When Enough Just Isn't Quite Enough

 Three times. Three different weekends. I have gone out and stood on the same street corner with many of the same folks, screaming at passing cars. 

Bruce Springsteen did not make an appearance. He was busy in Minneapolis. 

I was there, armed with a few new signs with pithy slogans and a few of the old hits. Along with a corner filled with friends and family, we waved at traffic and cheered whenever we got a honk. It wasn't until after I had been there for about an hour that it occurred to me that beyond my aforementioned pithy signs. 

I started to beg for drivers to respond to my presence on the corner. "Please honk at me and my signs! This has a direct connection to my self-esteem." Vroom. "I don't think I'm making myself clear," I continued to shout, "How are we going to solve this problem without you honking your horn?"

The problem is the same one we had months ago. The one where we were being forced to live with a king that no one, especially the gentlemen who wrote the United States Constitution, wanted. I suppose you might feel that just because the Orange Worst doesn't read maybe this could be excused. 

Except there are plenty of men and women in our federal government who have shown mild aptitude in the reading and writing department who seem to be having a difficult time grasping some of the basic tenets of the document that is supposed to be providing us with a blueprint for our representative democracy. You know, Schoolhouse Rock stuff. Checks. Balances. Following the rules and laws that had served us pretty well for two hundred fifty years. 

Hence, I find myself once again on that same corner, with a few hundred of my closest fellow Americans, trying to drum up support for dumping this dumb thing who slithered down an escalator a decade ago and keeps finding its way back into the White House. This in spite of the fact that he seems to know next to nothing about the operating instructions. 

I've been doing this for months now, and this past Saturday was the first time I was met with anything by indifference or enthusiastic honking. A gentleman rolled up to the stop light on his motorcycle, and with a sneer he asked, "Who ya gonna vote for? Gavin Newsom?" Momentarily caught unawares by this dissenting voice, I sputtered, "You mean instead of the convicted felon currently starting wars in the Middle East? You bet!"

The truth is, I am not certain that Gavin Newsom would get my vote for President, but if the choices were the convicted felon or the Governor of California, I think I could be persuaded to vote for the guy who has been in charge of the fourth largest economy in the world instead of the adjudicated rapist who used to host a game show. But the light changed and I didn't get to have anything that would have been described as an in-depth discussion with this weekend biker. 

Not that this was what the presumed MAGAt had in mind. 

Instead, I just started hollering louder. I wanted to believe that all my bellering and waving signs was going to rid our nation of the scourge and his cabinet of criminals. Standing there on a curb in Northern California, I understood that my voice was that of a majority, and the guy on the motorcycle was the one on the outside looking in. I knew that this one mild confrontation was a hiccup in the normal confluence of democratic thought found throughout the region. 

Which didn't keep it from feeling it like a bur under my metaphorical saddle, but I will be back out there for the next No Kings protest, with some new signs, and a renewed attitude. 

It's time for this to end.