No Tyrants!
Published at 09:43 on 29 March 2026
First, why “no tyrants” and not “no kings?” Because I live in Canada and Canada is an actual monarchy. There are some small-r republicans here (I would be one of them), but overall most people don’t have a big problem with Charles III (and I will readily admit that, unlike Trump, Canada’s king doesn’t make me feel personally threatened).
Anyhow, I was there. Here are some of the better signs I saw:
Of note were the Iranian flags, or should I say flags and graphics based on same:
None of those are flags of either the old monarchy or the Islamic republic. They merely make use of the green/white/red background which is common to both. (If you’re curious about “women, life, freedom” it is the English translation of a common protest slogan in Iran.) That’s a sentiment I can get behind: neither the current order, nor the one it replaced, is what is best for the people of Iran.
Some friends of mine are dismissive of these protests, because not enough of a break is being made with the status quo fast enough. I both agree and disagree with this sentiment. Sure, I’d like to see more radical consciousness, but such widespread consciousness currently does not exist, and the process by which such consciousness emerges historically takes time. Ultimately, though, that enough people are upset enough about what is going on in the USA to take it to the streets in numbers this large is a positive sign.
I think East Coast It Notes (facebook, reddit, instagram) got it right:
Where from here? As I have written before I think the fascists are going to cheat in the coming election, and have far more success at doing so than is commonly believed possible. At that point, things might really start to get interesting. If they do, the status quo could change surprisingly rapidly. That is the nature of tipping points: they happen suddenly.
Or perhaps not.
The war will probably continue to go badly so long as Trump keeps it going (and, being surrounded by yes men, he just might). It may continue to go badly even if Trump decides to end it. Because, to paraphrase former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, the enemy always gets a vote. If Iran is having a lot of success humiliating the USA, they may just opt to keep the humiliation going. (Sure, a terrible cost is being imposed on the Iranian people, but that government has amply demonstrated its willingness and ability to impose such costs.)
Either way, at that point, state and local Republicans, who are not surrounded by yes men to the degree that Trump is, may by Election Day be able to read the writing on the wall: either they sit on their hands, run a fair election, let the GOP lose, and trigger a gradual and lesser change, or they risk a sudden and more personally perilous period of change. Again, the enemy always gets a vote.
What happens, in other words, depends to a very large degree on current events, which the relatively small number of us political leftists for the most part do not control.
Anyhow, protests like the ones we just saw are far from useless. If they’re not your thing, I can understand. Consider a side quest or two.