Dan Greaney is a legendary Simpsons writer and apparently a clairvoyant able to predict the future with painful accuracy. He famously penned the episode ‘Bart to the Future’, which predicted Trump’s damaging presidency all the way back in 2000. Well, Greaney has obviously been staring into his crystal ball again, because this September, he predicted that “The end is near for the Trump presidency. It will happen in spectacular fashion. His fall will be unambiguous and universally acknowledged. He’ll be removed from office.” While many saw this as a beacon of hope for democracy, civil rights and human rights, few took this foresight seriously and instead saw it more as a desperately hopeful meme. But the second No Kings Protest, and the cogs it has set in motion, have shown that Greaney’s prophecy is coming true once again.
The No Kings II protest was gigantic, with seven million protestors filling the streets of cities all over the US, and MAGA reacted in possibly the worst way possible. There was the typical smearing, such as baselessly claiming protestors were paid, despite having absolutely zero evidence and refusing to self-reflect on the fact that Trump’s main PR guy tried to buy an election with a lottery, which is way worse than paying protestors. But this sort of crap is par for the course now. What was truly weird was MAGA and Trump basically admitting they want him to be a king, posting AI videos of him as a king with Congress bowing to him and him as a king ruling for decades. Possibly the worst was one of Trump wearing a crown in a military fighter jet (despite the fact he was a draft dodger), dropping faeces on protestors.
If a fake AI puppet of a man pretending to be a king shitting all over the American people from a pathetic, made-up projection of power isn’t the perfect metaphor for the US, I don’t know what is.
But yeah, Trump and MAGA seem to have admitted they want King Orange-Neck Vagina the First…
Either way, are seven million people peaceful enough to turn the tide on Dorito Bonito?
Well, I, and many others, have repeatedly pointed to the brilliant work of Harvard researcher Erica Chenoweth. She discovered that peaceful protest is by far the most effective way to create major political change and that when 3.5% of the population participates in these protests, such change is guaranteed to happen.
Because the US has a population of around 340 million, that means 2% of the US population took part in No Kings II. So, not quite there yet.
It does, however, demonstrate a considerable escalation against Trump.
The Hands Off Protest in April had three million attendees, the first No Kings Protest in June had five million, and now No Kings II has seven million. If you average this growth out, over 21,000 people in the US are joining the movement to peacefully protest against Trump every day.
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