Not in These United States

Each week seems to deliver new turmoil courtesy of Donald Trump.  This week, two biggies: the armed services to LA to manage protestors, and a military parade in DC.  Trump has said anyone who shows up to protest the parade will be met with “heavy force.”  Really?

Since the Boston Tea Party in 1773, we as a nation have honored the right of our people to gather peacefully to protest the government, whether that government was in the form of the Executive, Legislative, or Judicial Branch.  Trump wants to change all that and arrest people for disagreeing with him.  That sentiment is not only unconstitutional, but also blasphemous in these United States.

Colonists dumped 342 chests of tea into the Boston Harbor to protest an English law regarding taxation.  The phrase, “no taxation without representation,” was a special pro-democracy position against a monarch.  Thinking about it in today’s context, we should not forget that those colonists, whom history has judged as heroes, destroyed private property to prove their point.  We do not allow that destruction to go unchallenged anymore, and that is good IMHO, but even so, the right to protest the government was established early.

Is it OK with you that people who disagree with Trump and MAGA programs have the right to peacefully protest those programs?  Or shall we be a nation with a leader whose skin is so thin he cannot handle criticism?  Trump can’t take the heat and should review what Truman said about the heat associated with the job of President and get out of the kitchen.

For me, the right to protest is so democratic, so instilled in our blood, that any effort to persecute alternative perspectives should be met with legal consequences, not punishment of the protesters.  The point at which the protest turns violent or destructive calls for intervention, but not the protest itself.  If I'm an American, I should have the right to stand with my fellows, hold a placard that calls ICE practices into review, or a military parade in the streets of our nation’s capital is disgraceful.  And I symbolically stand with all those who agree and show up and protest.  I do not want a president more comfortable with Putin, XI, or Jong procedures than American inherent rights.

There, I have printed my protest.  Trump is wrong.  Even if you like Trump, surely you see that persecution of alternative thought should never happen in a free nation.  Not in these United States.

Or are we no longer these United States?