No Kings 5

 https://x.com/bskimike22802/status/2040463588242944477?s=51&t=cLq01Oy84YkmYPZ-URIMYw

 

"Let me be honest with you. When I first heard about 8 million people flooding the streets on March 28th chanting "No Kings," I had one reaction. A genuine, involuntary, sustained laughing fit. Not because of the turnout. Turnout was impressive, I will give them that. No, I laughed because in the history of political self-owns, what happened that Saturday is going to be studied in classrooms for decades.

The "No Kings" movement handed us EVERY argument we needed and then asked us to thank them for it.

So I will.

--- THE MATH PROBLEM THEY CANNOT SOLVE ---

Let us start with the number that should end the conversation before it even begins.

77,302,416.

That is how many Americans voted for Donald J. Trump in the 2024 presidential election. Seventy-seven million, three hundred two thousand, four hundred and sixteen individual human beings who showed up, stood in line, and cast a ballot in a FREE and FAIR democratic election.

The "No Kings" protest claimed 8 million participants nationwide.

So let me make sure I have this right. You had 8 million people out in the streets demanding the removal of a man who was chosen by 77 million of your fellow citizens through the exact democratic process you claim to be defending. That is not a protest for democracy. That is a protest AGAINST it.

Quinn's Law Number 22: "Liberals love democracy unless it doesn't go their way."

There it is. Hanging in the air like a failed chemistry experiment. Every sign, every chant, every Instagram post from that Saturday was the living embodiment of that law. You don't get to claim the mantle of "democracy defenders" while simultaneously demanding that 77 million votes be thrown in the trash because you don't like the result.

Madison called this a "faction" in Federalist Number 10 -- a group so driven by passion or interest that it cannot subordinate itself to the rights of others or the good of the whole. He warned us that democracies historically self-destruct because of exactly this dynamic. Hamilton reinforced it in Federalist Number 9, celebrating "legislative balances and checks" specifically to prevent a loud minority from steamrolling a quiet majority.

The Founders built this system knowing YOU were coming.

--- CONGRATULATIONS, YOU JUST PROVED HE IS NOT A DICTATOR ---

Here is my favorite part of the whole spectacle. I want you to think about this very carefully.

You marched. Freely. In 3,300 locations across the country. You held signs. You livestreamed. You posted on X and Instagram and TikTok without a single consequence. You called the sitting president of the United States a fascist tyrant on national television and nothing happened to you. You went home, had dinner, and tweeted about it the next morning.

Do you understand what that MEANS?

If Donald Trump were actually the authoritarian dictator you spent Saturday insisting he is -- if he were even a FRACTION of the tyrant you have been screaming about for a decade -- you would not exist right now as a functioning political opposition. The organizers would be in federal detention. The websites would be dark. The social media accounts would be suspended. That is what actual authoritarians do. Ask the protesters in Russia who criticize Putin. Ask the people in Beijing who tried to organize in Tiananmen. Ask the Venezuelans who marched against Maduro. How about the 20,000–36,500+ protesters/civilians killed in Iran for protesting, with 40,000–53,000 more detained (and the left, the party of democracy, the party of compassion, is against helping Iran... sad). They did not go home and tweet about it afterward.

You went home and tweeted about it afterward.

You provided IRREFUTABLE, INCONTESTABLE, EMPIRICALLY DOCUMENTED proof that Donald Trump is not a dictator. You did our job for us. I could not have asked for a more thorough demonstration. Forgot to pay your logic bill this month, did you?

--- SINCE YOU BROUGHT UP KINGS, LET'S TALK ABOUT WHAT KINGS ACTUALLY DID TO PROTESTERS ---

You want to invoke kings? Fine. Let us do a brief history lesson. Because I am a science teacher and I cannot in good conscience let that level of historical illiteracy go unanswered.

In 1381, English peasants marched on London in what history calls the Peasants' Revolt. They had genuine grievances -- poll taxes, serfdom, economic misery. Young King Richard II actually rode out to meet them. He made promises. He seemed to listen. And then, once the immediate threat passed, royal forces hunted down the leaders and executed hundreds of them. The rebel leader Wat Tyler was killed on the spot at Smithfield. The promises evaporated. That is what a king does to protesters.

In 1536, Henry VIII faced the Pilgrimage of Grace -- a mass uprising across northern England protesting his dissolution of the monasteries. Over 40,000 people marched. Henry offered pardons to divide them. Then, once they had dispersed and gone home trusting his word, he executed the leaders anyway. Hundreds of them. He used their trust as the weapon. That is what a king does to protesters.

Louis XIV -- the Sun King, the one the left might aesthetically enjoy because of the gold furniture and the dramatic outfits -- was actually a boy-king when the Fronde rebellion broke out in 1648. Parisian mobs and nobles rose up against royal centralization. The royal court literally fled Paris. And once Louis got his footing back? He spent the rest of his reign systematically dismantling every institution that could ever challenge him again. He revoked the Edict of Nantes. He persecuted Protestants. He built Versailles specifically to trap and control the noble class. His response to opposition was to make sure opposition could never happen again. "L'etat, c'est moi." I am the state. That is what a king does to protesters.

Peter the Great of Russia crushed the Streltsy revolt by personally overseeing the torture and public execution of over 1,000 men. He displayed their bodies as warnings. He did not call it a "therapy session." He made sure the next group thinking about marching would remember what they were looking at.

King George III responded to colonial protests with the Proclamation of Rebellion in 1775, formally declaring the Americans to be traitors to the crown. He mobilized the British Army. He hired Hessian mercenaries. He authorized the burning of towns. He did not tweet that the protests were "grassroots astroturf." He sent warships.

And in the modern era, when people ACTUALLY live under authoritarian rule -- when they face the kind of leader the left spent Saturday pretending Trump is -- here is what happens to them. Tiananmen Square, 1989. Chinese students gathered peacefully, just like you did, demanding political reform. The government sent tanks. Hundreds to potentially thousands of people died in a matter of hours. Nobody went home and posted on social media. Some of them ARE still in prison.

Venezuela. Maduro's government has killed over 100 protesters, imprisoned hundreds more, and used colectivos -- government-sponsored armed gangs -- to disperse crowds with live fire. The opposition leaders are in jail or in exile. That is an actual authoritarian response to protest.

So when you hold up your "No Kings" sign and go home to your house and tweet about it from your iPhone, I need you to genuinely sit with the fact that you just compared the man who LET YOU DO THAT -- peacefully, freely, without consequence -- to people who would have had you shot, hanged, tortured, or imprisoned for trying.

The gap between your slogan and reality is not a slight exaggeration. It is a canyon. And the only way you can stand at the edge of that canyon holding that sign is if nobody ever taught you what is on the other side.

Which brings me to something I have been wanting to say for a while.

--- KINGS DON'T GET VOTED OUT AND COME BACK ---

Let me explain something that I genuinely think a substantial number of the people out there Saturday do not know. The word "king" has a meaning. A specific, historical, verifiable meaning.

A king inherits power by birthright. A king rules for life. A king does not face term limits, midterm elections, congressional oversight, judicial review, or the possibility of impeachment. A king cannot be voted out. A king does not leave office peacefully after losing an election and then run again four years later in a free and open campaign.

Donald Trump did EXACTLY that last thing.

He served four years. He lost an election -- a real one, contested, audited, and certified by Republican and Democratic officials alike in state after state. He left the White House. He went to Florida. He played golf. He called in to podcasts. And then, because we live in a CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC and not a monarchy, he ran again. And won again. By more votes the second time than the first.

Can someone -- ANYONE -- name a historical king who did that? I will wait.

Charles I did not lose an election and come back. Louis XIV did not step down and campaign for re-election. King George III did not say "well, I lost the popular vote so I'll try again in four years." The very THING that makes Trump's presidency the opposite of monarchy is the thing you are using to protest it. He got ELECTED. By more people than voted for the other candidate. That is not what kings do. That is what PRESIDENTS do. In REPUBLICS.

--- THE REAL MONARCHS WERE IN CONGRESS THE WHOLE TIME ---

Now here is where I need you to pay attention, because this is the part that actually matters.

While 8 million people were in the streets with "No Kings" signs aimed at a man who has been in federal office for less than five years combined, the following people were quietly sitting in Washington enjoying their permanent thrones.

Nancy Pelosi. In Congress since 1987. Thirty-eight years on the taxpayer dime. Her net worth, by various estimates, has ballooned past the hundred-million-dollar mark during that time, fueled significantly by her husband Paul's remarkably well-timed stock trades in companies directly affected by legislation Nancy was voting on. She resisted a congressional stock-trading ban for years. Fought it. Explained it away. You can call Trump a king while a woman who has been accumulating power and wealth in Congress since REAGAN was president keeps her throne. Amazing. Truly stunning.

Bernie Sanders. In public office since 1981. Forty-four years. Senator for nearly two decades, sitting on the Senate Budget Committee, authoring legislation, drawing a government paycheck, railing about millionaires and billionaires while owning three houses. His net worth is estimated between two and three million dollars. Fine for a regular American. Interesting for a man who has built his entire political identity around class warfare.

And then there was the "Fighting Oligarchy" tour. Oh, this one. This is my personal favorite exhibit in the museum of liberal hypocrisy.

While traveling the country to tell you that the rich have too much and the system is rigged, Bernie Sanders was asked why he flew private instead of commercial. His exact response, and I want you to read this carefully:

"You think I'm gonna be sitting on a waiting line at United... while 30,000 people are waiting? No apologies for that. That's what campaign travel is about."

He will not wait in a security line with the rest of you. The man whose entire political identity is built on the idea that wealthy people are your oppressors will not sit in coach with the working class he claims to champion. He flies private and he is not sorry. Not even a little.

You marched against the guy who has been in office for a few years. You did not march against the people who have been running this country as their personal career for half a century. Curious choice.

--- $294 MILLION IN DARK MONEY AND A COMMUNIST PARTY LOGO ---

Let us talk about who actually organized this thing.

Multiple investigators and journalists confirmed that the "No Kings" protest network was funded in part by a web of progressive dark money organizations, with reports citing hundreds of millions of dollars in organizational backing from groups tied to George Soros and other left-wing billionaire donors. The CPUSA -- that is the Communist Party USA -- was listed as a co-sponsor, literally displaying the same hammer-and-sickle imagery the Soviet Union used for decades. Antifa flags were present at multiple events. Hezbollah flags. Hamas flags. Palestinian flags.

Wait, wait. Hold on. I need to ask a clarifying question.

The people holding Hezbollah and Hamas flags and the Communist Party USA banner -- are those the democracy defenders? I just want to make sure I have that right. Because when I look at a hammer-and-sickle flag and someone tells me "this is what democracy looks like," the only honest response I have is that you have never opened a history book.

In 1963, Congressman Albert Herlong read into the Congressional Record a list of 45 Communist Goals for America. Goal Number 15 called for capturing one or both of the political parties in the United States. Every communist symbol flying at a mainstream Democrat protest represents the degree to which that goal has been achieved. This is not a conspiracy. This is photographic evidence.

Here is something else worth noting. At approximately 1:00 PM in New York City, the protest dispersed. Almost simultaneously. All at once. Almost like a shift ended. Almost like someone's paycheck stopped being direct-deposited. I am not saying anything. I am just saying: organic grassroots movements do not have coordinated clock-out times.

--- THE INTERVIEWS WERE THE CHERRY ON TOP ---

If you watched any of the street interviews from the protests, you saw the most accidentally educational content produced in years. Reporters walked up to protesters with a simple question: what specific thing has Trump done that makes him a king?

The results were remarkable. And I am not editorializing here. I am going to let them speak for themselves.

"Trump's a-- Yeah. Why is that? I don't know. He's just -- We don't like him. That's the word around here. Any particular reason why you don't like him? No clue at all. I'm just going what everybody else saying."

No clue at all. Just going along with what everybody else is saying. Eight million people. Marching. For that.

Then there was this exchange, which I have read three times and it still does not fully compute: "Well, this is called No Kings. So what does that mean to you?" And the response? "It means we got to get rid of him. He's not a king. He's not a king. He's not a king."

So -- you marched to say he is not a king... and therefore you need to get rid of him. I teach logic to teenagers and even they would catch that one.

How about this gem: "Can you give me a specific example of Trump acting like a king?" The answer: "There's a million of them all put together. There's no one example. It's exactly just one or two. There's more than one or two." Follow-up: "Can you give me one or two examples?" Final answer: "Not off the top of my head. I mean -- I guess I'm just at a loss."

I am at a loss too. Just for different reasons.

And here is a reporter asking a woman why she is protesting Trump: "Is there any decision in particular you disagree with?" Her response: "We're okay. So I would start with um --" And then silence. Actual, filmed, documented silence. The reporter could be heard waiting. The internet dubbed it simply: "We're waiting, Karen."

A mom brought her daughter. Sweet. Civics in action. The daughter explained that they were there because "they silence us and they don't get to do that." The reporter noted -- correctly -- that Trump had just won a democratic election. The girl's response: silence. The reporter said, gently, "Trump is keen, says people freely protesting in a free country." And the interview ended.

The most honest moment of the entire weekend came from this man: "What do you make of the fact that he was democratically elected, even won the popular vote? How does that make him a king?" His answer: "It doesn't make him a king. Makes him a president, not a king." And then someone in the crowd continued the "No Kings" chant anyway.

That man understood the argument better than the protest he was attending.

One last one. Seventy-four-year-old woman, on camera, clearly terrified: "I'm just so scared. I'm 74 years old. I worry about everything and I'm just so scared."

And I have genuine empathy for her as a human being. I do. The fear is real. But the fear is the product of three years of media telling her that fascism is coming, that democracy is ending, that the worst is inevitable -- and not a single day of anyone sitting her down and explaining what the words they were using actually mean.

That is not her fault. That is a failure of information. And it leads me to something I have to say.

Quinn's Law Number 6: facts are the enemy of liberalism.

When you cannot name a single example of the thing you drove to the city on a Saturday to protest, you are not a political activist. You are a prop.

--- THIS IS A FAILURE OF EDUCATION AND I WILL NOT PRETEND OTHERWISE ---

I am a science teacher. I have spent my career in a high-need career tech district where the public schools largely gave up on the students I fight for every single day. I wrote the textbooks for my own classes because the existing ones were not good enough. I take education seriously in a way that a lot of people who CLAIM to care about education simply do not.

So let me be direct about something.

What I watched on March 28th was not a political disagreement. It was not a difference of opinion between informed citizens with competing values. It was EIGHT MILLION PEOPLE who do not know what the word "king" means marching to prove it on camera.

And that is not their fault. Not entirely.

A king. What is a king? This is not a difficult question. It is a sixth-grade vocabulary word. A king is someone who inherits power through bloodlines, rules for life, answers to no one, and maintains that power through force. No elections. No term limits. No peaceful transfer of power. History is FULL of examples of exactly what kings do and how they operate. We have been writing about it for 3,000 years. It is not a mystery.

And yet. Eight million people applied that word to a man who was voted in, voted out, went home, came back through another election, and operates under the most thoroughly documented system of checks and balances in human history. The Constitution that limits his power is a public document. You can read it. It is not long. The 22nd Amendment that caps him at two terms is sixty-eight words.

But nobody taught them that. Or they were taught it and the curriculum spent so much time on feelings and social justice frameworks that the actual content -- words, their meanings, their historical context -- got squeezed out. I have watched this happen in real time. Teachers who learned it incorrectly and passed that incorrectness to the next generation like a virus. Students who graduate knowing how to feel about injustice but not how to define the terms they are using to describe it.

You know what else teachers often get wrong and students carry for the rest of their lives? That there is no gravity in space. That blood is blue until it hits air. That Albert Einstein failed mathematics. That you only use 10 percent of your brain. These are myths so thoroughly embedded in American education that millions of adults believe them as settled fact. Because a teacher said it. Because nobody corrected it. Because the feeling of having an interesting fact was more appealing than the work of verifying it.

The "Trump is a king" idea operates the same way. Someone in authority said it with confidence. The media repeated it. The algorithm amplified it. And eight million people went to the streets to protest a concept they cannot define, aimed at a man who is the living disproof of the concept they are protesting.

I teach kids who come to me with years of misinformation baked in. I know what it looks like. I see it every day. And I am not angry at the protesters -- I am angry at the system that sent them out there that underprepared, that under-informed, that confidently ignorant of the very words on their own signs.

That is a CATASTROPHIC failure of American education. And the same party that funded, organized, and showed up to that protest has controlled the teachers unions, the curriculum boards, the education bureaucracy, and the Department of Education for decades.

So. To summarize. They built the machine that produced these protesters. They aimed the protesters at the people trying to fix the machine. And then they called it a grassroots movement.

--- CANADA HAD TO RENAME THEIRS ---

I am saving this because it is the dessert of this whole article and I want you to savor it.

A group of Americans living in Madrid, Spain, organized their own "No Kings" protest to demonstrate against American authoritarianism. In Spain. Which is a constitutional monarchy with an actual royal family. The irony has not been confirmed to have harmed anyone physically, but I remain hopeful.

Even better: the "No Kings" protest in Toronto, Canada had to be renamed. They called it "No Tyrants" instead. Do you know why? Because Canada is part of the British Commonwealth. Canada HAS a king. The King of England is their king. They could not chant "No Kings" in their own country because their country literally has one and their prime minister swore an oath to him.

I could not write this. No one could write this. Reality just handed me material that satire cannot touch.

--- WHAT THE ADMINISTRATION SAID ---

The White House called the protests "Trump Derangement Therapy Sessions."

No policy changed. No executive orders were reversed. No legislation was pulled. The administration continued doing exactly what 77 million people elected it to do, while 8 million people stood on sidewalks holding signs that accidentally proved our side's arguments for us.

You organized the largest single-day protest in recent American history and the policy outcome was nothing. That is not nothing as an insult -- that is a factual description of the result. The constitutional republic functioned exactly as designed. A temporary elected official with term limits, checked by courts and Congress, continued his elected agenda while the loyal opposition freely and openly opposed him without consequences.

James Madison would have called this a success story.

--- THE BOTTOM LINE ---

Eight million people proved on March 28th that Donald Trump is not a dictator. They proved that the First Amendment functions as written. They proved that Quinn's Law Number 22 is as reliable as gravity. They proved that a protest funded by hundreds of millions in dark money, co-sponsored by the Communist Party USA, flying Antifa and Hezbollah flags, organized by people who could not articulate a single grievance, dispersing simultaneously at 1 PM like a paid shift ended -- is what the media calls "grassroots democracy."

And they aimed ALL of it at the wrong target.

The career politicians with the stock tips and the private jets and the forty-year tenures are still in office. Untouched. Unbothered.

Fortunately, we live in a constitutional republic. Not a democracy. Not a monarchy. A republic, as Madison described it in Federalist Number 10 -- a system filtered through representatives, checked by enumerated powers, designed specifically so that a loud faction cannot override the legitimate will of a majority of 77 million voters.

The Founders built this system with people like Saturday's protesters in mind.

They got it right.

But what do I know -- I am only a science teacher who actually teaches the Federalist Papers, a man who spent 23 years in the Army taking an oath to defend the Constitution instead of a king, and someone who reads the primary sources before forming an opinion rather than just going along with what everybody else is saying."