Strength Against Weakness
Reversing The Reversals Of The Trump Administration
The temperature was hovering at just above freezing, and a cold wind made it feel even colder in Enfield on Saturday, but perhaps 50 protesters still showed up to join in a nationwide No Kings Day rally on March 28. Enfield’s crowd was smaller than at the last No Kings Day protest, but that was not the case in other locations across the country and even in Australia, Italy, Israel, and England (what did King Charles think?) when people gathered to oppose the Trump takeover of the United States.
Conservative estimates place the attendance at the more than 3,300 sites in the United States at eight or nine million people, which organizers say makes it the largest one-day protest in US history. (They seem to forget that there were 20 million participants in the first Earth Day protests on April 22, 1970 — although those “protests” were largely educational to raise awareness of the health threats to humans and the devastation to the environment from industrial chemicals and pollution.)
The numbers on Saturday were huge: an estimated 200,000 in Boston and Minneapolis, and large turnouts in other cities, as well as in small towns. There were at least three separate protests in Burlington VT, and many people who did not attend a rally posted No Kings signs on their front lawns to show solidarity with those seeking to preserve democracy at a time when President Donald Trump is claiming the ability to do whatever he wants to do, including joining Israel in starting a war against Iran.
Something strange occurred, however. Much of the legacy media ignored the protests, or minimized them: The New York Times took the lazy approach by publishing a short “5 Takeaways From the ‘No Kings’ Rallies as the Midterms Heat Up” which glossed over the event with political pablum that required no effort at serious reporting.
Let me digress for a moment: One of my pet peeves is the proliferation of “5 Takeaways” or “5 Things You Should Know” or “5 Ways To Avoid….” or “5 Steps To Better Health”…. I immediately skip them, for they are worthless space-fillers, merely attempts to draw people in or produce quick content. I look for articles that actually say something, that require the author to do a little digging or provide useful analysis.
That is why Substack and, to a lesser extent, BlueSky have been so rewarding as legacy media have lost their way. There is real information that no longer appears amidst staff cuts and fear of threats from the Trump administration.
Robert Hubbell, for example, although he is a partisan writer who is a “member of the resistance”, does deep analysis of events and how they are reported by the press. Of the third No Kings Day, he writes, “Leading the pack of doubters and cynics is the NYTimes, which posted a pre-emptory dismissal of the NKD3 protests the day before the protests took place. The article was offensive and insulting. … The thesis of the article, by Jeremy Peters (petersjw@nytimes.com), questions whether the No Kings Day protests matter:
Organizers hoped Saturday’s protests would turn out to be the largest yet. But as the marchers tried to fulfill that promise, it remained an open question whether another big turnout would be enough to influence the course of the nation’s politics. Can the protests harness that energy and turn it into victories in the November midterm elections? How can they avoid a primal scream that fades into a whimper?
Hubbell continues, “Worse is Peters’ use of an “expert” in civic engagement, Dana R. Fisher, a professor at American University (drfisher@american.edu or on Bluesky, @fisherdanar.bsky.social), who appears to hold those who engage in civic engagement in disdain. Professor Fisher told the Peters,
These large-scale protest events make people feel like they’re not alone — it’s like collective therapy. What we really need to do is the work of defending democracy in our communities. It’s not about inflatable costumes. It’s not about clever signs.
“So, an expert in ‘civic engagement’ sees millions of people in the streets in a single day, and she reduces it to ‘collective therapy’ and ‘inflatable costumes.’ Has Professor Fisher considered the possibility that 8 million people are actually concerned about their democracy and are protecting it through ‘civic engagement?’”
Why minimize the protests? There certainly is the pressure from the Trump administration to avoid reports criticizing him, and the media fear another lawsuit against them, or the revocation of their broadcasting rights. There is another reason, too: The media quickly tires of covering the same thing, preferring to approach news as a horse race — who’s ahead, what new play is being made? After two No Kings Day protests, they are ready to move on. It is similar to their acceptance of Trump’s lies. It’s no longer “news” that the president is unable to utter anything but lies, so why report on it? Then there is the combination of laziness and the lack of staff. The protests occurred on a weekend, and covering them would involve overtime. Why not wait until Monday and sift through social media posts to find out what happened?
Some protesters are beginning to feel that something beyond large gatherings is needed, as the New York Times implied. Trump may be panicking at the numbers of people taking to the streets to oppose his authoritarianism, but he will never willingly admit he has done anything wrong. Some are arguing that protesters will need to apply sustained economic pressure through week-long boycotts to get him to move away from his reckless economic policies. When protests directly affect his wealth, he listens.
Trump surely wants a way out of the Iran debacle as he sees the damage it has done to the world economy (which means his ability to coerce donations, royalties, and settlements is diminished). Republicans are defecting, not seeking reelection, or simply hiding as they realize how much Trump has diminished the United States’ standing in the world, with former allies no longer willing to back up his insane “excursions”. To reclaim democracy will be easy compared to restoring faith in a country gone astray.
