No Kings (We Don't Like) Day

In Hawaii today: "Two events, one to protest against kings and one to celebrate a king. Makes perfect sense."

Pravda reports:

A huge crowd of protesters descended on the [Hawaii] State Capitol today as part of the nationwide “No Kings Day” rallies against the Trump administration.

Photograph by Jamm Aquino for Pravda.

How huge?

Crowd estimates ranged from roughly 1,500 to about 7,000, depending on who was doing the counting.

Hawaii News Now Nausea gave an even huger estimate (emphasis mine):

Although there was no official count of how many people attended the protest at Hawaii’s State Capitol, organizers estimated that seven-to-10,000 people expressed their concerns about the Trump administration.

What was the point of this leg shot? Notice how “CLIP 2664” wasn’t clipped. I often see such insider bits in the closed captions of Hawaii Nausea.

I’m okay with just saying “lots”. What interests me isn’t a number that fluctuated during the protest¹ but something that’s harder to measure: cognitive dissonance.

In true blue Hawaii where the state senate was recently 100% One Party, wannabe king Trump is widely regarded as evil. (An assessment with which I agree.)

The composition of the Hawaii Senate in 2016 and 2017. Source: Wikipedia.

But at the same time, there is nearly universal reverence for the Hawaiian monarchy. In my lifetime, I have encountered exactly one person here who saw the end of the monarchy as a good thing. There must be others, but they maintain polite silence. Because to publicly diss the monarchy would be racist, imperialist, and colonialist.

That’s why no one is protesting the other big event in Hawaii today.

No one normally dresses like this today. The two men in the center are wearing simulated mahiole and ʻahuʻula, the feather helmets and capes of chiefs. Note the irrelevant caption accidentally carried over from a previous news story.

The only objections I’ve seen are a few comments on these two Pravda articles referring to the rarely mentioned dark side of the Hawaiian monarchy:

I was hoping that the "No Kings Day" protesters would use the occasion to topple and destroy the KING Kamehameha statue -- a war criminal who killed thousands of native Hawaiians, invaded and colonized the entire archipelago -- a statue that shows him holding out his hand demanding tribute while brandishing his gut-ripping sharks-teeth studded spear threatening what might happen to you if you don't knuckle under.

historynet.com: “[…T]he largest and bloodiest engagement of Kamehameha’s quest to rule the islands [...] Through a series of skirmishes, Kamehameha’s warriors eventually forced their enemy, whose strength had dwindled to 800 men, to the razor’s edge of the pali [cliff] for a last stand. Rather than be captured and face enslavement or ritual sacrifice, most defenders fought to the death, many literally being driven over the edge of the 1,000-foot cliff at their backs.”. Note the gunman at left. Painting by Native Hawaiian Herb Kawainui Kāne.

He [King Kamehameha] united the Hawaiian islands by ki11ing tribes² and communities who opposed him, supported by western military training and western firearms.³ Pretty sure that would be called genoc1de today.⁴ (Yes, I know he negotiated a settlement with [the island of] Kauai)

I wonder what KING Kamehameha would have done to NO KING protesters in his day?

They celebrate King Kamehameha Day while at the same time protest "No Kings." These are not the sharpest tools in the shed.

No kings - unless they’re Hawaiian.

Lest you think I jest, here’s a serious comment:

There were plenty of Hawaiians at the No Kings Day event. They were carrying signs saying Hawaii had kings but the U.S. doesn't.

And here’s my favorite comment:

Two events, one to protest against kings and one to celebrate a king. Makes perfect sense.

A Native Hawaiian responded,

Two parades, ... one for a beloved King who unified the Hawaiian Islands.

The other, the "No Kings" one, a pretend king celebrating his birthday with a military parade.

So … No “Pretend” Kings Day?

I’m not the only Trump hater who can’t get over the irony:

Ironic to celebrate a vicious absolute king like King Kam who slaughtered many Hawaiians and members of his own court and the protests against the ridiculous Trump.

Bottom line: In a moralitarian society⁵, people just buy into whatever is sold as ‘good’ or ‘evil’, regardless of whether those ‘goods’ or ‘evils’ make sense or not: e.g.,

• No kings - GOOD

• King Kamehameha - GOOD

• Trump - EVIL (again, I agree with this; it’s the coexistence of the first two that cracks me up)

Consistency is not a basic vocabulary word; it is a relatively recent innovation. Hence our species doesn’t really care about it.

But we do care about much older notions: good and evil.

1. One can make any protest seem smaller by citing the actual number of people present toward the beginning or the end.

There is an unspoken assumption that the (perceived) size of a protest determines its validity. A pack animal instinct? Moar bodies GOOD, fewer bodies BAD. The numbers game aims to skew the audience’s perception of a protest.

Even if everyone somehow agreed on One and Only One Right Number of People there, that number could be spun in either direction. For instance, Pravda commenters wrote,

Protesters made up about less than one to one percent of all the adults living on [the island of] Oahu [where the State Capitol is]. I guess many don't think Trump is making himself into a king. I sure don't and I'm not a diehard Trump supporter either.

so, while 313,044 people in hawaii voted for giggles [i.e., Biden], 'no king' was only attract 0.5% of the people to this kumbaya.

I believe the reason Erica Chenoweth's 3.5% rule is a reliable tool is that obviously 3.5% is not enough to win an election [huh? - it’s enough to break a tie], BUT [paragraph break in original]

those 3.5 percenters willing to hit the streets, will be motivated to exert enough influence on their ohana [Hawaiian for ‘family’; an example of the use of Hawaiian for propaganda] to unseat the authoritarian regime.

I read that last comment as admitting that only a small percentage of the population protested while also asserting that such a percentage is sufficent “to unseat the authoritarian regime.”

2. The word “tribes” is out of place, as there were no “tribes” in traditional Hawaii.

3. We’re not supposed to talk about the beginning of the Maoli-Haole (Native-White) Alliance that created a unified Hawaii out of multiple kingdoms. Kamehameha imposed the name of his island (Hawaii) upon all the islands he conquered with European assistance. Wikipedia admits there were “independent monarchs of various subdivisions of the land and islands of Hawaii” but cannot bring itself to name them. They are as forgotten as the Ko dynasty of Koguryŏ and the Puyŏ dynasty of Paekche. I cannot find Wikipedia articles on them in English. (I’ve linked to the brief Korean Wikipedia articles on those dynasties.) Hawaii and Korea may have mild cases of macroamnesia.

4. This is the first time I’ve ever seen the G-word associated with Kamehameha’s actions. I would not use that word in this context, though maybe I’m just brainwashed and ignorant. I don’t like using the G-word in general. The G-word is a rhetorical weapon aimed at any mass killing one doesn’t like; other killings are excused as ‘self-defense’, ‘rightful retaliation’, etc.

5. Okay, on second thought, any society.