Saving the Republic from Goliath

The major media ignored it. But at the 'Rescue the Republic' rally in Washington Sept. 29 I saw that a lot of politically diverse Americans understand the biggest threat to our freedom is the state.

Novelist Walter Kirn explained at the ‘Rescue the Republic’ rally why free-speech enemy John Kerry should have his ‘hammer’ taken away and Kirn’s journalist pal and web partner Matt Taibbi gave this speech about the supreme importance of the First Amendment. For those who missed it — including the biased journalists at the Washington Post, New York Times, Axios, Drudge et al. who didn’t write a single word about it — here’s a video of the entire event. Here’s an anti-military industrial complex and pro-freedom video by peacenik indy film-maker Bobby Bailey based on the rally. And here’s a hate-filled trashing from what’s left of Rolling Stone.

Rescuing the Republic

Washington, DC

Sept. 29, 2024

The major media ignored it, before and after.

But a unique assortment of politically pissed but multi-partisan insurrectionists gathered to speak Sunday at the “Rescue the Republic” rally at the National Mall in Washington, DC.

Sub-themed “Make America Healthy Again,” the event featured an all-star roster of exiled Democrats like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, who’ve teamed up with the Trump re-election campaign.

Other headlined speakers included leftist comedian Jimmy Dore, psycho-philosopher Jordan Peterson, non-interventionist retired colonel Douglas Macgregor, freshly baptized comedian/activist Russell Brand, heroic covid war dissidents like Dr. Pierre Corry and honest super-journalists like Matt Taibbi and Lara Logan.

The speakers dropped the names of their gods Madison, Mencken and Assange.  They hated on their devils Fauci and Kerry. They praised the Bill of Rights and told mean jokes about Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. After about four hours, Taibbi, Dore and others started dropping angry F-bombs.

The speakers didn’t cause a street riot. They didn’t call for a war against Iran. In the presence of the Washington Monument, they didn’t demand more government subsidies for their pet causes or more laws to enforce their values on the rest of us.

They were not certified libertarians, but they were united on several important big issues that revolved around the threat posed to individual freedom by a huge, powerful and predatory government.

They fiercely decried our immoral and bloody wars overseas, the government’s wanton censorship of the Internet and its bloated military industrial complex. They shared outrageous stories of the tyranny they and others suffered during the war on covid and they took shots at the power of Big Pharma and medicine- by-mandate.

Trump was not there in person and the event was billed as a nonpartisan call for unity.

But Trump’s spirit, his wackiness, his anti-establishment bent and many of his insurrectionist political positions were well represented or enhanced by a six-hour-long parade of heroes and celebrities of the unhappy, rightish wing of American politics.

No one officially guessed the attendance, but it seemed far short of the 100,000 that evolutionary biology professor Bret Weinstein and other sponsors hoped for and were claiming on web sites on Monday.  About a million people reportedly watched the rally live online, though, and it’s still being watched.

The size of the crowd was obviously suppressed by the off-and-on mist and the failure of the Sun to ever show itself. The pre-rally info blackout by the liberal Big Media didn’t help, either.

The rally’s attendees were disproportionately older, whiter, hairier, hippier and Flyover Country looking. They came to show their willingness to put aside their left-right political and cultural differences and unite to Rescue the Republic from its predicament.

They were what you could call “80 percenters.” Like the speakers on stage, like the people in the crowd, like all Americans, they didn’t agree on everything.

Some loved Trump more than Jesus. Some loved Jesus or RFK Jr. or Tulsi more than Trump. Their ideological Venn Diagrams overlap so crazily they would have confused VP Harris.

The Israeli-Palestine-Iran war was not mentioned. But the crowd at Rescue the Republic generally agreed on the important stuff – that the federal government was too big, too powerful, too war-happy and too intrusive in their personal and financial lives.

They are not happy being docile citizens of the Nanny State, the Surveillance State, the Crony Capitalist State, the Administrative State or the Forever Wars State.

They know the state – aka, Leviathan, Goliath, the Blob and the elitists who have seized charge of it -- is a danger to their freedom, prosperity and health.  They are Davids who are united in believing it is the state that needs to be drastically defunded, downsized and defanged.  

To prove they were serious about their beliefs, the crowd stood in front of a huge stage for hours with their handmade signs, U.S. Flag shoulder wraps, Trump hats and assorted MAGA-ware. They lifted up cardboard faces of Bobby Kennedy and waved signs that said things like “Make America Healthy Again” and “We Are the Control Group.”

MC Rob Schneider entertained the crowd with a string of cheap and often funny political jokes. Tyler Fischer showed them why he might be the next George Carlin and as darkness arrived Jimmy Dore put the f-ing corporate media in its place.

The crowd heard excellent speeches by the likes of Taibbi, a few dull speeches like Jordan Peterson’s lecture on the eternal power of stories and a Christian prayer or two. Protest songs by rappers and rockers and country singers with libertarian and conservative themes like Tennessee Jet thundered through giant speakers and filled huge concert monitors.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was the clear favorite and Gabbard and free-speech defender Taibbi were close seconds. Kennedy, channeling Lord Acton and sounding like a born-again libertarian, told the crowd:

“I want you all to remember three rules: 1) When you give a government a power, it will never voluntarily relinquish it. 2) If you give a government a power, it will ultimately abuse that power to the maximum extent possible. 3) Nobody ever complied their way out of totalitarianism.”

But the rally’s highlight, in terms of entertainment, was, by far, the hilarious and unscripted Brand-Peterson stand-up comedy routine, which proved Peterson is a great straight man and Brand is the English-speaking world’s funniest, most eloquent and entertaining political improviser.

Hillary Clinton would have smeared the entire crowd at the Mall on Sunday as Americanus deplorablis. Joy Reid and her fake liberals at MSNBC – not to mention the salvage crews manning the sinking ships of the legacy print media – would pre-hate every one of them. The legacy lefties at the invisible Nation magazine finally got around to trashing the rally and everyone in it in a series of ad hominem attacks that wounded some of their targets.

The Fossil Media and their star reporters and logos were noticeably – and mercifully -- absent. Not even the patron saint of Trump USA, Sean Hannity, or any of the little Foxes, showed up. Neither did the FBI’s robotic drill team of pretend Nazis in their khaki uniforms.

Based on a Google search on Monday, the only major media outfit to cover the rally was the Wall Street Journal, which deployed columnist Molly Ball who snarked it as “the coalition of the weird.”

Reporter Molly writes as if she actually went to the rally. But she apparently was so intent on making fun of its politically “weird” speaking roster and its “crunchy and militant” attendees that she apparently could not hear or see straight.

In paragraph two of her Journal piece, she wrote that during his clever interchange with Peterson on stage Brand complained of the “vanilla-ization of culture.” He actually – and clearly -- said, “banal-ization.” Ball also slimed Brand and his hairy chest, saying his shirt was “unbuttoned to his navel,” which it wasn’t. His “diaphragm,” maybe.

The rally to Rescue the Republic won’t change America or save it. The Big Media predictably ignored or mocked it. Most Americans living in their hardened Left/Right, Blue/Red, Trump/Harris Silos won’t be affected one way or the other by what anyone said.

They’ll never hear about Rescue the Republic’s 8 worthy “Pillars” unless they go online:

 1) War is always the last resort vs. Military Industrial Complex 2) Sanctify/recodify informed consent vs. Medical Industrial Complex 3) Banish state media control, surveillance and propaganda vs. Censorship Industrial Complex 4) Enact a rational border policy vs. Immigration Industrial Complex

5) End Lawfare and abuse of the judicial system Vs. Injustice Industrial Complex 6) Secure monetary freedom vs. Finance Industrial Complex 7) Restore family sovereignty vs. Developmental Industrial Complex 8) Return to truth-seeking and open dialogue vs. Academic Industrial Complex

It doesn’t matter in the long run that the rally failed to attract 100,000 peaceful insurrectionists and the major media ignored it. It was a success because it proved there is a politically diverse remnant of freedom-loving people across the USA who agree that the only way to rescue the Republic is to reduce the power and size of the state.

For the Record:

Waking up the Washington Post ---

Just in case the crack newspaper journalists at the fair and balanced Washington Post hadn't heard about the ambitious 'Rescue the Republic' rally on Sunday in DC at the National Mall, I sent this email to about a dozen of the 3,000 editors listed on its 'Leadership of the Newsroom' Page --

Dear Washington Post Leadership --

Hello there.

As a former newspaperman, I want to make sure the Post will be covering the star-studded "Rescue the Republic' rally Sunday, Sept. 29 from noon to dusk on the National Mall.

The 'resistance movement' the rally represents might make an interesting story in advance, considering a bunch of Democrats -- RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard and Brett Weinstein et al. -- will be speaking. And I'm sure you'll have reporters and photographers at the event for Monday's paper.

So far, no major East Coast media site has mentioned this unique rally, so you can 'break' the story of its existence.

Here's a link to all you'd need to get started.

https://jointheresistance.org/

If you are short-staffed and need any help, give me a call. My wife and I will be there and I still have some empty official "Reporter's Notebooks.'

Thanks very much.

Bill Steigerwald

ex-LA Times and two Pittsburgh dailies

The speakers will appear in the order they are listed on this poster.

Note: As of Oct. 1, The Washington Post had written nothing about the rally.