Can they bend the arc?

Being a true conservative, I decided to go to the No Kings Rally yesterday at Grant Park in Chicago. I thought it was only fitting, being as conservative as I am, because the Founding Fathers disagreed about all kinds of things, except one.

Nobody wanted another king.

Yes, kids, it’s true. As it turns out, the Founders disagreed about how powerful the federal government should be, how to tax the commoners, where to put the Capital, and they even disagreed about slavery. They were absolutely determined not to have a monarchy, though, and that’s a true fact. You’d think they’d teach people about this in law school or during their Supreme Court orientation weekend, but that’s a post for another day.

Anyway, it seemed like this whole anti-monarchist sentiment was being dismissed as liberal Argle-bargle on right-wing media, so I figured I’d balance the turnout by showing up. I decided not to wear my Make America Great Again hat (a gift, I swear) or my ICE hat (a gift, I swear again) so I would blend in better with the crowd. Good thing I did, though, because there were no other MAGA/ICE hats on display. Maybe my conservative compatriots were as bashful as I am about showing off our strict-constructionism cred.

By my rough count, there were between 20-30,000 people in Grant Park, and I was impressed by the demographics. I saw a few people from recognizable minorities and some people who appeared to be under 40, but this was about as old and white a bunch as you’d have seen at a Grateful Dead concert. In the 70s, they were marching out of concern for the world they’d be living in and now they were back because they’re handing a much crappier world to their grandkids…and some brought placards that made that point clearly.

The speakers on stage tried to drum up enthusiasm with group chants and cheers, with only moderate success. White liberals don’t work well with organization and cohesiveness, which is evident whenever there’s a rally. Or an election, but that’s also for a future post.

A woman walked by with a sign against the Iranian incursion/excursion and she said she buried her son this week, one of the first U.S. military casualties of this not-a-war. I checked after I got home and, yes, six reservists who were killed in a drone strike came from a unit in Iowa that draws soldiers from Iowa, Illinois, and Minnesota. Freedom isn’t free, the politicians love to say, but the politicians are never the ones who pay the ultimate price.

As the march was ending and people started heading home, I wondered what it all meant. It’s safe to assume nobody in D.C. was watching the march and deciding to change course. Still, it probably made a difference to the people who attended and that impact can have ripple effects.

Increasingly, I have conversations with normies who see nothing but extremism represented on their feeds and they tell me how much they feel alone in the political world. As the algorithms promote conflict, they say, they’ll wonder if there is anyone who sees things the way they do. On Saturday, they saw the reality. They saw other people who feel the same way they do, without any social media filters. Many/most/all returned home just a bit less isolated, more confident, possibly emboldened to share their views with others.  

Will they change the arc of history? You never know. Still, it’s reassuring every so often to watch democracy in action.

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