Well, nobody could say that the weekend lacked interest.
I’m a sixty-eighty year-old man living in Puerto Rico, but I tune in a lot to the news. My friends and sponsor in AA don’t think much of it—they accuse me of surveying the prairie each morning, looking for the deepest rabbit hole I can dwell in for the day. I answer them by telling them that I am—what’s the phrase?—"actively engaged with my time.” By which I mean that I pay attention when…
…an American senator from California, Alex Padilla, is arrested in a secure government facility. He had passed through security—metal detectors and all. He had been escorted by federal employees into a room, where he was awaiting a meeting with the Armed Forces concerning their training and preparation for deployment on the streets of Los Angeles. That meeting was aborted when Kristi Noem, the Director of National Security, showed up for a press conference. The Feds asked Padilla if he would like to attend the press conference. He said sure, and was chill enough to sit in the back, absorbing the misinformation until Noem announced that the National Guard, which Trump had ordered into Los Angeles against the wishes of the governor California and the mayor of Los Angeles, was there to “liberate the city” from the socialist and radical governments of the mayor and the governor.
A sitting president had decided to topple the lawfully elected governor of the most populous state in the country as well as the mayor of the second most populated city in the United States.
It didn’t sit well with Padilla, who rose to his feet, walked quickly to the front of the stage (Noem called it a “lunge”) and identified himself as a US Senator. Given that he had presented ID, had been previously vouched as having business in the building, and had been escorted to the press conference by federal employees—well, there couldn’t have been much doubt about who he was.
He was physically stopped, pushed out of the room by several FBI agents, taken into the hallway where he was forced to his knees, then forced onto his abdomen. He was then handcuffed and led out of the building.
That was Thursday of last week, but I was still paying attention even before my morning coffee, when on Saturday morning the news came out that the former Speaker of the House of the Minnesota State House of Representatives had been killed, along with her husband. The Speaker of the House was responsible for the Minnesota Miracle, which showed that common sense and common decency could prevail even in the most divisive of times. The Minnesota Miracle (capitalizing it makes it feel like a baseball team) was going on at the same time that Scott Walker was completely destroying whatever vestige of the Wisconsin Idea was left in the state. All of the work that old Bob LaFollette and the Progressives had done a century ago was out the window, and Minnesota swooped in and grabbed our miracle.
Putting grievances aside, I can tell you that the killer struck in the night, and was apparently acting alone (hhhmmm…). He was dressed as a policeman and was driving a police car. In the car were the usual AK-47’s, or whatever they are, and a manifesto. It contained the names (mostly still undisclosed) of seventy elected state officials. Among them were the two senators from Minnesota and the governor of the state, Tim Walz.
Tim Walz, you may remember, was the loveable former High School teacher who had been a senator and then became governor of Minnesota. He was the diametric opposite of Donald Trump, made all of us old white men feel good about ourselves, and was absolutely going to be the next Vice President of the United States, serving under Madam President Kamala Harris.
Anybody could see that, of course.
The details are still unclear, but the usual suspect was apprehended. He was a Trump voter, he had been weaponized or radicalized, and after visiting the houses of two more state legislators in the very wee hours (neither lawmaker was at home at 2:30 in the morning) had gone to his final victim, another legislator. The couple was shot, but are expected to survive. It was at their house that the police (the real police) found the fake police, the killer. They had a shootout, the gunman fled, and the rest of the weekend was pretty grim, for Minnesota State Legislators. One of them (who had been on the target list) spent the weekend holed up in her basement, grateful for the cop car that was parked outside in her driveway.
So I was indeed actively engaging with my times (my gaze firmly directly forward to the future, ignoring any rabbit holes in the foreground) when Governor Walz had finished declaring the obvious. He did it in his loveliest High School fashion. This material was definitely going to be on the final exam, and you’d have to be a fool not to realize it. So I was checking off “Political Assassinations in America” from my list, when it was time to get going. There were going to be over two thousand demonstrations against Trump and his insane military parade throughout the country. One of them was two blocks away from me and really guys—what excuse did I have not to go to it?
I was glad I did—I saw four or five friends, walked in a circle on the street, held a sign that said “Ningún Ser Humano es Ilegal” (hah! That’ll stick it to Trump), and shouted “LUCHA SI, ENTREGA NO!” I have heard “Fight Yes Surrender No” for over thirty years in Puerto Rico, as countless protest have drifted past my house. But last Saturday, it was my day to shine.
There were five million of us on our various streets, sidewalks, and public spaces last Saturday. We were protesting in Minneapolis, even though the No King’s Day organizers had cancelled the March. Nobody was in the mood to cower at home in the basement, so here’s how that went.
There was also no official parade in Washington, DC, since Trump had decided to pair his 79thbirthday with the Army’s 250’s birthday. It was going to have Macron of France and Kim Jong-Un of Korea in conniptions, it was going to be so big. He was expecting a quarter of a million to show up, and who could compete with that? So people would have to go to Philly instead, but screw that. Here’s what the DC non-protest looked like….
I was protesting at the same time as my brother and sister-in-law were protesting in New York City, and if the official estimate off 200, 000 people at the rally doesn’t tally with Jeanne’s number of 250, 000… well, what a problem to have.
The protests were great—they had the energy Trump would have wanted at his parade. But the parade was sparsely attended, the stands were half-empty, the squeaking of the tanks as they rolled listlessly by was a mockery.
I came home and felt, for the first time almost sorry for Trump. I used to say that I would despise the man if there was any “man” there to despise. He has no inherent values or virtues. He’s a wearisome, predictable collection of grievances and hates. His one interest is himself and feathering his nest. He can do that now, and his fortune has grown by millions if not billions since he left office.
He's on top of the world.
At his parade, though, he was an old, tired man. The tanks rolled by. The MC for the affair laid out the number of troops in each war, the casualties, the guns and weapons used. It was as leaden as the skies—which refused to open up and rain. Even that fizzled, and there Trump was, slowly dozing off—completely alone among all the people who could only fear him.
One couldn’t and the most heart-breaking scene starts around minute four in the video below. The MC is droning on about World War I, the dignitaries are struggling to appear awake, Trump has given up the battle.
But Melania, his wife, looks over at him and surveys him coldly. There’s no affection. She’s looking at him critically, clinically. Is she thinking that he is 79 years old, demented, petty, vindictive, and ultimately a monster of selfishness? However much money he has, he will always be a poor man.
Is she wondering how many more years she will have to endure this sham of a marriage? How many times will she have to appear on stage, feigning interest in a husband she can’t stand? How much more pretense will be required of her?
The protests were great. The parade was a flop. The narrative was that the tide had turned, the momentum had changed, a new day in our glorious democracy had dawned.
Wrong—Trump was still president.
