For many who participated in the No Kings protests on Saturday, October 18, the simple act of marching in what may be the United States’s largest show of resistance against the rise of authoritarianism in recent times was both cathartic and hopeful. An estimated seven million people turned out to protest as Republicans threw a collective tantrum over the weekend. President Trump, achieving a new low that previously seemed impossible, posted an AI-generated video of himself manning a warplane emblazoned with the words “King Trump” and bombarding protesters with what looks like human excrement. Why is the movement so provocative to the right? It might have something to do with its “surprisingly patriotic” aesthetic, as Hyperallergic contributor Emma Cieslik observed from Washington, DC, or perhaps it’s the relentless calls for Trump to release the Epstein files — including one sign, photographed by hragv in Manhattan, that invokes the president’s own alleged birthday drawing for the con...