Caffeinated Politics

Saturday was one of those days when the ideals of the nation were forefront from coast to coast. From Bangor, Maine (not far from Corinth where my husband James grew up) to Berkeley, California, Americans gathered not in anger, but in absolute resolve to fight against authoritarianism and fascism. In Madison, like every other place across the nation, folks came with signs, with songs, with chants, and children on their shoulders. (I asked one boy atop his dad’s shoulders how the weather was up there.) But I noticed repeatedly people were talking about the Constitution. One man near me while marching had a copy of it in his shirt pocket. One older woman leaned over to me and said she had a copy of it near her television and referenced it during nowcasts.

What everyone was grounded in from their signs to their conversations, to the applause line they cheered for at the statehouse rally was that no man, however gilded, loud, boorish, or demanding stands above the law.

I thought at random times as the afternoon moved along that the Founding Fathers would much agree with the nationwide protest marches. After all, as my favorite historian of that period, Joe Ellis, makes clear in his many books is that the Founders understood a republic is animated not by the whims of a ruler, but by the will of the people. In the face of Donald Trump who has an utter and complete disregard for democratic norms, constitutional constraints, and the dignity of dissent, Saturday’s gatherings, therefore, were acts of patriotism in its purest form.

We have heard Trump and his enablers in Congress try to claim that the marches were sings of hatred for America. To try to spin that yarn means the GOP has no awareness that protesting is not a betrayal of the nation but proving that our foundation of laws is something truly anchoring us to our beliefs in the nation. In the many faces I saw Saturday no one looked to be a part of a mob. I saw veterans, high school students, university students, members of the clergy, young and old. I feel secure in writing of them in this collective sense in being united by a shared belief that democracy is not self-sustaining, it must be shepherded and tended.

I saw several homemade signs that pressed the theme that today was not about the left or right. Rather it was about right and wrong. About the sacred balance of powers. About the idea that the presidency is a public trust and not a personal grifting platform. About the conviction that when leaders abandon their oaths, the people must not abandon their responsibility to hold those leaders accountable. That is not partisan. That is simply the lessons of our civics education from our years of growing up being put into practice.

In 1776, we declared that kings would not govern us. In 2025, we declared it again. History will show on this No Kings Day, Americans stood up. Peacefully. Proudly. Purposefully. They simply want the ideals that have guided us throughout our history to still be our guiding light.