It's Already a Moot Point

Stop protesting against kings and start protesting against war

Photo by servet photograph on Unsplash

So today is the day — June 14th. Two opposing events are scheduled: Donald Trump’s military parade and the No Kings nationwide protests.

Here’s a quote from a press release on May 5, 2025 from indivisible.org, a partner sponsoring the No Kings events (bold emphasis my own):

“This country doesn’t belong to a king — and we’re not letting him throw himself a parade funded by tens of millions of our taxpayer dollars while stealing from us and stripping away our rights, our freedoms, and the programs our families rely on. On June 14th, we’re coming together to send one clear message: No Thrones. No Crowns. No Kings.”

Put your thinking caps on folks. The parade is happening today and we, the people, will be paying through the nose for it. Do you really believe that DJT, Inc cares how many of you come out to protest today? Protests have to be sustained on all the days in between the big, organized events: follow-up action, not just shouted slogans once a month or so

But, you argue, we are headed towards fascism, authoritarianism. Newsflash: it’s already here. The military is on the streets of LA. The people of Gaza continue to starve and burn, as the US continues to do nothing to stop Israeli atrocities (under Biden and Trump, and all US Presidents since Israel became a nation), and now things are really revving up with Iran:

The United States is shifting military resources, including ships, in the Middle East in response to Israel’s strikes on Iran and a possible retaliatory attack by Tehran, two U.S. officials said Friday.

The Navy has directed the destroyer Thomas Hudner, which is capable of defending against ballistic missiles, to begin sailing from the western Mediterranean Sea toward the eastern Mediterranean and has directed a second destroyer to begin moving forward so it can be available if requested by the White House.

While Trump’s idiotic military parade is a huge waste of money, the biggest waste of money is the Military Industrial Complex that Ike warned us about, but in our current times is better described as MICIMATT. (see, also, Bracing Views)

Electing more Democrats will not stop this military spending. My state’s senators, both Democrats, support every war that comes down the pike.

There once was a wing of the Democratic Party that questioned and stood up to the war industry: Senators J. William Fulbright, George McGovern, Gene McCarthy, Mike Gravel, William Proxmire and House member Dennis Kucinich. But that opposition evaporated along with the antiwar movement. When 30 members of the party’s progressive caucus recently issued a call for Biden to negotiate with Putin, they were forced by the party leadership and a warmongering media to back down and rescind their letter. Not that any of them, with the exception of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have voted against the billions of dollars in weaponry sent to Ukraine or the bloated military budget. Rashida Tlaib voted present.

The opposition to the perpetual funding of the war in Ukraine has come primarily from Republicans, 11 in the Senate and 57 in the House, several, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, unhinged conspiracy theorists. Only nine Republicans in the House joined the Democrats in supporting the $1.7 trillion spending bill needed to prevent the government from shutting down, which included approval of $847 billion for the military — the total is boosted to $858 billion when factoring in accounts that don’t fall under the Armed Services committees’ jurisdiction. In the Senate, 29 Republicans opposed the spending bill. The Democrats, including nearly all 100 members of the House Congressional Progressive Caucus, lined up dutifully for endless war. (link)

Please don’t respond that I must be a fan of Donald Trump or the Republicans. I am not. I simply refuse to play along in this game of good politician/bad politician, while our society deteriorates and innocents continue to die due to preventable wars.

We need to protest en masse, but to do so effectively. The threat of revolution has to be a real threat, one that truly disrupts the status quo.

From an series of conversations between Howard Zinn and Ray Suarez (bold emphasis my own):

The country was in turmoil in the 1930s when Roosevelt came into office. There were strikes all over the country. There were riots. There were people breaking into places where there was food. There were children marching into city halls demanding that they be fed and taken care of. Tenants were organizing and refusing to be evicted, bringing furniture back into the homes after it had been taken out to the street. It was a country that was in a state of near-revolution, something that very much worried the people in Washington.

Certainly Roosevelt was sensitive to this. The New Deal was the result of it—the result of the combination of Roosevelt’s sensitivity and the events, the uproar, the rebellions taking place all over the country, which he had to take notice of.

I think, yes, Roosevelt was saving capitalism, no question about that—and I think he was conscious of that too. I think he was saving the system that he believed in from revolution, from very deep trouble, but I think he also was a human being responding to the plight of people. He may not have responded so easily if there hadn’t been all this turmoil and threat to the system, but there was something in Roosevelt that wanted to do some good.

Donald Trump is not FDR. He doesn’t have to be. But, we, the people, need to find the courage to act as our forebears did in the 1930s. To disrupt the system. To say “no” to endless wars rather than continue to support politicians who feed the MICIMATT.

I don’t have all the answers; none of us do. But I do know that we have to stop seeing our fellow citizens as “others”, and instead unite under an anti-war, pro-labor agenda.

Israel is bombing nuclear facilities in Iran, and the US is sending our Navy right into the fray as I write this. This sounds like a WWIII scenario to me. Really, should we all be fighting over who voted for who at a time like this?