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While the US government remains closed, MAGA’s Mike Johnson has been on TV channeling Donald Trump’s tweets to blame Democrats rather than advance negotiations to reopen the government. Having brushed off his colleagues in Congress, he turned his ire toward millions of American citizens who are preparing for No Kings rallies this coming Saturday, October 18th. (You can find one near you here. [ [link removed] ])
This is how Johnson characterized the peaceful mass demonstrations that are planned for more than 2,500 cities and towns - an event that’s likely to be the largest single-day mass demonstration in US history.
They have a ‘Hate America’ rally that’s scheduled for Oct. 18 on the National Mall. It’s all the pro-Hamas wing and, you know, the ANTIFA people.
Johnson’s invocation of the National Mall brings to mind the Americans who are honored by monuments there - each of them remembered for challenging authoritarianism in their own day. We would do well to recall what authoritarians said about them when they were doing their work to build and reconstruct America.
The mall is bookended by monuments to Washington and Jefferson, who joined fellow colonists to declare and defend their independence from King George III. In his August 1775 Proclamation, King George officially declared the colonists to be in “open and avowed rebellion” and stated that certain persons had “traitorously prepared, ordered, and levied war against us.”
“Traitors” and “rebels” to the authoritarian ruler then, Washington and Jefferson are honored as Founding Fathers today.
On an small hill between them, Abraham Lincoln sits enthroned as preserver of the Union. But we should recall that, when he ran for President in 1860 as a member of the new Republican Party, he was called “ape,” “gorilla,” and “baboon.” Southern newspapers and politicians painted him as a “Black Republican” radical who would incite slave insurrections and racial mixing. The Charleston Mercury called him “a vulgar village politician” with “coarse nature” and editorialized that his election would lead to violence.
The authoritarians of the plantation South who wielded power in Congress despised Lincoln, but he is remembered among the greatest of Americans today.
Along the tidal basin, a memorial to Franklin Delano Roosevelt honors the polio survivor who led the nation out of a Great Depression and through the Second World War. But the corporate elites of his day hated FDR. Critics frequently compared him to Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin. His opponents called him a “dictator,” especially after his 1937 court-packing plan. Former President Herbert Hoover called the New Deal “fascism,” and the American Liberty League, funded by wealthy businessmen, portrayed FDR as destroying American freedom. Like Johnson, FDR’s opponents often wrapped their criticisms in the veneer of religious nationalism.
To the authoritarians of the early 20th century, FDR was “anti-American.” We rightly honor his leadership today.
The newest American memorialized on the National Mall, Martin Luther King, Jr., has been honored with a national holiday for nearly four decades, yet he was castigated by the authoritarians of the Jim Crow South and the FBI in his own day.
Southern politicians called King an “outside agitator” and accused him of being a communist during the Cold War. Billboards across the South claimed to show him at a “communist training school,” though the Highlander Folk School where he’d been photographed trained civil rights workers in nonviolence and voter registration tactics. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover called King “the most notorious liar in the country” and labeled him and other civil rights leaders as national security threats.
To the authoritarians of the Jim Crow South, King was “anti-American,” but to Americans today he is a prophet of our nation’s Second Reconstruction.
If MAGA’s Mike Johnson says those of us who are determined to stand up for the First Amendment, healthcare, immigrant neighbors, due process, equal protection under law, public health, and the Constitution hate America, then we are in good company.
Gandhi once said about nonviolent campaigns for social change: “first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
We should also remember the message of the living Dr. King, when he addressed a quarter million Americans on the National Mall in 1963.
The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds…
We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
Now is the time to stand firm in the nonviolent truth-force of those who’ve gone before us. We love our nation best by following in the footsteps of those who’ve worked to make it better.
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On the Monday following No Kings Day, moral leaders will visit Senate offices across the country for a pray-in/stay-in with people who are at risk of losing their healthcare because of cuts to ACA subsidies and Medicaid. You can register here to join a delegation near you [ [link removed] ].

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