June 14, Flag Day. As I sit down to type this, friends around the state are donning their protest hats and signs for the big day, to say with their bodies as well as hearts and minds “We don’t do kings in America!” Our erstwhile President, meanwhile, dons his majestic invisible regalia to parade his naked ego before a military display fit for a king. “It’s my birthday, after all,” he explains, as if he deserves a gift of this size from the American taxpayers. Does that explain the birthday suit?
Oh, friends, I admire your faith, your hope that standing up en masse against this Macy’s Balloon-sized World Leader has the potential to prick and pop something, whether it’s Donald Trump’s illusions or whatever fear is keeping our elected representatives from taking the situation back into our own hands. But I don’t think the statement hits the mark. We do have kings. It’s dictators we don’t have, or don’t want to have. But that’s what we’ve got.
What’s going on in Los Angeles, on the opposite side of the country from today’s gargantuan military display, is proof enough for me. It had not occurred to me that an effective way to control immigration would be to make our country as despotic and lawless as the countries many refugees are fleeing. But seeing footage of DT’s Mean Babe from Homeland Security consorting with his masked, armed goon squads invading middle class homes on tree-lined streets – that sent terror through me. Refugees don’t come here just hoping it will be easier to get a meal: they’re also hoping to live where there will be laws to protect them. For some people that hope is worth risking everything, including death, for the possibility of living without persecution. Demonstrating that no law will protect anyone Donald Trump doesn’t like, not even a citizen in good standing like U.S. Senator Alex Padilla, may convince potential migrants it’s no better here than Venezuela or Sudan. Better to stay home with the despot you know, share misery with family and friends.
The truth is, we do have kings, lots of them. We grant them regal status according to the wealth they have acquired – which is how we got this king through the democratic process. We have kings and queens, princes and princesses, dukes and duchesses – people we will salute for having “made it” even when they made it on someone else’s dime. We think money’s polluting power emanates from campaign contributions (and that’s certainly true.) But we pollute ourselves over it. We salute rich people reflexively, will bend over frontward and backward for them without receiving a penny. We are deferential to them. We let them make laws that favor their continuing accumulation of wealth from the public’s resources, and then refuse to risk changing those laws or even challenging them. When the possibility comes up, we play dead, like possums, then crawl away to safety when the danger of acting subsides. And just so you’ll know, I do it, too.
“Humanity is failing,” I heard a woman wail on NPR last week in an interview about Gaza. She was from the International Red Cross, I think, describing the Palestinian deaths from starvation piled on top of the deaths from being shot while trying to get into food lines. And now, while our pathetic President plays Parade King, his goon Netanyahu, whose political party demands a dictator, has started war with Iran as if his country hadn’t yet seen and caused enough death.
Humanity is failing because we are under the reign of dictators, not presidents or kings. I think we will continue to fail until we give up worshiping wealth and making royalty out of the wealthy. But what we will have to do to wrest the world away from these evil empires is daunting.
Trudy Wischemann is a writer who cowers in Lindsay. Send her your recipes for resurrecting democracy c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247
