Two hundred and fifty years ago, on June 14, 1775, the Continental Congress voted to raise six companies of militia in Pennsylvania (84 men in each, including officers, volunteers and one drummer or trumpeter), two in Maryland and two in Virginia. A year earlier, they had rejected such an idea, wary of the possibility that a future government might someday turn its troops on the people, just as King George III was threatening to do in the colonies.
By 1775, however, the red-coated troops of King George III had, indeed, been sent directly to “keep the peace” in Boston, and had opened fire on colonists there. The Continental Congress concluded that the colonies needed to organize and push back.
Fast forward to now, where we watch the clueless, and demonstrably unhinged, current resident of the white house throw himself a military parade ostensibly to celebrate the 250th anniversary of an army founded to fight a king. Perfect.
And what a nothingburger parade. In the words of all the press excepting, of course, Faux News, the endless and spiritless borefest of a lackluster parade was “lame”, “a dud”, “embarrassing” and “a flop”.
Lacking any vestige of the precision of previous parades, such as the one held on June 8, 1981 to celebrate the end of the Gulf War, these military marchers were mostly out of step, walking casually in ragged lines.
The audience of only a few thousand were so bored, they left early as it dragged on and on. Marco Rubio yawned openly, VP Vance snuck out early and the president, though he tried to muster an awkward salute, having never actually served in the military, seemed sad and dejected. Perfect.
OTOH, at least five million of us made signs, waved them on curbs, in parks, and on streets, sang, danced, speechified and made it very clear that we would Have No Kings in America in this century, either. And we did all of this in over two thousand cities, towns, hamlets, parishes, villages, burgs, boroughs, suburbs, inner cities, and neighborhoods.
I hope you were there, saw the thousands of pictures, and felt the combination of anger, stubbornness and joy that i did. I have no doubt: We shall overcome.
The Irony of The Royal We
Apparently the stubbornly orange-tinted president was deeply stung by seeing us mocking and thumbing our noses at his ridiculous fantasy of royalty. So stung, in fact, he finally felt the need to say that he didn’t feel at all like a king, and to complain that he had to go through the tiring process of negotiating with what everyone else sees as a weak, compliant, legislature, in order to to get his way.
He then concluded by saying, “We’re not a king, we’re not a king at all, thank you very much.”
Ha! I guess he never heard that only the king was allowed to refer to himself in the plural. Remember “The Royal We”?
The first use of Pluralis Majestatis is found in the twelfth century. It continues, however, through the pronouncements by King Henry III in the thirteenth century, and all the way to Queen Victoria, who often chastised those given an audience with her by saying, “We are not amused.”
King George II wrote in German in 1750, but always referred to himself as “We”, as did King Edward VII in the early 1900s. The royal “We” was continuously used by British Kings (and Queens) to imply that “God and I speak for all my people”.
So this mockery of a president inadvertently mocked himself. And likely doesn’t even know he did it.
The only real We is We the People. We are now the continental army, and we are saying, as they did 250 years ago, “No kings in America. Not then, and not now.”
Sheila
