No Kings

And no fairytales, either

This past weekend, I joined thousands of my neighbors to line the main boulevard through our town as part of the No Kings protest. The atmosphere was festive, defiant, patriotic, joyful. American flags unfurled by their dozens. In this town of busy strivers, where the car behind me often honks if I hesitate to turn right on red, I felt an uncommon sense of community and belonging. We are all in this together.

We pedestrians were joined by a parade of vehicles, including this boy on a bike, probably my favorite sight of the day:

And this dude holding a copy of the Declaration of Independence out his car window:

There were many cars driving by with big American flags waving, some playing patriotic music, all honking. It reminded me of something, another day, another time. A comforting bedtime story I once told myself. One of a hope I am struggling to hold on to now.

When the news outlets called the 2020 election, we popped champagne on the patio before loading in the car and driving into DC. The city was one giant sea of jubilation, on par with what I imagine the end of World War II must have been. In both cases, we believed the forces of evil had been beaten back once and for all. Even the later outrage and sorrow of January 6 contained relief that Trump had consigned himself to history’s trash by finally going too far. Surely a violent attempted coup, documented by a million cameras and broadcast live, could not be spun or made palatable, I thought. It was over.

The story I told myself included an unlikely hero. A stuttering boy shaped into a weathered old man by life’s tragedies had the super powers we needed in the wake of a playground bully’s taunts and jabs. Empathy. Kindness. Decency. Gentleness.

I was never blind to Joe Biden’s abundant flaws. But even those could become part of his legend. They made him human, something Trump—devoid of shame, lacking in all feeling, unable to understand the ties that bind most of us together—never seemed to be. Biden’s triumph seemed almost a gospel story to me. The weak made strong, the strong exposed as weak. The moral inversion of brutal, natural law.

With Trump fully revealed for what he is and with our kindly uncle leading us, we could heal our families, our friendships, our institutions, our land. I had it all worked out in my head. It was the prayer of my heart.

And now I have been made a fool. Mainly by thinking so many of my fellow Americans aren’t fools. At least we have that in common. There’s very little else anymore.

I have hated every second of Joe Biden’s autopsy, painful and humiliating. I do not doubt the findings—although from my fairly good vantage point in the government, I don’t believe his decision making or ability to govern was ever compromised—and I can’t argue with the harsh assessments of his unfathomable, hubristic decision to run again. It seems Joe Biden is human in ways both good and bad. He is fully human. He wasn’t the hero we needed after all, and his legend is tarnished.

I can see these things, I am not a cultist. But I don’t want to stare at them for too long. I don't want to be assaulted by my own deception. But mostly I don’t want to believe that the real-life fable I told myself, the one I imagined telling my grandchildren to pass on to theirs in a stable and just America, is just that, a fable, a fairytale, a myth. Sometimes the dragon’s fire consumes the land. Sometimes the knight’s armor rusts and his sword breaks. Sometimes things aren’t made right by the last chapter. Most of the time.

All of us want the world to be less complicated. All of us want more linear stories and clearer categories and more sympathetic protagonists. Our brains are literally wired for it, so we won’t drown in stimuli. We make a delicate order out of unrelenting chaos, draw tenuous and sometimes dubious connections, and end up filtering out informative noise.

I try to keep this in mind when I think of my fellow Americans who have subjected us to this horror show. I will remind myself of this again when my book comes out, and I am deluged with hate. Those folks have told themselves reassuring stories, too, they have ordered their world just so, they have allowed themselves to be deceived in exchange for a morsel of peace. It’s not an excuse—we all should be capable of admitting error—it’s just something I can understand, amidst so much I can’t.

As I watched the flags waving and my fellow Americans smiling on Saturday, I was reminded of all the ways and times I’ve been wrong about the story of this nation, and not just in the last few years. The weight of history is much heavier than I ever imagined and what I once believed.

But I also thought about all that is right, the love and faith and commitment to each other lining the roads and swaying in the summer breeze with these neighbors and these flags, and all that has been made right when we have admitted our wrongs, and all the more right than can be if we can fully face the truth about ourselves, in all our humanity, and the inhumanity of the lies we tell to escape it.

There are still no kings here. But there are also no princesses or knights in shining armor or gleaming castles or pots of gold. Even the ogres and monsters and trolls are mainly fictional (well, but then there’s Stephen Miller).

There’s just us and a muddy road leading to parts unknown. We have to walk it together, with people we like and those we can’t stand, sometimes led powerfully, sometimes wandering aimlessly, sometimes under fire.

We get to carry each other.