Pump and Dump
Every resistance movement starts with the first step. It’s all the better if that first step lands on a foot pump. Prior to the No Kings rallies, we heard a lot of hot air about violence, antifa, and protesters who hate America. The protesters who united in cities across don’t hate America. They are America. Well, America dressed as a giant inflatable chicken, anyway. Yes, a lot of the protests included humor. But that humor serves a serious function. “This humorous form of protest, known as tactical frivolity, shows the absurdity of the charge that all the protesters are armed militants. In contravention of the Trump administration’s claims that the protesters were all Hamas agents or antifa interns, the protest in Chicago was wholesome, nonaggressive and almost shockingly middle-of-the-road. It’s hard to call an inflatable chicken dangerous.” The novelist Gary Shteyngart in the NYT (Gift Article): The Rise of the Inflatable Chicken Resistance. “Frivolity and absurdity are kryptonite to authoritarians who project the stern-father archetype to their followers. Once the pants are lowered and the undies of the despot are glimpsed, there is no point of return.”
+ “It’s a joke, but it’s not only a joke. At a time when the administration is seeking to portray its political opponents as seditious enemies—ones worthy of violence and prosecution—the injection of levity is a matter of strategy.” Slate (Gift Article): We Interviewed an Anti-Trump Inflatable Frog. It Made Some Great Points.
+ “Unable to get a precise crowd estimate, I tried instead to count inflatable frog costumes. I gave up on this about twenty minutes later: there were simply too many frogs.” Sarah Jeong reports from Portland. March of the frogs.
+ One of the key goals of authoritarianism is to exhaust the public and leave them in a state of apathy. Well, Saturday was the country’s largest single-day protest in history.
+ Photos of the protests from NPR and The Atlantic.
+ “Kenny Loggins has spoken out against Donald Trump using his song ‘Danger Zone’ in a bizarre AI video of the president in a fighter jet bombing No Kings protesters with what appears to be fecal matter.” (The obvious song choice was Snoop Dogg’s Drop It Like It’s Hot. What can I say. Some people just can’t tell a joke…)
