No Kings: The pot calling the kettle black.

"Fascist." You keep using that word. Somehow, I do not think that it means what you think that it means.

Miles from anywhere and 10,000’ up in the cold, thin air, and I’m still not as light-headed as the “No Kings” crowd.

This still is not the long-form piece I promised over the weekend, but it’ll have to do for now. It’s fall break, and the Groms and I are off for some adventures for a week or so.

Warmest regards to all. I’ll keep up with you on current events via Substack Notes.

It’s a cold, rainy evening here at the grommet, llama, motorcycle and guitar ranch up in the mountains of Idaho. Before the current storm arrived, I did manage to sneak in one last ride before the high country gets snowed under until next May and June.

Fall is the best for enjoying the outdoors in the Rocky Mountains. I try to waste as little of this precious time as possible on other things less valuable to me. How many more glorious fall days do I have before comes the slow walk and the sad singing? Ten? Fifteen? The latter number puts my expiration date at 85, probably too old for motorcycles and mountain bikes if I do make it that far above ground. So I try not to get too distracted this time of year.

My life these days is very simple: take care of four kids, read, write, ride, play music and enjoy my denouement. The blend of everything changes a bit from season to season, but the same elements are in play. So when this weekend rolled around, perhaps the last good one for a long time, the last thing I intended to pay any mind to other than fun was the likes of the “No Kings” weirdness. I had better things to do.

But, try as I might, I simply could not ignore the steaming, fetid, Everest-sized mountain of buffoonery that was the No Kings protests, about which we gotta talk. It would be better if we could have shared the same views I enjoyed while conjuring this up, but that you’ll have to glimpse vicariously. Wish you were here.

Even in my out-of-the-way corner of Idaho, local No Kings rallies got big coverage. At the one here in Pocatello, crowd size estimates varied from 500 to 2000, with the press promoting the crowds as harbingers of the end for one Donald John Trump.

Well, not so fast. Let’s put aside for the moment the fact that 500 and 2000 are very different crowd size estimates for the same event. Let’s just split the difference and place the crowd at around 1250—2% of the local population. Still, very respectable. I’m sure that the same may be said of many other rallies held on Saturday around the country. They did get some people out. Bravo for them.

Unfortunately for the No Kingers, the only crowd size that actually matters in presidential politics is the one that assembles the first week of November every four years to cast votes. In that crowd, Trump won roughly 66% of the votes around these parts in the last election. I doubt that very many of the folks at the local No Kings rally on Saturday were among that 66%.

That being the case, spending a glorious fall Saturday surrounded by freak flags and signs endorsing the notion that supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not because some watery tart threw a sword, feel good as it may, amounts to pissing up a rope.

So, wishful thinking aside, I’m not seeing much in terms of signs and portents based on this. Nonetheless, the "No Kings" rallies served, if nothing else, as a reminder of the robustness of our First Amendment and that in America, you have the right to be wrong.

That’s a tough statement, but let’s consider the issues animating the NKers. By their own speeches and screeds, they are principally concerned with encroaching fascism, which they liken to rule by monarchy as opposed to rule by law.

Issues that contribute to this alleged encroaching fascism include the legitimate enforcement of existing laws, the reduction of government in both size and overreach, the elimination of government regulations on the private sector, the abandonment of a catastrophic green agenda, the abandonment of woke discrimination, exercising fiscal responsibility, the practice of lawfare, and the usurping of executive branch norms.

Allow me to retort. That’s simply the pot calling the kettle black.

I’m not exactly sure what fascism, as I hear it bandied about lately, even means anymore—other than ideas with which the left disagrees (sometimes violently). It seems that if your mind’s not right, according to the left’s way of thinking, you’re a fascist. That seems to be about it.

Believe in the First and Second Amendments? You’re a fascist. Think illegal immigration is a problem? You’re a fascist. Think that blowing up drug submarines is way down your list of things to get wound up about? You’re a fascist. Think that lawlessness in cities is a serious issue? You’re a fascist. Think that it’s OK to run a successful business and make a lot of money? You’re a fascist.

Think that drug addiction and mental illness are troubling? You’re a fascist. Object to the Biden administration’s FEMA policy of asking who you voted for before helping after a disaster? You’re a fascist. Opposed to green agendas that make little technological and no economic sense? You’re a fascist. Think that the government has no business trying to censor opinions it finds inconvenient? You’re a fascist. Think that the government’s response to COVID was a mistake? You’re a fascist. Think that mentally ill male sex offenders have no business sharing a locker room with your daughter? You’re a fascist.

Support Israel? You’re a fascist. Supporter of Trump? You’re a fascist, and if you happen to get assassinated for that, you had it coming—because you’re a fascist.

Now, I don’t know about a lot of this, which seems less like an exercise in drawing accurate historical parallels than untethered name-calling. When I think of fascists, I think of Mussolini and Hitler—not Donald Trump and his supporters.

And I don’t even like the guy. But “asshat” and “fascist” are two different things.

But what the hell. I’ll play. If we’re going to call everyone we don’t like a fascist, let’s figure out a way to rank them. For those of you playing along at home, let’s keep score with what we’ll call a Fascism Index (FI). Zero is antifascist; ten is a living, breathing incarnation of II Duce.

Let’s start with an obvious parallel between the current left and historical fascism—their attacks on the Second Amendment. The left has attempted to ignore or circumvent the plain text of the Second Amendment to restrict the legal ownership of firearms among law-abiding citizens for over half a century. They don’t seem to have much of a problem with criminals in large cities in possession of all manner of lethal and illegal firearms, but Republicans in flyover country, you know, the ones who cling to their guns, don’t need more than a flintlock musket for shooting varmints, which is actually mentioned nowhere in the Second Amendment.

The Nazis, upon assuming power in the 1930s, actually relaxed the strict gun control laws enacted by the Weimar Republic except for gun licensing. The Nazis then used licensing to prohibit Jews from obtaining firearms or ammunition, foreshadowing Hitler’s “Final Solution.”

The way I see it, the NKers favor strict gun control with lenience only for criminals in major cities. Trump, his followers and most of the rest of the country support the Second Amendment as it is written. Trump gets an FI score of 0, and the NK’ers get an 8. The NKers surrender the antifascist high ground so thoroughly on this one as to reek of chopped garlic and an afternoon at Piazzale Loreto.

Another parallel. Trump was the properly elected nominee of the Republican Party who went on to win both the Electoral College and popular vote in 2024. His opponent, Kamala Harris, was selected to be the nominee of the Democrat Party without as much as a single vote being cast. Trump’s path to the Oval Office certainly seems less like the ascension of a monarch than that of Harris. Trump gets an FI of 3 for running his mouth, unhelpfully, a lot more than he should. Harris gets an FI of 6 for being anointed rather than elected.

It’s more common for a monarch to die while asleep on a throne they refused to abandon than for democratically elected leaders. Trump receives an FI of 5 for being legitimately elected twice but refusing to acknowledge defeat once. Biden receives an FI of 5 for his Weekend at Bernie’s act.

Lawfare. Ayiyi. It’s beyond doubt that the United States of America is currently immersed in an escalating cycle of brutal, unseemly lawfare—real banana republic stuff. But that cycle began with the left’s efforts to delegitimize Trump’s 2016 election victory with all of the Russian collusion nonsense. And, when that didn’t work, by dubious legal maneuvers. The most recent escalation is over disclosures of spying on lawmakers who’ve supported Trump.

This won’t end well.

Most of this lawfare is bullshit, both ways. A clearly partisan prosecution of Trump over minor business records charges ginned up into 34 felonies—something actually designed to thwart the will of deplorables and prevent Trump from being reelected—yields AG Letitia James an FI of 8. Retaliating against James for the financial equivalent of doing 37 in a 35 mph zone earns Trump an FI score of 5. I cut Trump some slack because you’d have had to chain me to a water heater in a closet somewhere away from the Oval Office to prevent me from doing the exact same thing.

All of the lawfare, both ways, has turned our system of checks and balances into a screwupathon. The James Comey indictment, in particular, is an incoherent mess. If being a partisan ass were a crime, we’d need to build prison walls around every capitol in the country and hire a lot of guards.

There is one exception to all of this, and that’s the John Bolton indictment. Bolton, one of the last of the neocon lowlifes who deceptively led us into the Iraq War, has become a recent darling of the left solely due to his proclivity for bashing his former boss, Trump, over various disagreements.

One of my favorite legal analysts, Andrew McCarthy, has written an analysis of why Bolton might actually be in trouble. If true, it couldn’t, IMO, happen to a more deserving guy. I give an FI of 8 to the NKers for embracing somebody who never met a war they didn’t want just to stick it to Trump—who gets a score of 0 for recognizing what a putz Bolton actually happens to be.

One final parallel—attacks on our First Amendment. On this, I am inclined to award the NKers an FI of 10 more than their opponents over COVID, government disinformation boards and the fact that they seem to think that it’s OK to enlist the government in efforts to suppress speech they disfavor or find “harmful.”

But that’s not right. Both the right and the left in this country stand up for the First Amendment only when it suits their purposes. On the flip side of NK, consider Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s recent implementation of new policies that severely restrict press access at the Pentagon—policies that are so onerous that even conservative outlets (like Hegseth’s former employer, Fox News) have decided to turn in their credentials rather than abide by standards that have the potential to criminalize legitimate reporting.

So, the way I see the No Kings protests is through confusion—theirs. Monarch vs. president, fascism vs. antifascism, and the list goes on. Much of what NKers have embraced—attacks on fundamental constitutional rights, attacking the integrity of elections, promoting illegal activity, calling for the demise of public figures, foisting the wishes of minorities on the majority—has much stronger parallels to historical fascism than what they point fingers at.

Between picking absurd hills to die on and rallying around the pot calling the kettle black, I’m not sure what they hope to achieve. Whatever it is, have fun storming the castle.

Associated Press and Idaho Press Club-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer, and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time with family, riding bicycles and motorcycles, and arranging and playing music. Follow him on X at @MartinHackworth, on Facebook at facebook.com/martin.hackworth, and on Substack at martinhackworthsubstack.com.