The Declaration of Independents
Once again the 50501 movement (short for “50 protests, 50 states, 1 movement”) took to the streets en masse Saturday for their fourth protest against the Trump “administration.” This time around the protests simultaneously commemorated the 250th anniversaries of the battles of Lexington and Concord and the famous horse ride of Paul Revere.
As a nod to the two lanterns placed in Boston’s Old North Church in order to warn Paul Revere how the British would arrive, “one if by land, two if by sea,” one protester held a sign saying “One if by land, two if by DC.” (Recently the Old North Church itself had a series of anti-Trump messages projected on it.)
It says a great deal when millions of Americans, many who have never participated in protests before in their lives, take to the streets in every major city in the United States to protest a president. But it’s unprecedented that this is the fourth such protest. As I write this, the morning of April 20th, Trump has only been in office for three months. Yes, I know, it feels like three years.
At least Trump can take personal solace from the knowledge that today is a special day to him. No, I’m not talking about Easter. Today is also Adolf Hitler’s birthday.
The message is clear: Americans are pissed off. They are pissed off that Trump is destroying their economy, gutting their benefits, tanking the stock market, making his friends rich, kidnapping human beings off the streets and sticking them in a hell hole prison in Central America from which they will never return.
Americans are pissed off that eggs are more expensive than ever, gas prices remain high, inflation is about to spiral out of control and JD Vance announced that the US is going to give up on the war in Ukraine if Ukraine and Russia don’t agree to a ceasefire. These are the problems that Trump promised over and over on his campaign to fix on his first day in office. Not only has he not fixed them, he’s made them deliberately worse.
If Trump had done nothing at all things would actually be better. America in this way is analogous to Trump’s fortune. Trump’s father gave that self-anointed “self-made man” four hundred million dollars. Had Trump invested it in the S&P 500 instead of losing it all to a series of hare-brained business ventures he would be worth several billion dollars today. In the same way Trump could have probably gotten away with leaving America alone and playing golf, and the drooling cretins that worship him would have been delighted with him. Instead many of them are taking to the streets against him.
That’s right, the 50501 movement isn’t just Democrats. It’s composed of Republicans and Independents as well. Trump is uniting a wall of Americans who previously would have little or nothing to do with each other. In that sense Americans are all Independents. You might even call this series of protests our Declaration of Independents. We want Trump gone, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that if the Republican Congress and Senate don’t agree, they will be gone.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.