So, another round of “No Kings” protests swept the nation during the weekend of October 18th, 2025. Or did they?
I can’t say that I noticed them all that much, and judging from many of the on-the-ground reports, the turnout was lackluster at best. The energy just isn’t there anymore, and corporate media, for all their preening and propagandizing, cannot enhance this declining movement.
The irony of protesting “No Kings” in a country that broke away from a kingdom, a global empire, is not lost on me. Of course, the greater irony is that if this country were still ruled by a king, I highly doubt that any “No Kings” protests would be allowed to proliferate across the country.
Consider the communist dictator, aka Dear Leader, Chairman Mao Zedong, following the first decade of his rule. At that point, he allowed dissent during what he termed the Hundred Flowers Campaign. He permitted student and general protest in post-World War II China to, as he claimed, “Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend.”
The Chinese intellectual classes approached this newfound freedom with caution. Then, when they realized they could speak their minds freely (so far), intensely (and correctly) criticizing Communism, Chairman and his red goons cracked down within weeks, and shut down all dissent. The truth is that Mao’s generous invitation was a honey-pot scam to lure out his greatest detractors, arrest them, and silence them for good.
We would see a similar crackdown in this country if there were any threat of President Trump turning himself into a king.
I have lost count of how many “No Kings” Protests have taken place this year, especially in my section of Los Angeles County. I have attended at least three of them. Most of the attendees are pushing seventy or eighty years old. Sure, there are children present, mostly because their adult-children parents drag them to the events, and what child does not want to please Mom and Dad by going along with their events?
Mostly, a bunch of elderly progressives have shown up month after month, spouting their outrage. I can’t say “rage,” since they don’t chant or yell that much. Most of them just stand and try to keep a beat when chanting some hollow mantra about “No Trump, No KKK” or something else like that. In Culver City, CA, I saw a literal “Hippie Boomer” (the term I use for old liberals, to distinguish from the larger conservative Baby Boomer cohort), dressed up in the passé tie-dye colors of the 1960s in all its Woodstock infamy. Do any of these angry elders realize how sad and petty they have become?
And pettiness really is the word.
Did these protestors not notice the intense haggling that overtook Congress in June and July of this year? President Trump’s MAGA-aligned Republican party controls the legislature and the executive office, yet President (not King) Trump still had to wheel and deal to pass his Big Beautiful Bill.
He has issued a number of executive orders prioritizing key enforcement maneuvers, legal mechanisms, and cultural policies, but they face considerable (even undue) judicial scrutiny. Ultimately, the Supreme Court has upheld most of his orders, but not because Trump has threatened them if they don’t go along. For the most part, the Justices clearly outline to the public that Trump is well within his constitutional rights to enforce federal laws, direct the military, and prosecute the peace as needed.
Trump is no dictator. He just dictates orders with a gruffness that ruffles some liberal feathers, and progressive posturing has reduced itself to shouting “Trump the Meanie! Orange Man Bad!” as a final argument.
And let’s not kid ourselves about the nature of power and the progressive left’s true interests. It’s not that they don’t want any kings or supreme rulers. For decades, the liberal progressive movement of the United States was riding a long series of wins, starting with the judicial activism (read, supremacism) of the United States Supreme Court. From Roe v. Wade and Griswold v. Connecticut to Obergefell v Hodges, liberals witnessed their broad worldwide agenda come into play with the stroke of many gavels and the long-winded opinions of self-involved justices remaking the United States in their progressive ideal image. Even the justices nominated by Republican justices from the 1950s to the 1980s turned into big government, “living constitution” liberals who enacted sweeping cultural and political change to the Left, without the opinion or recourse for change from the general public.
President Joe Biden ruled as one of the most imperial and imperious presidents of our time. His flurry of executive actions imposed vaccine mandates, lockdown orders, and broadened huge influxes of cash into every left-wing interest in academia, media, business, and entertainment.
President Barack Obama bragged about his phone and his pen, and that he was not afraid to use either to push his agenda, including broad, corrupt actions in our immigration policy and the forced implementation of radical cultural Marxist ideology in every branch of government. Like FDR and other progressive presidents before him, Obama was not above using the engine of state to inflict retribution on his political enemies, and he even seized the phone records of AP reporters and tried to shut down Fox News!
The Left loves its kings when they are in power. Only when they see political power slipping away do they cry “No Kings! No Kings” like a bunch of crazed hyenas.
Not just in politics, but in every major institution of the culture, the regressive Left and their hippie Boomer peers have had their say, way, and sway. President Trump is the Counterrevolution to all of this, and the majority of the country welcomes his return to normalcy. The will of the people, the voice of the voters, terrifies The Left. Now there’s the irony! And they shout “No Kings.” Indeed, the power of the American people is slowly returning, and President Trump is implementing these necessary changes.