October 18, Modesto joined the nationwide “No Kings” protest. A crowd of nearly 2,000 people gathered at Standiford Park and along McHenry Avenue to make clear their rejection of despotism.
“King” is actually a misnomer for today’s autocrats, but it communicates the history of America’s rebellion against King George III, the ruler who failed to extend his monarchy when George Washington and his new American Army said “No.”
Today’s rogues gallery of dictators and autocratic thugs, Putin in Russia, Kim Jong Un in Korea and Hungary’s Viktor Orban are from a new mold of technocratic tyrants who’ve harnessed the powers of impulse media, wealth inequality and resurgent xenophobia to establish and strengthen totalitarian regimes. The drift away from democratic values and institutions is, with few exceptions, global, and even includes unlikely countries such as France, Japan, Italy and Germany, though these last four nations have thus far held their most extreme parties at bay.
The United States is ground zero during the battle to save democracy and peaceful protest has become almost the only weapon the people command, as both our major political parties have, with few exceptions, been cowed by a president who has embraced repression and retribution as default governing styles. MAGA propaganda about nonexistent threats such as “Antifa” dissolves into absurdist farce when people wear blowup costumes, put on clown makeup and bring their children to protest masked goons in the streets.
Portland, with its long protest history, has set the new trend of inflatable costumes to defeat disinformation about mob violence and paid agitators. Anyone familiar with American history recognizes these attempts to demonize peaceful protest and suppress free speech as tactics from the Red Scare era of the 1950s, when segregation was legal, women were classified as “dependents,” and livelihoods were lost under false charges of communist affiliation…