For people of a certain age, the invocation of unnatural malevolence will always be the two words spoken by a cherubic five-year old in a Spielberg classic film: “They’re here.”
I strongly believe there’s a danger in alarmist rhetoric or over-reaction to political provocations, and in a recent column I wrestled with the challenge of maintaining our vigilance as well as our equilibrium. But the hope for equilibrium was annihilated last week with the death of Alex Pretti. There are brownshirts roving our streets killing citizens, and they’re doing so with remorselessness and impunity.
No one knows precisely what happened during the confrontations with Pretti or with Renée Good. Protesters aren’t saints, and they rarely behave like Buddhist monks. But when a government leader emulates a Nazi SS officer and espouses hostility to Constitutional law, it’s no longer about Cassandra-like warnings of what may happen in the future. It’s about halting a perilous descent.
Masked men are seizing citizens from their homes without warrants, let alone due process. We cannot wait this out. We cannot focus on our individual lives for the next three years, in the hope that sanity and decency will eventually prevail. History suggests those are the first casualties in regimes that reward sadists and disparage good samaritans. The President, who is prone to psychological projection, has described the situation as domestic terrorism, and indeed it is. But it’s the government terrorizing the people.
There are signs that the President is mitigating his approach, and we can only hope that justice will be restored. But we must remember that the moral paragon replacing Gregory Bovino, the would-be Waffen fashionista, is Tom Homan, the man who was allegedly recorded accepting a $50,000 bribe in a Cava takeout bag. Meaning we are still at the mercy of bottom feeders.
So what can we do? Actually, quite a lot, because we, the people, are still the ones in charge. The President serves us, not the reverse, and if enough of us choose to exercise our dormant powers, they are formidable.
We don’t need to put our lives at risk, as Ukrainians are doing on the frontlines every day. We don’t even need to man barricades, as French students did in 1968. We can do something far easier by just showing up for an hour or so at the next No Kings rally on March 28th.
You can bring your kids. You can bring your grandparents. In Santa Monica, you could have a picnic or a family reunion in Palisades Park while letting Washington know that there is a silent majority that objects to the actions being taken in our name.
Seven million people participated across the country at the No King rallies last October. If each of us contacts all our friends and loved ones who are unsettled by the threat to our democracy, there could possibly be 20 million people standing in solidarity in March. Or 50 million.
We can vote for different people. We can disagree about policies and procedures. But we can’t disagree about malice and lawlessness.
There have always been a small number of people who lurk in the shadows, who savor cruelty, and whose only fealty is to greed and power. They’ve come out from under their rocks, and now they’re here. But we’re also here, and this can be what unites us.
As Steven Spielberg proved in “Poltergeist,” a horror story can have a happy ending.
By Devan Sipher