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No King But The People: A Nation on the Eve of Reckoning

  • Jun 13
  • 4 min read

Updated: Jun 17

Special Edition: Today at 6 PM Eastern, a live program honoring the 250th Anniversary of the US Army and the 248th Anniversary of Flag Day. Plus, it's also President Trump's 79th birthday.


Programming is available on Social Media.




June 13, 2025

Today, tanks will roll down the streets of our nation's capital. Not in response to an invasion, but for a parade. A parade to celebrate the U.S. Army's 250th birthday, which, by no coincidence, is also Donald Trump's 79th birthday. The administration calls it a celebration of our troops. But for millions of us, it feels like a coronation. It feels like a chilling spectacle of authoritarian pageantry, and it's why tomorrow, we will take to the streets in protest. Our message is simple, and it is rooted in the very foundation of this nation: No Kings.


This parade is not an isolated event. It is the grand, theatrical finale to a series of actions that have pushed our democracy to the brink. It is the culmination of a political project that seeks to replace civil servants with loyalists, dissent with silence, and the rule of law with the whim of one man.

Look at the groundwork that has been laid. In Texas, even before the first protest sign is raised, Governor Greg Abbott has deployed thousands of National Guard soldiers and DPS troopers. This isn't a safety measure; it is a deliberate act of intimidation. It is the state flexing its military muscle not against a foreign foe, but against its own citizens who plan to exercise their right to peaceful assembly. The message is clear: dissent will be met with overwhelming force.


Look at our institutions, the traditional guardrails of our republic. At the U.S. Naval Academy, a revered history professor resigns in protest after being ordered to remove a scholarly paper from a symposium, a blatant act of political censorship in a place designed to foster critical thought. This is happening as our most senior military leaders have fallen into what The Atlantic has rightly termed "the silence of the generals." Their quiet deference in the face of the politicization of our armed forces is a dangerous abdication of their duty, not to a president, but to the Constitution.


And look at the streets of our cities, where the ugliest expressions of this ideology are made manifest. Masked federal agents from ICE are conducting raids, grabbing people from their homes and cars. As The Washington Post opinion page highlighted, these masks serve a dual purpose: they protect the agents from accountability while terrorizing communities. This is not law enforcement; it is the tactic of a secret police force, operating with impunity.


Why is this happening? To understand, we must look at the toxic ideology that underpins it all: Hereditarianism. It is the discredited, pseudoscientific belief that a person’s worth, intelligence, and character are predetermined by their bloodline and ethnic origin. This is the philosophy that allows a government to categorize people into "us" and "them." It is the intellectual justification for building walls, for mass deportations, and for treating immigrants as an invading force rather than as human beings. It is the poison that, once it enters the body politic, leads inevitably to the kind of ethno-nationalism that this parade is designed to celebrate.


So, when we march tomorrow, we are not just protesting a parade. We are not just protesting Donald Trump. We are protesting the deployment of troops against citizens. We are protesting the silencing of academics and the cowing of generals. We are protesting the use of masked agents to enforce a cruel and dehumanizing agenda. We are standing against the insidious idea that some of us are more American than others.


The "No Kings" protests, planned in hundreds of locations, are a testament to the enduring spirit of American democracy. We know the risks. We have seen the reports from The Wall Street Journal that extremist groups like the Proud Boys may stage counter-protests. But we will not be intimidated.

Tomorrow, the world will see two Americas. One is an America of military hardware and strongman politics, a spectacle for a king on his birthday. The other is the America of the people—in the streets, in the town squares, armed not with weapons, but with the conviction that in this country, sovereignty rests not with any one person, but with us all. We choose the latter.


Trend Analysis

The provided articles, when viewed together, reveal several disturbing and interconnected trends that characterize the current political moment.

  1. The Militarization of Civic Space: The deployment of thousands of National Guard and state troopers in Texas in anticipation of protests is a prime example of a broader trend. Instead of being treated as a constitutionally protected right, dissent is being framed as a threat to public order that requires a militarized response. This creates a "chilling effect," discouraging citizens from exercising their rights and normalizing the presence of military forces in domestic political disputes.

  2. The Politicization and Subversion of Apolitical Institutions: The resignation at the Naval Academy and the "silence of the generals" point to immense pressure on institutions designed to be apolitical. The military and academic institutions derive their legitimacy from their non-partisanship and commitment to principle over politics. Forcing them to bow to a political agenda, such as by censoring academic papers or co-opting the Army for a personal birthday parade, erodes public trust and removes a critical check on executive power.

  3. State-Sanctioned Dehumanization as Policy: The use of masked ICE agents is not merely a procedural choice; it is a political statement. It signals a move toward unaccountable state power and actively dehumanizes both the agents and their targets. This trend is ideologically supported by the principles of Hereditarianism, which provides a framework for classifying entire groups of people as "other" and, therefore, less deserving of rights and humane treatment. This transforms immigration enforcement from a legal process into a tool of social and racial purification.

  4. The Rise of Performative Authoritarianism: The military parade itself is the most visible manifestation of this trend. Such large-scale, state-sponsored displays of military hardware are hallmarks of authoritarian regimes, designed to project an image of overwhelming strength and to center the leader as the embodiment of the nation. The deliberate fusion of the Army's anniversary with Trump's birthday underscores the personal nature of this spectacle, shifting the focus from celebrating a national institution to demanding fealty to a single individual. The "No Kings" protest name is a direct reaction to this performative demand for monarchical-style reverence.

 
 
 

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