COMMENTARY:
Saturday morning, after writing about a fictional family with one son in ‘Nam, and one opposing the war, I attended the third No King’s Rally. Headlines proclaiming “Huge antiwar demonstrations April 15th [1967]” merged in my mind with Internet posts from the “3rd No Kings Rally.”
Those feel so different.
Our generation was shocked when we had to face how awful and stupid the Viet Nam War was. We’d grown up believing that the U.S. was a shining democracy under God, envied by all the world for our decency and democracy. I had no idea that we were destroying indigenous populations to help United Fruit Company control Latin America, or that Vietnamese leaders simply sought independence, as we had.
Our protesting was an unpleasant surprise to our country. In 1966, our first small peaceful vigil in front of the draft board in conservative Lancaster, Pennsylvania was broken up by motorcyclists riding onto the sidewalk and hitting people. As the cops took us down an alley toward the station to report, they stopped, and the driver looked back at him and growled, “You’re the ones we ought to be getting. And we will.” (Those cops and motorcyclists had brothers or pals fighting.) Here, a certain LCPD detective filmed every demonstration. Everyone, even Walter Cronkite, credited Administration with a little candor and believed the war wasn’t completely insane; and
Opposition to the war grew. It brought down an otherwise popular sitting president. Eventually, the war ended. Pentagon lying and Richard Nixon’s Watergate fiasco shot credibility all to hell. People got more cynical about their government than during my childhood.
The “we” expanded, too. To include Blacks, women, atheists, and folks whose sexual drives and gender identities varied.
But all that triggered a reaction.
While I celebrate other nations’ independence, and being able to form friendships and relationships with folks of any ethnicity, and letting consenting adults love each other however suits them, others find that threatening, somehow. And our rulers love to divide us.
With tremendous Democratic help, Donald Trump has cleverly ridden popular anger to the White House, although most folks disagree with him on most issues.
“No Kings” rallies are not a small minority desperately trying to awaken Americans to well-camouflaged and tragic idiocy, but millions of citizens trying to remind others who the United States is, or was, or aspired to be. Mature folks are as numerous as young. There’s joy, not fear. Passing cars honk their support instead of throwing rocks at us. Proprietors of neighborhood luncheonettes don’t spill coffee on us intentionally for being traitors.
These protest an obvious departure from our governmental norms. No previous President demanded his face on money, changed a tower’s name to the Bush-Washington Monument, or held up highway funding to get a major airport named after him. Unfortunately, our limited democracy is more obviously endangered than ever.
Most folks want us to be a democracy, though they may differ on means. Unlike the huge majority who supported or accepted the Viet Nam conflict so long, a significant majority of us oppose Trump’s Iran lurch (“excursion”) from the get go.
These rallies are fun; they’re therapeutic; some signs are wonderfully witty; but they are not an end in themselves. They must not only expand the majority that favors saving democracy from Mr. Trump, they should generate action, electoral or otherwise (but always peaceful) that builds some serious speedbumps under the Trump bandwagon.
Peter Goodman's opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of KRWG Public Media or NMSU.