‘No Kings’ Protests Start Tomorrow. Here’s Why You Should Show Up.

Greetings from Los Angeles, California, which if you trust cable news is currently on fire. It is demonstrably very much not, but if my inbox is any indication, a surprising number of grown human beings trust cable news. This week, I wrote a piece about what I saw while I was downtown at the ICE protests last weekend, and how little it matched up with the dystopian chaos loop that’s been playing on television ever since. A lot of people who were also down there got in touch to back my assessment up. And a few people, none of whom were there, told me I was wrong. They knew better. This message sums it up nicely

I wanted to reply, something to the effect “go look in a mirror and read those words back to yourself,” but there’s no point. It was a real test of my “do not engage” policy, and I just barely passed. But you have to admit: “Your essay about how little real life matches what I’m being shown on television is wrong, and I know that because of what I’m being shown on television” is a hell of a point for a grownup to make. The one percent of protests that feature fire and property damage are about one hundred percent of what the television is showing us, and on social media, I have seen footage from other protests along with some truly dog shit AI images, and with our collective media literacy at an all-time low, a few of us are very confidently jumping to some very dumb conclusions.

I do like being called Cupcake, though. It’s fun and flirty.

This Saturday, the protests are going to grow and multiply and stretch across the entire country, and if your mother trusts cable news, she doesn’t want you to go. But you absolutely should. Here’s the bottom line: They’re going to be peaceful, and if we want to make super-extra-double-sure that they’re peaceful, then more peaceful people need to show up.

Will there be a commotion at the protest? Maybe. People are angry and scared and feeling hopeless and—at least here in L.A.—we have the National Guard and the Marines armed on the streets, which has somehow not proven to be a calming influence. It could escalate, but—as with here—it mostly won’t. Show up for the angry and the scared and the hopeless.

Will there be agitators at the protest? Maybe. There will always be a couple dozen agitators, anywhere. People went to that Minecraft movie just to film themselves throwing things when Jack Black said “chicken jockeys.” There is a tiny percentage of any group that wants to cause chaos, and now some of them do it by setting shit on fire and breaking windows, because calling sports talk radio stations and saying “BABA BOOEY” doesn’t have the same cultural impact it used to. A couple dozen agitators in a group of a hundred is a problem. A couple dozen agitators in a group of a thousand isn’t. Five thousand, they’re barely there.

Things are dire. You saw the video of Senator Alex Padilla being wrestled to the ground, and that’s bad enough. What has been shared less often is the statement he went into the room to ask Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem about.

“We are not going away,” she said. “We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialist and burdensome leadership that this Governor Newsom and this mayor placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into this city.”

That’s a literal military coup she’s talking about, right into a microphone and in front of a camera, that’s how fast this is moving. That’s a liberation nobody here asked for, an idea as un-American as it gets. Also, if California is a socialist state, I’m going to need someone to tell the home prices.

Show up on Saturday. There are ‘No Kings’ protests, there are ‘Indivisible’ protests, there are smaller, more-organic protests. Pick one. If this fever is going to break, we need people out there on the streets in massive numbers. If you didn’t vote for this, show up. If you voted for him but didn’t vote for this, you’re going to need to prove it, and the way to prove it is to show up. If you voted for him but didn’t vote for this but don’t show up, well, then you did vote for this. You’ll know that forever, and that’s going to be a real motherfucker.

Here’s some more of the news and the noise of the week.

On Thursday, we found out we’d lost the great Brian Wilson. I wanted to write a longer, fuller and more fitting obituary, but I know when I’m outmatched. It’s impossible to explain his impact. It’s like trying to write a tribute to air. Like trying to define the word “a.” “God Only Knows” is of course the greatest song ever written, but this is the one that started playing in my head when I saw the news. It really encapsulates Wilson the way I imagined him: a melancholy misfit supergenius, like if Charlie Brown were also Mozart. Charlie Pierce wrote a beautiful tribute, and this 2016 Esquire interview is a great read.

Peter Carlin’s first-person account of his divorce, from our Secret Lives of Men series, is a really excruciating piece, and I mean that in the best way. Only you know whether you’re secure enough in your relationship to read it. Pairing suggestion: i quit, the new album by HAIM, is out next Friday and sounds like it is going to be a breakup album for the ages.

There was a piece in The Times the other day about how many American expatriates are repatriating in Scotland, particularly Edinburgh. I’d be lying if I said the idea of, you know, seeing other countries has not come up in our household. While we would naturally gravitate toward Ireland, the Times piece makes some strong points. And it gives me a good excuse to play this song from the Scottish band Trashcan Sinatras from their 1990 album Cake, which when all is said and done might be my favorite album of all time. Anyway, Scotland, congratulations: You’re in the conversation.

Also this week, my old MTV colleague Ananda Lewis died after a long struggle with breast cancer. If you watched her on MTV in the ’90s, as I did, you thought, Well, this is the coolest person on Earth. If you were lucky enough to go on to work with her, as I did, you realized you were wrong. She was also the kindest, and the funniest, and the most stylish, and the most professional. Generally just the overall best, across all categories. Unflappable, even in the white-hot chaos of live television. Cool enough under pressure to make the rest of us feel like we could handle it too. She could talk to anyone (and she did; you would not believe who she could reach on that Motorola two-way pager). But when she talked to you, she made you feel like the only one on her mind. Prayers up for her son and her sister and everyone who loved her, which is everyone who knew her. Long ago, in a trailer on a remote shoot, this song came on the stereo, and we both sang every word, very loudly. It’s reminded me of her ever since, and now it always will.

You know, a little happy news would go down pretty nicely right now. So let’s see. Dua Lipa and Callum Turner are engaged. Is that anything? It’s all I got.

Last weekend, when our most Fox News-poisoned family members were certain Los Angeles was burning, we went to see an old friend’s band’s reunion show. Actually, it was kind of a band and kind of a comedy performance art piece, no, I know, but stay with me. The conceit of Prototokyo is that in the year 2150, scientists have proven conclusively that love is mankind’s only true resource, and in order to ward off 21st century fascism and get the New Love Regime started earlier, two professional love-makers have been sent back in time as catalysts. Prototokyo released a record and played a handful of shows back in 2005, when we were young and the idea of fascism was a little more abstract. Then they put it on hold to focus on their writing careers and start their families. Now they’re big sitcom producers, and the kids they had are teenagers, and those teenagers had to watch their dads be all sexy on stage at a 20th anniversary show. They took it well. This song is about after-dinner disco-nap culture in Brazil, and its hook will stay with you until the day you die.

There’s a new Sabrina album on the way! She’s doing puppy play on the cover or something! We’re all about to have a big cultural argument about whether she’s too sexy and whether that’s appropriate! Or we could just enjoy this song. Let’s do that.

Charlie Pierce’s thoughts on Sly Stone are a must-read. And just think: Back in 1969, someone went to the record store, bought this record, drove home with it, put it on the record player, and this is the sound that came out. I cannot imagine having my mind blown in quite that way. I love this song, even if it is the opposite of what this summer feels like. At least so far.

We don’t know yet, but it is possible that the Donald Trump military parade is going to be cancelled due to thunderstorms in the D.C. area. I think we can agree that causing a cancellation is the second funniest thing lightning could do at the Donald Trump military parade.

This year’s Best Bars in America feature is leaner and more focused than usual. Jeff Gordinier got a small handful of contributors to write about their one favorite bar, so now you have a guidebook to keep in your bookmarks for when you’re traveling, and I can say I was published alongside David Mamet. My favorite bar is Marie’s Crisis in Greenwich Village, and even typing this sentence out makes me ache to be back there.

Okay, fine, you can’t not listen to this song over and over this week. I’ll leave you to it. See you out on the streets tomorrow, Cupcake.