In 1989, I was equally terrified and inspired by a Chinese dissident who, in protest, stood alone on worldwide network television, insanely justified, before a column of loaded, rolling, Communist tanks, in perhaps the most suicidally unarmed act of momentary singular freedom my world had seen since Jesus accepted the cross.
The world was not terrified of him, but for him. To this day, I have never heard any information, other than his act, to confirm or suggest his whereabouts or physical condition. From that day to this, I have agreed with his political position and respected his action. With arms held in wide supplication, a lone figure in white, unarmed but for the thundering visions of a silenced voice, hurled his belief to all the borders of his known world, blocking ordered tanks about to strike.
Had he had a few drinks? We will likely never know. I myself might have had to have had many more.
Protest should never be an act of terror, but any physical or verbal action which highlights and demands, with unarmed, open-handed determination, the basic human right to be fairly treated and intelligently heard.
Even if the layered creations of another's misconstrued world views have taken them to belief systems far removed from our own, we in America have the constitutional obligation to allow forbearance in an opponent's peaceful expression to be, just as often, likely wrong or right.
A man I do not know, a man who just yesterday stood as a singular voice of protest, unarmed, hands out, occasionally raising a rude finger, and face completely open, before thousands of Trump train wheels in my neighboring town of St. George, Utah, exercised his protected right to protest.
I likely am in clear opposition to his point of view. What I respect in this instance is a man who made a peaceful, unarmed protest under his constitutionally protected human right to do so. Additionally, though being severely memed (Biden sniffing his hair, very funny), and potentially far more endangered, he committed no act of violence and no member of the Trump Train made this man or his voice disappear.
If his reasons for this action had any history in what fact-based information he has allowed himself to swallow, we in opposition ought to give a fair hearing and attempt to better create a more sumptuous democracy for enjoining this peacefully defiant man and similarly opposing masses in our enjoyment of its plentiful feast.
I want this fellow to one day reemerge in his convictions, dining on my side at the growing table of freedom and patriotism for a successful American democratic survival and its positive worldwide proliferation. Together in prosperity. Together in peace.
#RFK24
-Hermit King-
