The People and the Kings

Part of remembering that we need no kings is reminding would-be tyrants that they are as expendable as they think we are.

In chess, the only piece that counts is the king, who is frankly quite limited in his ability to defend himself. What makes chess work is this principle that the king is the only important piece on the board. There are infinitely more powerful pieces. For example, the queen, as a player, one must watch intently, because if the queen makes a move that you miss, it’s possible to kill off all of your major pieces on the board with her. But the game technically doesn’t end when losing a queen, despite her power. I’ve lost my queen many times and still gone on to win the match.

Chess is where my mind goes when I hear that Putin’s residence was attacked, and so the entire prospect for peace in the war that Putin started in Ukraine is in jeopardy. The second thing I think? That we’ve been conditioned to believe that someone, in the middle of a war that they started, has some sort of moral right to torpedo peace prospects between two nations of hundreds of millions of other humans.

Look no further than Zelensky’s denial for proof of the wide acceptance of this idea as fact. And to be clear, I’m not faulting Zelensky—he’s done a spectacular job of navigating dubious allies to the advantage of Ukraine. And I don’t think he honestly cares if Putin’s residence was attacked or not, probably might feel a bit vindicated if it was, to be honest. But the fact that he finds it necessary to protest that he had anything to do with it implies that Zelensky, at least, believes that the Western world still has that mindset that it is the king’s right to avenge themselves against a nation when they are attacked personally.

I don’t see it that way, though. What I see are hundreds of thousands of dead innocents at the hands of Putin’s attacks, and of Trump’s habitual abuse of our allies. Each one of those injured, whose children have been kidnapped, who have had their homes destroyed in this unjustifiable war, is justified in destroying Putin’s residence and his entire lineage and striking whatever they want inside of Russia proper. Millions rightfully should be allowed to take everything Putin owns and distribute it amongst themselves.

That this hasn’t happened yet points to a critical fault within Western civilization: our birth from feudalism is not complete. We have barely breached the womb, to be honest. Never have we fully cast off the cloak of hierarchy and supplication, which makes humans behave so much less like humans and more like…well…orcs. Zelensky’s belief is right: there are millions of Americans and Western Europeans who would consider it justifiable, even in a war of his own making, for Putin to torpedo any peace deal on the pathetic excuse that Putin’s residence was attacked, when we should all be celebrating that collateral damage is finally reaching the person responsible for the destruction of an entire nation.

It is this mentality that keeps us locked into mental serfdom here in the United States. We believe that those in power are somehow separate from us and somehow more important. Don’t get me wrong, the left are far more likely to disparage powerful people, but the reason the mainstream press behaves the way that they do isn’t solely for corporate interests, but is also because they know their audience. Fox News, for example, knows if they start maligning their strong-man dictator-wannabe, they will lose viewers who are usually so loyal they don’t bother to think critically any longer. Unfortunately, their groupthink has been largely co-opted by their dear leader, hence Fox’s early acquiescence to Trump’s demand and continuing collusion.

This isn’t just a Western world thing, though. It is through our own self-aggrandizing that we refuse to see what’s right before our eyes: every single civilization on this planet has had a feudal age. We all glorify the king because, in the dawn of civilization, it is this rigid hierarchy that has helped us to overcome the terrors of the chaotic natural world. I’m reminded of Game of Thrones: the night is dark and full of terror, and it is that way, without civilization supporting us. At one time, it took kings to bring us together into civilization, and because of that, we’ve clung to our past and chained ourselves to it. Even I have been guilty of this.

But, to bring us back to the chess analogy, what happens when we acknowledge that the idea that the game is over when the king is lost is ludicrous? We’ve come far enough now that we know better, or should know better anyway. Proving that a nation can exist without a king is exactly what the founders of this nation accomplished, and exactly what the Enlightenment was. I believe this is summarized best by Thomas Paine in The Rights of Man. At the risk of going long, I won’t revisit and instead will encourage you to pick up a copy (seriously, it’s $2.99 at that link above). If anything speaks to America’s true exceptionalism, it is the stalwart belief that the power of civilization lies within the people. The continuity of nations itself is a testament to this fact. Let’s keep the analogy going, though. What if the king came off the chessboard? The most powerful pieces would all remain, but without a king to defend, why would they continue to fight?

They wouldn’t need to. I believe the reason we’ve had relative peace for so long is that the people have been leading in more and more nations. Reversing that trend can only lead to more bloodshed, which we’re already witnessing. It would do well for the American people to remember this fact, because we may need it going forward.

We can survive without a king. That’s how America was founded: without a king.

No Kings is American exceptionalism. No Kings is America’s legacy to the free world. We showed that it is possible to be a free people.

Now, we have to prove that we are still those strong people who value the right to remain so. And that is also why the next No Kings protest, more of us must remember who we are.

To complete my earlier thoughts on Ukraine as well, if Putin’s residence was bombed by Zelinsky, I, for one, will never stop cheering. The pain of war must not be limited to the poor. It must reach the self-proclaimed elite, because part of remembering that we need no kings is reminding would-be tyrants that they are as expendable as they think we are.