people!”
Now, there are a lot of smart, well-educated, well-intentioned, and hard-working people behind NK and other attempts to slay the vile Neanderthal wielding a club over the country, and world. And I give them a lot of credit for grabbing their slingshots.
But in the process there is some naivety and mythologizing. I’d like to discuss a couple of the myths.
King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia of Spain
First off, the nomenclature. I totally get the motivation for the name. The most evil president the country has ever seen has been permitted unprecedented executive power and has behaved like a drunk with a truckload of whiskey. He’s used the Constitution as toilet paper and raised his middle finger at the rule of law. And Republicans – for whom the idea of “Big Government” used to (supposedly) be anathema – seem perfectly fine with Trumpian-styled big government. (What Republicans truly dislike is when our government helps the less fortunate. Welfare for the wealthy and expensive wars, however, are acceptable.)
But there are constitutional monarchies throughout the world (U.K., Canada, Spain, Sweden, Belgium, etc.), with kings and queens in democratic countries, who are strictly ceremonial, and only marginally involved in state policy, and who aren’t fascist clowns like Trump.
But America, until now, has had limited experience with royalty. King George III and his redcoat goons and punitive taxes were a long time ago. Breaking news: not all kings and queens are tyrants.
I suggest No Tyrants Day as a more appropriate name for March 28. It’s a name which doesn’t insult those friends of ours that have benevolent kings and queens who don handsome sashes, epaulets, medals, and pins, instead of demagogues wearing ratty nationalistic baseball caps that were probably woven in China. Another might be “No Clowns Day.” But I’d hate to impugn circus clowns.
(I suggested a name change to NK organizers, but I’ve yet to hear back from them. Will keep you posted.)
King Frederik X of Denmark…and also Greenland
The concept of monarchy conveniently segues into another myth being perpetuated by the good folks behind No Kings: that America doesn’t belong to “greedy billionaires.” This is ludicrous.
We may wish the country wasn’t owned by the wealthy (just as we wish America could be a pure democracy). More breaking news: corporations and the wealthy have been running the country for a long, long time. We just had a billionaire business mogul purchase the presidency, not once, but twice. (His money has also kept him from prison.) The corporate elite influences our elections and laws, corrupts our political candidates, controls our media, oils our perpetual war machine, and tells Americans how and where they should spend their money. And it also sticks its nose into other countries’ business.
But I’m just a little guy, so I’ll let two others speak for me:
American corporations today are like the great European monarchies of yore: They have the power to control the rules under which they function and to direct the allocation of public resources. This is not a prediction of what’s to come; this is a simple statement of the present state of affairs. Corporations have effectively captured the United States: its judiciary, its political system, and its national wealth, without assuming any of the responsibilities of dominion – Robert Monks (R-Maine), 2012, from “The Corporate Capture of the United States,” published by Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance
America has only one party – the property party. It’s the party of big corporation, the party of money. It has two right wings; one is Democrat and the other is Republican…The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of (the) system – Gore Vidal
[Aside: historical novelist and playwright Gore Vidal – for those unfamiliar with him – was of the old school, where books of substance were valued and an understanding of history was deemed important. (In other words, he was at odds with today’s society.) He was one of the smartest, wittiest, and most insightful Americans that ever lived, a fearless buster of U.S. myths, and a master of the witty aphorism.]
***
I’m certain the No Kings folks aren’t reading this. But I’m used to people not listening to me. I’m a parent.
And even if they are reading, myths are hard to shatter. Humans cling to them. If myths were easy to shatter, most religions would look very differently, and Americans would have immediately rejected those antiquated and bigoted notions that Trump now uses for his template: that all Indians are “savages” and all whites are civilized; that women aren’t smart enough to be allowed to vote let alone govern; and that African “expatriates” are only three-fifths of a person.
Even folks I otherwise agree with, like the hard-working young people at No Kings Day, behave as if George III died just yesterday, and America belongs to We the People.
Where are the Gore Vidals of today? We really need him.
Last November we returned to the U.S. after briefly living in Spain, and I promised myself I’d do what little I can to help “rescue” my beleaguered country. To that end, I’ve volunteered with several groups.
While protests, petitions, phone calls and donations are all good, the only true progress comes at the polls. But with Republicans now controlling all three branches of government, and most of them cowardly and slavishly crawling on their knees before an unethical authoritarian figure (to put it nicely) – and the Democratic Party more clueless than the Cleveland Browns during playoff season – even election fairness is in jeopardy. Not to mention, even with a fair election, American voters have proven they can’t be trusted to make intelligent decisions.
My consolation is that – whatever the fuck happens – at least my grandkids will know that their “stinky old man” actively fought against this American shitfest.
And I hate to keep harping on 1920s-40s Germany. Today (notwithstanding efforts by certain alt-right groups…cockroaches are indestructible), Germany is one of the most enlightened and liberal countries in the world.
But its history offers many lessons, and the parallels to America’s present plight are just too stark. And getting back to fighting the good fight…there was a group of volunteers in Germany in the 1940s who literally devoted their lives to ending Nazi-style fascism: the White Rose.
Contrary to many perceptions, there existed resistance movements within Germany during the height of Nazism. The Kreisau Circle, led by a lawyer and nobleman, Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, contained members with widely different political views but who all opposed Hitler and were “democratic, anti-racist, and internationalist” (Wikipedia). The Red Orchestra (no association with Soviet red) was the name given to a network of resistance groups and individuals who tried to incite civil disobedience against the Nazis. And many already know about the failed insider plot to assassinate Hitler by army officer Claus von Stauffenberg and others.
But the most poignant anti-Hitler, anti-Nazi organization is die Weise Rose (the “White Rose”).
This was a group of approximately 50 young persons from Munich and Hamburg. The core members were five University of Munich (LMI Munich) students and one instructor: siblings Helmut and Sophie Scholl, Christoph Probst, Willi Graf, Alexander Schmorell, and professor Kurt Huber. They founded their resistance group on June 27, 1942 to denounce Hitler and the Nazis, using leaflets and grafitti to incite other Germans into resistance. They distributed six leaflets in total, the second of which (late 1942) condemned the mass murder of Jews.
Top: Hans Scholl, Sophie Scholl, Kurt Huber Bottom: Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell, Willi Graf
Since the conquest of Poland, 300,000 Jews have been murdered in this country in the most bestial way…The German people slumber on in dull, stupid sleep and encourage the fascist criminals – from second White Rose leaflet
Thousands of copies of the leaflets were produced on hand-operated duplicating machines then distributed throughout German cities. Rather than targeting the working class, the group concentrated on the intelligentsia (which Hitler, of course, hated), whom it believed were more receptive to its message. They used quotes taken from Goethe, Aristotle, and the Bible, among other sources.
The White Rose lasted a mere eight months. On February 18, 1943, while the Scholls distributed leaflets at LMI Munich, a maintenance man alerted the Gestapo. Both brother and sister were arrested. Probst was later arrested. The threesome received a show trial – a Sondergericht – with Sophie, on numerous occasions, defiantly challenging judge Roland Freisler, a slavish Nazi. All three were quickly found guilty of treason, sentenced to death, and guillotined. Graf, Schmorell, and Huber were executed after a later trial, with Graf being tortured before his death. (He refused to name names.) At least 18 other White Rose members were later imprisoned.
The sixth and final White Rose pamphlet was smuggled outside Germany by Kreisau Circle leader von Moltke. It reached the attention of Winston Churchill, who reproduced thousands of them and had Allied planes drop them over Germany in the summer and fall of 1943.
Ultimately, the White Rose and other German resistance groups did not accomplish much. Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels went into Big Lie overdrive, and too many Germans, by 1943, had been brainwashed by Nazi propaganda and hollow slogans like “make Germany great again.”
Roland Freisler. Over a period of three years, his People’s Court ordered over 5,000 executions
But today the White Rose is well-known and well-regarded amongst Germans. There are memorials to this courageous group throughout the country, as well as in Paris.
Not all remembrances are noble. In 2021, a repugnant conspiracy-theory group appropriated the name “White Rose” to distribute propaganda and lies about COVID-19. Their cloud-based, IM channel also spreads anti-Semitic propaganda and theories about New World Orders.
But I’ll close on a different note:
(The White Rose) is possibly the most spectacular moment of resistance that I can think of in the twentieth century…The fact that five little kids, in the mouth of the wolf, where it really counted, had the tremendous courage to do what they did, is spectacular to me. I know that the world is better for them having been there, but I do not know why – playwright and director Lillian Garrett-Groag, 1993
Here are links to U.S. pro-democracy groups I belong to (plus one environmental group) for anyone wishing to help defy the U.S. wolf:
It’s hard to imagine now, but only 100 years ago there was no television, and moving pictures had no sound. Before things changed, America got its entertainment from the circus. Circuses were live variety shows that traveled around, set up tents in small towns, then tore them down and “hit the road” to pop up elsewhere.
Kids would fantasize about running away to join the circus. Many actually did so. Traveling circuses helped people escape from their daily drudgeries and were a fun, wholesome diversion.
Every circus had its share of lion and tiger tamers, trapeze acrobats, clowns, freaks, strongmen, and barkers. The barker was the one who tried to coax passersby into buying tickets. Exaggeration was a crucial element in his colorful act. “Ladies and gentlemen, step right up! See the biggest, the most amazing…”
America loves entertainment, and is also really good at manufacturing it. We gave to the world Old West mythology, Hollywood, Mickey Mouse, Muhammed Ali, and rock ‘n’ roll. And periodically, when we get too grim, or too bored with our wealth, we need to entertain ourselves with, as Ed Sullivan used to say, “a really big shoo.” What I’m going to say now is undoubtedly controversial, but I’ll say it: in longitudes‘ opinion, it is one reason we plunge ourselves into wars every 10 or 20 years. In all seriousness, war is a distraction and great entertainment for the “folks back home.” For a while, anyway.
I kinda like it when a lotta people die – George Carlin
We also need to exercise our tremendous military muscle so our soldiers don’t get too flabby. And we need to engender patriotism amongst the citizenry when they start becoming too cynical. The news media is kept busy. Making lots of money for weapons manufacturers and military contractors and sub-contractors is also part of it.
The U.S. has evolved to where we now have catchy nicknames for our wars. Catchy nicknames make our wars seem more like video games and make it easier for the gullible public to swallow. We don’t have to think about the dead and maimed and traumatized. The latest catchy nickname is “Operation Epic Fury.”
Watching the orchestrator of the latest “operation” with his Florida tan and silly “USA” baseball cap…vainly trying to look like mister average guy to appeal to his Billy-Bob base between his golf rounds at Mar-a-Lago, and announcing in his usual dumbed-down attempt to sound presidential, that America had just intervened in the Middle East…brought to my mind a circus barker. Also a freak and a clown. Of course, we’ve often seen this act before.
Anyway, watching Douchebag pat himself on the back after he just sent Americans into battle (he devoted all of three minutes to Iran during his marathon State of the Dis-Union rant), I found myself thinking how entertaining freaks and clowns and wars can be. And I suddenly found myself slipping into a somnolent daze. Before long, it was as if my mind was transported. It was like I was leaving my usual American reality-show nightmare state and slipping into a different reality show altogether, one whose background vaguely resembled circus tent fabric. Gina Lollobrigida and Cornel Wilde briefly flitted behind the back of…the back of…can it be…?
The barker’s nose suddenly morphed into a red rubber ball. He had swoops of orange hair protruding several inches from his stupid mock-patriotic ball cap. His scowl was exaggerated by red greasepaint. And he held a long baton in his hand, and jabbed it at a crowd that had gathered around him. To me he sounded like a really clumsy, unfunny stand-up comic. But the crowd seemed mesmerized by his rambling, high school-level and (to my mind, anyway) extremely arrogant speaking manner.
Ladies and gentlemen…ladies and gentlemen…step right up to America’s latest attempt at regime change! Forget what I said earlier about me being the “peace president”! I’ve conveniently changed my mind! Enjoy now the thrills and spills of America’s highly technical, highly complex smart bombs! You’ll be gasping at the destruction we Judeo-Christians wreak on a Satanic nation of Muslims, I’ll tell ya…!
Half the bombs will strike military installations, half will strike government buildings, and half will strike mosques! (Only a few schools and day care centers will be hit.) Folks, these smart bombs are so smart they’re almost as smart as me, I tell ya…!
Pay no attention to the corpses of Iranian women and children! Pay no attention to the body bags containing U.S. servicemen and women who were forced to enlist because their parents couldn’t afford tuition at our disgustingly liberal universities! (I plan to censor images of those body bags, anyway, with help from those news networks I now control. And believe me, I know how to censor and control, lemme tell ya.) Pay no more attention to the Epstein files, or ICE brutality, or how three conservative justices betrayed me with that stupid tariff ruling…or my plummeting poll numbers! Forget the fact this is a war without a plan and that I again violated our Constitution by sidestepping Congress!
You’ll be thrilled and amazed at how I courageously killed an 86-year-old autocratic Muslim fanatic leader (with a few other incidental deaths) with help from my young, blessedly right-wing, Jewish friend here, by bombing the hell out of an entire Muslim country! Step right up, U.S. Judeo-Christians, and enjoy the Biblical Armageddon about to unfold! Our budding Christian theocracy is the only true theocracy!
Ladies and gents! Don’t listen to those awful atheist liberal Democrats who want to destroy me, and destroy America with higher education, gun control, public television, climate-change initiatives, civil liberties, and books! Yeah, I’m doing what those snowflake liberals Biden, Obama, and Bill and “Lock Her Up” Hillary should have done a long time ago, know what I mean? Speaking of ol’ Lock Her Up – and as an insurrectionist and convicted felon – I know something about politicians who should be locked up, lemme just tell ya!
And thank you, uh, single-issue conservative, uh, Bible thumpers, for continuing to support this Antichrist billionaire, tyrant, liar, adulterer, abortion flip-flopper, and pedophile, without condition! I’ll make it through that eye of a needle yet, yeah, know what I mean?
Step right up! The all-new, must-see reality show you will not want to miss!
My reverie ended with the melody of “We’ll Meet Again” from the entertaining Stanley Kubrick black comedy, Dr. Strangelove; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
Then it was back to that other nightmare reality show. The makeup was gone, but the barker was still a clown. And America was dropping bombs again.
The word fascism is bandied about a lot these black days, and not only on longitudes. But what exactly is fascism? And how can one recognize it?
Some history: the National Fascist Party began in Italy under Benito Mussolini (“Il Duce”) in 1922. It later was called the Republican Fascist Party. It dissolved at the end of WWII, for obvious reasons. The party was characterized by extreme conservatism, nationalism, totalitarianism, and corporate economics. Its proponents believed that men and women have separate, traditional roles, and homosexuality is a social disease. They were strongly Christian (Catholic flavor) and strongly anti-Semitic.
Conservatism, traditional roles, corporate economics, anti-gay, strongly Christian…some whiffs of similarity to the U.S. Republican Party, perhaps?
Since the Italian political party’s dissolution, fascism as a philosophy has persisted and surfaced in various countries around the world. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines fascism as this:
“A political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.”
Il Duce and The Douchebag. The arrogant poses are uncannily similar. Among other similarities.
But while all the above is certainly valid, when exactly does a country (like, for example, the United States) slip from liberal democracy and into fascism territory? Might longitudes and others be echoing Henny Penny (aka “Chicken Little”) with unfounded cries of “The sky is falling, the sky is falling!”?
A few essays ago I mentioned secular humanist Lawrence W. Britt‘s popular article “Fascism, Anyone?” It was published in Free Inquiry magazine soon after Bush-Cheney convinced a dazed, post-911 U.S. Congress to invade the country of Iraq with an infamous lie about “weapons of mass destruction.” Britt compared the regimes of seven leaders – Mussolini, Hitler, Franco (Spain), Salazar (Portugal), Papadopolous (Greece), Suharto (Indonesia) and Pinochet (Chile) – all right-wing conservative, like Trump – and discovered 14 areas of fascist commonality between all seven.
In bold below are the 14 areas of commonality between the seven…okay, I’ll quit the circumspection…eight:
Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism (MAGA, bombastic threats against Canada, Greenland, and other vulnerable countries/territories)
Disdain for the importance of human rights (ICE terrorism, violations of due process, anti-LGBTQ rights)
Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause [hate speech, insults, unfounded accusations, and federal policies targeting practically every demographic other than white, male, heterosexual, conservative Americans (the largest voting bloc)]
The supremacy of the military/avid militarism (unconstitutional Executive-branch acts of war, threats of invasions)
Rampant sexism (“Grab her by the pussy”…for starters)
A controlled mass media (authoritarian threats and pressures against FCC, ABC, CBS, Meta, Washington Post to silence critics, free speech violations, journalist arrests, lawsuits against any media outlet deemed a critic)
Obsession with national security (rejection of international law)
Religion and ruling elite tied together (White House prayer meetings, pedophile faith advisors)
Power of corporations protected (Big Oil and coal industry mollycoddling…for starters)
Power of labor suppressed or eliminated (ending collective bargaining rights of federal employees, gutting benefits for working families)
Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts (Kennedy Center and university takeovers by conservatives)
Obsession with crime and punishment (executive orders criminalizing the homeless, National Guard deployment against non-violent protesters)
Rampant cronyism and corruption (Epstein, Musk, Trump himself, Fiore, Santos, Bannon, Navarro, Trump himself, clemency to violent insurrectionists, Trump family crypto cash-ins…the list is endless)
Fraudulent elections (???)
Unless one has been living in a Patagonian cave for the last 10 years, or regularly sniffing airplane glue, it is not hard to recognize how enthusiastically Donald Trump and his Republican Party have exhibited the above characteristics of fascism…so I won’t belabor examples far beyond what’s merely inside the parentheses. My stomach is tied in enough knots as it is.
In longitudes‘ opinion, America’s one last hope before the sky hits the ground with a thud might be point number 14. There is, as of yet…and as far as this blog is aware…no evidence of any serious election malfeasance in election years 2016 through 2024. But voter suppression by Republicans and claims of fraudulence? Is J.D. Vance an Ohio hillbilly?
America’s big problem, however, is the quality of its voters. Even America’s founders wrestled with the idea that a country’s democracy is only as good as the citizens which make up that democracy. Constitutions and laws are devised by humans, and they can easily be violated by humans. And, sadly, they have been.
Information, which the U.S. seems to regularly overdose on, does not equate with knowledge, the absence of which is like a sailor being deprived of vitamin C. And the U.S. now has its gums bleeding and its teeth falling out. Britt himself, at the end of his article – and somewhat sardonically – cited the importance of “a well-informed public constantly being put on guard against evils.” Americans, indeed, are well-informed. The trouble is, their info is derived from their own echo chambers. And the chamber on the right emits poisonous gas. (This isn’t to excuse the echo chamber on the left).
After Trump’s recent State of the Dis-Union address rant – which, by the way, I didn’t subject myself to – a Facebook friend of my wife’s posted something, in total seriousness, along the lines of Trump being an absolutely perfect leader. Perfect if you love fascism, maybe. Obviously, this airplane glue sniffer was hoping for a reaction. My wife gave it to him.
Facebook and other social mediums abound with such nonsense. Back in the pre-fascist, pre-internet days of newspaper letters to the editor – when people had to write, which required thinking – ideology-obsessed automotons like Trump cultists certainly existed, but they were relegated to the shadows. But the Old Guard is gone. Fascism doesn’t happen in a vacuum, it is cultivated and takes time to grow. The GOP’s decades-long move to the extreme right has produced the monstrous fruit we see now, and the onetime fringe is now the mainstream. Do humans have to periodically shit on themselves before they finally say “Oops”?
I guess so.
There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty – John Adams
longitudes 
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