LTE: No king but a party

To the Editor:

Rich Kirby reported in the Patch on 11 June that No Kings Day protest rallies are scheduled to take place in thirty Connecticut communities on Saturday, 14 June. He quotes “organizers:” “No Kings is a nationwide day of defiance. From city blocks to small towns, from courthouse steps to community parks, we’re taking action to reject authoritarianism — and show the world what democracy really looks like.” Though one hundred organizations are mentioned, the principal organizer seems to be Indivisible.org, whose manifesto is remarkably similar to the quote above and to others in Mr Kirby’s article.

According to their website, “Indivisible was founded in response to Trump’s election - but we know that Trump is a symptom of a sick democracy, not its cause.” Of course, rich white folk are the illness. Indivisible’s purpose is to resist Trump’s and the GOP’s “right-wing” agenda and to promote “progressive” candidates and policies. They don’t acknowledge it, but it is safe to assume that such candidates and policies have been, are, and will be those of the Democratic party.

The married co-founders of Indivisible came of age in the Obama Dispensation. True disciples, they clearly intend to carry forward his “fundamental transformation of the United States of America.” Both are ex-staffers of Democrat politicians of that era and they took their lessons from the anti-Obama Tea Party. Photogenic and now in the deep wisdom of their mid-thirties, they appear in all the fashionable magazines and regularly make the lists of the most visionary and influential people in Washington, D. C.—indeed in the world.

In their vision, the social, political, and economic wishes of at least half their fellow citizens are an infection, a malignancy rotting the core of our polity. The hideous orange tumor is but a visible outgrowth: to save the patient, it must all be permanently excised. They will cure other people’s authoritarianism, capitalism, colonialism, and racism.

“No Kings” is good old demagoguery. It fetches back to the expulsion of the Tarquins, the assassination of Louis XVI, and the defeat of George III. Basilophobia flows in our veins. But the notion that the current President has monarchical aims and will achieve them if he is not stopped by popular resistance deserves ridicule. Similar fear-mongering agitators were decrying the same of George Washington right from our founding. Indivisible et alii might be opposed to a king by that name, but what they want is not so different. They are not new. We have seen them many times in the last two and a half centuries.

Indivisible and their fraternal and sororal allies claim to know the one and true definition of “democracy.” A true democracy, you see, is a one-party state guided by a correctly-thinking intelligentsia under a Leader’s sole direction. This ends all recalcitrant opposition that keeps progress from moving forward. And they would have had it, too, if Mr Trump had not stolen it, first from Ms Clinton, Obama’s heiress-apparent, by means of the electoral college, then from Ms Harris, similarly anointed, aided by malefactors of great wealth. No, they alone know what is best for the people, and the demos must return their party to power. Sole power. Then will the world see “what democracy really looks like.”

— Peter Cohee