Acting like a king

The peanut gallery at our local bastion of freedom of speech, Facebook’s “Osceola Scoop,” recently outdid themselves in their comments on the local No Kings rally last October 18. The Scoop actually has some stated off-limit topics, primarily “Politics (state/national), race, creed, ethnicity, color, gender” with “ZERO TOLERANCE for racism, hate, threats,” so it was probably only a matter of time before the entire yakfest was removed.

After due reflection, however, and in the spirit of “Act(ing) like an adult,” another of the group rules, I would like to respond to the two main, and perhaps only points being made on the thread: (1) the participants are idiots; (2) Donald Trump was elected by a majority and therefore is not a king.

As for the comments on the limited brain capacity of the participants in the Osceola rally, it’s worth noting that a large number of the protesters were retired teachers, and the Scoop thread perhaps offered some of their former students an opportunity, channeling their childhood selves, to express the poor opinions of teachers that they were unable to express during their brief stints in educational institutions.

As for the second point: the protesters were expressing their opposition to monarchies and authoritarianism and to those who act like kings. According to the Declaration of Independence, these were some the acts of King George III:

• Refused to Assent to Laws..…
• obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither…
• obstructed the Administration of Justice
• erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people…
• kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures…
• Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us…
• cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world…
• depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury...transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offenses...
• excited domestic insurrections amongst us.

When the visas of law-abiding people are revoked without notice, and U.S. citizens are yanked off of worksites right along with them and detained even after they’ve presented passports or Real IDs; when apartment doors are blasted open at 1:30 am by ICE thugs swarming out of helicopters landing on the roof to round up sleeping children along with their parents into vans; when citizen children are deported along with a parent with no hearing or even a phone call; then people start to notice that things are a little different now, and not in a good way.

Over 7 million people attended No Kings rallies in over 2,600 cities and towns on October 18. Last month, Trump quietly issued National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7) directing national security agencies to monitor indicators of “anti-Christianity,” “anti-capitalism” and “anti-Americanism” to identify domestic terrorists. On October 10, Mike Johnson identified the upcoming protests as the “hate America rally.” Those 7 million people are to be commended for their courage.