WHAT A WEEKEND

The best and worst of who we are on fully display

Massive crowds turned up for the NO KINGS DAY rallies around the country on Saturday, while the military parade in Washington was little more than a $45M ego trip. A parade to celebrate 250 years of the US military as well as Flag Day could have been a very powerful, positive thing - don’t get me wrong. It could have been a deep bow of appreciation for the men and women who have served in our military over the last 250 years, and an appropriate celebration of people in uniform today as well as veterans. But just parading a bunch of army tanks was not that. It was more like a gargantuan floating car show. Trucks, tanks, all sorts of heavy military equipment - see what we got?

Let’s remember that President Trump, when visiting the cemetery of fallen American soldiers at Normandy, was heard to utter, “What was in it for them?” That’s how little appreciation he has for anyone sacrificing their life for the cause of freedom. And how little appreciation he has for freedom itself.

But that was just one of the major events of the weekend.

Around the country, an estimated over ten million people took to the streets to celebrate NO KINGS DAY. That was the true spirit of America on display. Trumpworld’s authoritarian incursion into the sinews of our nation has been deep, from the demolition of important governmental functions and federal agencies to the inhumane treatment of undocumented immigrants. But NO KINGS DAY, regardless how much Trumpworld might try to diminish its significance, was a rousing expression of just what it says: we do not have a king, we do not want a king, and we will not be quiet when an American President acts like one.

The spirit of America lay dormant for a long time. No longer.

We should not underestimate - not that I think anyone has - the damage this administration has done to the functioning of the U.S. government and the psyche of the country. We must face this fact clear-eyed. Yet a disturbing number of people have seemed almost to surrender in advance, saying things like “There’s nothing we can do” or “Well, life went on during the fall of Rome.” That is not the kind of thinking we can afford to indulge right now.

Yes, it’s true that Trumpworld came on strong in those first hundred days. It’s also true that people took a bit of time to process what was going on. I’ve always said Americans are slow to wake up sometimes. But when we do wake up, we slam it like nobody’s business. And yesterday was a hard slam. It didn’t have to be violent to make its point, and thank God it wasn’t. But it showed Steven Miller and Kristi Noem and the rest of the regime that millions of Americans are watching, and we are not pleased. The Trump gang can pretend not to care about all those rallies, but trust me they do. They had the military on alert should people have given them the slightest opportunity to come in with soldiers to “liberate” the town. There is probably even some level of disappointment that we did not.

But yesterday was just one day. To me, it signified that the resistance has a stronghold. We’re still far from the 2026 midterms, but anything and everything we do to gum the works of an authoritarian regime is an advance. And we cannot let up. As Churchill so famously said, “This is not the end. It’s not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” Those who organized the NO KINGS DAY protests deserve kudos and gratitude. They made the military birthday party look like the insignificant thing that it was, by the way. And so much for getting rid of waste. That $45M could have provided food for the hungry and healthcare for the sick, but hey, who’s looking?

We are.

This weekend also saw tragic events in Minnesota, neither the horror nor the significance of which should be ignored or glossed over. The Democratic former leader of the Minnesota Senate Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark were killed, and State Senator Jerome Hoffman and his wife were shot multiple times but survived. The alleged gunman left behind a kill list of 70 other Democrats he felt should be marked for execution.

So it is in America today.

And here we are. Whether political violence comes from the left or from the right, it is antithetical to everything that as human beings we should tolerate. In the words of Martin Luther King, Jr.,"Silence in the face of evil is itself evil.” We should recognize the danger of these times and commit ourselves to being part of the solution. To do that, we must cultivate a culture of non-violence and love. We must dedicate our lives to the challenge of this moment, participating in every way possible in the creation of a light so great that all darkness shall be cast from our midst.

The spirit of our country took a long nap, but it’s awakening. Something important has been activated in America. There are no quick solutions or easy answers. But there are millions of mature and emotionally sober Americans who are willing to go deep, to think about issues we have left too often in the hands of others, to atone in our hearts for the compromise of our own principles that led us to the state we are in today, and to pray with our feet for a reborn and more beautiful America.

It’s not a quick process, but I feel in my heart that it’s begun.