"Kodachrome, they give us those nice bright colours
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, oh yeah
I got a Nikon camera, I love to take a photograph
So mama don't take my Kodachrome away."
Paul Simon, Kodachrome, 1973
It was another No Kings rally.
But the memories go back 60 years. I have done this before. So have many of my fellow demonstrators.
I have been scolded by readers for observing and describing something that is both true and obvious: The participants at No Kings rallies skew old. There are people of all ages, of course, including some young people, but there are a lot of people more or less my age. I had a mission now, to express my discontent with our national leadership. I had a second mission, to circle back to memories of my youth.
Why not? My hair is gray now, and this time I am carrying a sign.
There were thousands of us on the sidewalks and in Hawthorne Park:
And then there is this one. Possibly these young people are simply doing the explorations of youth, trying out being outrageous, trying to get a rise out of the crowd of old fogies. Perhaps they are provocateurs placed by the local GOP. Perhaps they are the leading edge of a new era in the U.S., but I think not. I think it is more likely that in 60 years, if they are alive and well, that they will remember this moment with nostalgic fondness, imagining their daring as a kind of heroism, as described in that Robert Frost poem:
"I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."
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4 comments:
Who can doubt but that the young person at the CommunistUSA desk is well-informed about Stalin, Mao, Castro, Ceausescu and Pol Pot? Her three-dimensional familiarity with Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un goes without saying.
All that’s missing from the hammer and sickle against the familiar red background is the inspiring visage of that daring hero of peace and social justice, Che Guevara. Some of the old fogies could get her a shirt or poster.
Some pretty clever and telling Trump signs, though, by the by. For my part, let there be a third or fourth road, and may they be still more traveled by.
Looks like the GLP-1 is working! Congratulations.
LD, with DJT, it is becoming harder and harder to distinguish the behavior of the current executive branch and MAGA Republicans from the authoritarianism of Mao or Stalin. Remember, ICE is running loose in our streets. The DOJ is authorizing a home invasion targeting a sitting Democratic congresswoman. Detention facilities have been built across the country. The democratic center will not hold through two more years of the current Trump-centric MAGA policies.
What is notable about these photos is that most of the gray-hairs in the photos are traditional Kennedy/Clinton/Obama Democrats, while young Democrats have gone communist. The last photo is evidence that the Democrat Party is going communist.
On a separate note, Peter, it looks like you've overdone it with the Ozempic, and you look skinny and emaciated now.
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