Why "No Kings" Matters

 The protests were large and peaceful, despite assertions by Republicans that they were going to be lawless and small. Trump even said on Saturday that they were pathetic and small, despite obvious photographic evidence to the contrary.

What's more, as Richardson shows, the GOP actually leaned into the monarchical aspects of Trump's rule. They posted some of their AI slop videos of Trump placing a crown on his head and flying a jet over American cities and dropping literal shit on people. This is simply crazy behavior from a party that has to contend in elections (raising the prospect that they have no intention of allowing elections to proceed fairly).

Krugman makes a good point about all this by referencing the concept of "flattery inflation" that builds up around autocrats. Here's the quote from Henry Farrell:

How do you show your loyalty? By paying the costs of humiliation. The more grotesquely over the top your praise, the more credible it is as a signal of support for Dear Leader.

Apparatchiks’ willingness to degrade themselves will hurt their reputation with other people. But for exactly that reason, it serves as proof of loyalty to the one man who counts, Donald Trump. The more appalling the self-abasement, the more effectively it will serve this purpose.

That dynamic explains a lot of the behavior around Trump. The bigger the lie you are willing to tell in his service, the more loyal you are. Since loyalty overrides competence, we get a messaging team that shows Trump literally shitting on Americans. That is not - or at least should not be - a very good message. Democrats get slagged for saying things like "Why don't rural Americans vote for their economic self-interest?" and then Fox runs a million hours of content about how Democrats are calling rural voters dumb. Trump depicts himself shitting on people and...shrugs.

However, this is exactly why these protests might actually matter. Trump and his voters exist in what Krugman calls "bubble autocracy" in which almost every Republican and much of the media extol his power and greatness. Mockery - especially the mockery by millions of Americans - helps puncture that myth. Trump is not all powerful - not yet. Arresting the slide into autocracy has to begin with eroding the lies that infect our Republic and that are coming from the White House. The visuals of protest are the way to start.