A Philosopher's Perspective on the No Kings Protests

Hey everybody, welcome to the Firestone Files. I am Dr. Chris Firestone. Today we're going to be talking about the No Kings protest of this past weekend and uh I'm here in Fort Worth, Texas. And so that's one that I visited. Um really interested in observing and asking questions and that's what I'm bringing you today on the Firestone Files.

All right. Well, welcome back everyone. We are moving on to episode 10. And this is once again a special episode breaking into my normal normally scheduled stuff mainly because I wanted to not do business as usual. You remember with the death of Charlie Kirk and my own desire to do stuff in real time. Well, something came up that uh uh a week ago and that was the No Kings protest. And I really wanted to go there with a spirit of new beginnings here in the Firestone Files. That is to do some live events, take some journeys with you, bring you along with me as I try to process the events of our time.

And so, um, really what I wanted to do by going there was to get into the mind of of the, uh, of the protesters and ask questions like, can we find common ground? What are these folks against? What are they for? And, who are they? Are they young? Are they old? Are they black? Are they white? Are they people of faith or not of faith? Or whatever. Just kind of get a sense of who these people are in these No Kings protests.

I guess I'm still a little bit touchy maybe or or sensitive to the fact that Charlie hasn't even been, you know, a little more than a month at this point and already we've got these protests going and uh just curious to see how sensitive they are to people like Charlie and people, you know, and and and and people asking questions about their position. So that's what we're doing here today. Um, what I'm proposing to do is a chronological kind of walkthrough of my time there at the No King's Protest. So, I'm I'm I'm really just trying to act as an observer, get to know the people, understand their complaints, and if possible, find some common ground. So, the way I'm going to do it is pretty straightforward. I'm just going to follow the videos that I shot on my own as I, you know, approached the protest and interacted with people and then left the protest. And I think it's pretty insightful, pretty interesting stuff.

And I'll let the videos do most of the talking, but I'll provide a little commentary as we go along. So, let's go ahead and look uh to clip one here. I am leaving the center where I'm working here as the uh head professor and and and on-site director of Turning Point Education Prep Year. And uh nobody's up as far as I can tell, but I did hear through the grapevine that some of our students were going to be heading over there. I didn't see any students, but I thought I'd better go ahead go over, have a look around, make sure everybody's okay, and um, of course, observe the protest for myself.

So, um, I think it's important it to be fully transparent that I'm a Christian, I'm reasonably conservative, and I'm walking into a no kings protest, which is probably on the opposite side of the spectrum. So, my job's not going to be easy. Um, but here I go. So, let's roll clip one. No kings. Here I go. All right. Good morning. I am out here in the hallway of uh prep year. Bunch of students are going to the no kings protest just to observe. And uh this is not a turning point event, but I thought I'd better tag along, see what's going on. And so, um, that's what I'm doing. Got my coffee right here and I'm about to head out.

I'll drive over to the No King's Protest and, uh, see what's going on. Um, maybe I'll capture some video while I'm over there. All right. I'll catch up with you soon. Bye. All right. Well, we have started the journey and I drove it's was about 10 15 minutes from where I'm working here and I arrive at the protest site, but I should have looked at my gas tank cuz I was running on fumes. So, I decided to stop at a gas station right next to the protest. And um immediately I was approached by somebody who pulled up behind me. And so I don't think they knew me from Adam, but they did.

Uh, you know, I knew I had the uh-oh moment when they walked up behind me as I was pumping my gas and they said, "Hey, no, no worries. I'm not looking for money. All I'm looking for is gas." And I said, uh, I said, "Gas? Gas is money, my friend. That's pretty expensive, uh, stuff you're asking for." He looked a little rough around the edges. He had somebody else in the car with him. They had a minivan. And I thought, you know what? I'm going to start the day off with a good deed. So, I said, "Why don't you go ahead and pull around next to me and I'll uh and I'll give you the gas pump." And so, he did.

And um and uh it wasn't the start I was looking for at the protest, but I thought I would um at least start off with an olive branch. So, he went ahead and pumped the gas after I was done with mine. And I think he was going to fill that whole minivan up for like 50 or 100 bucks. But I I pushed the button and basically gave him about 20 bucks from what I remember. But uh that's how it started. So let me just roll that real quick for you. That's uh clip two. Uh gas guy. All right. I'm here. Had to get some gas to uh cuz I was running out.

It's a torrential downpour. Some guys here have asked me for help getting gas, so I'm going to give them a little bit of gas, get them on their way. Um, but anyway, um, yeah, that's it. So, we'll catch up with you guys soon. All right. Well, I got my my gas tank filled up and I found a really good parking spot and I decided to uh make my way toward the uh the no protest. Um, immediately I recognized this was going to be something unusual or different for me. I've been to things like this before, but this one uh I ran into a chicken immediately. Um, had some kind of backpack on that blows air into the chicken suit and it fills up. And I thought, my goodness. Um, first guy I meet is an inflatable chicken. This is not an auspicious start at all.

First I met the gas guy. Now I meet the chicken guy. So let's go ahead and roll clip three. Meeting the chicken. All right, I have arrived. Got a really good parking spot and uh looking forward to seeing what's going on. It's already getting interesting. Let me see if I can get my first interview. Yeah.

Hey, how's it going? Doing good. But is this Chick-fil-A or what is this? This is Go with this. Oh, wow. Okay. Chunks of chicken. So, a chicken. Okay. What's he afraid of? That guy seems like a beast. Yeah, he'll he'll cower every time. All right. All right. Chicken. All right. Oh, we're pretty close to the event here. Yeah. What? We're pretty close to the event. Yeah. Okay. The rain's not discouraging people. No, it's just not. And this will help with the rain for sure. That's right. You got your own uh I got my own fan. There's a fan in that thing. Yeah, like the backpack. Yeah. All right. Well, thanks so much. Yeah.

get across here. All right. Well, I see things straight ahead. Should be interesting. So, that was the chicken guy. That's how I started off my the event. I this guy in a backpack, you know, with with air blowing in his suit. And this was going to be a really strange event. As I looked at the crowd, I could begin to see them in the distance. This chicken wasn't alone. He had other characters that were there too. And uh I kept thinking to myself, chicken, is he trying to say like Trump is a chicken or something like that? And I I started philosophically to ponder the question, how could Trump sensibly be thought of as a chicken?

I mean, he was sued in every way imaginable and fought back. He was shot in the ear. He dropped bombs on Iran. He negotiated peace in the Middle East twice actually over the course of two administrations. And I'm like, what in the world? Where do we get this chicken concept? Anyway, let's go ahead and roll clip four followed by the chicken. Okay. Whoa man, this is getting really fascinating. Go ahead and chicken still following me. Uh, okay. Here we go. My first view.

All right, I'll be back. Well, I you know, it's hard to really say uh you know how to respond to clip four, but I'm going to move on to clips five and six and maybe tag on clip 12 as well. Um and I think these are worth putting together because they kind of tell a story about some of what was motivating the people there. The people were complaining about the current administration and I saw a lot of these signs calling them morons. Morons. Um, but the irony was hard to miss. Here I am meeting all these costume characters and the sensible people, the people not in costume are calling the current, you know, rep Republican administration morons.

Um, so as I was kind of moving forward there, I uh bumped into this husband and wife who had these signs. One of the signs said, um, you know, we're governed by the morons or something along those lines. And I asked him a few questions. And then and as I moved out, I again started seeing more of these clownlike characters. and I began to wonder who are the morons here. So, let's go ahead and roll clips five and six and then 12. Uh, in the end, you're going to notice a chant going on. People got the power.

And if you look in the background, you'll see the signs as well. So, let's go ahead and roll clips five, 6, and then 12. Taking a picture of all the signs here. Who are the morons you think? Wait a minute. I've got a sign that Oh, do you really help you with that? All right. Thanks, Seth. Christy Gnome Cash Patel. Wow. Senator, what are you talking about? Well, he's on right now. I didn't Oh, that's right. This is the new one. You made that one last You didn't put any color on this one, though. No, we didn't have time. Oh my goodness. You guys came fully articulated here. Let's see. Flush truck away. Oh my goodness. Trouble code. Wow. So, if you could uh get one thing to like result from this, what would it be, do you think, among these options? Oh, I think the best thing is is flushing away. Are this my That's your signature one. Okay. Well, thanks so much. Appreciate it.

Looks like the morons are governing America. Hold on a second. Where are the morons? That's the big question. That parking garage is the power. Got the power. Power. People got the power. Who's got the power? People got the power. Who's got the power? People got the power. That's why we vote, ladies and gentlemen. That's why we vote. When I came to this, as you can see, the um the event was going to be really kind of something quite unusual. One of the things I noticed immediately was there were a lot of older folks there. It reminded me of people who used to protest at Vietnam, you know, the Vietnam era like the 60s and 70s, maybe the the mid70s.

Um, and uh, but in a more sanitized way. They had these professional suits on all over the place. I don't know where people get the money for this and why they would do this because it doesn't seem to have any real punch to it. But anyway, moving on. I'm going to look at clips uh eight and nine here. And in clip eight, you'll see that I finally bump into some of the students and uh decide to make my way to the front and um and start to hear the real chanting going on where they start to identify immigrants as the best possible citizens, for example, and calling everyone else fascists who kind of hold their feet to the fire.

um after parking my my making my way to the process, you know, and finding the students, they were observing and asking pretty good questions, but everyone on the whole was being friendly so far as I can tell. And people were going out of their way to try to be friendly, I think. But the more I made my way down to the front, the the more sort of um rambunctious rambunctious the crowd got.

And again, the questions kept bothering me. Uh, why are they calling everyone a fascist? Everyone a fascist. What does this mean? Is uh fascist is it a fascist behavior to give people here illegally free passage back to their home country? I mean, that doesn't sound like fascism to me. that sounds like, you know, the legal system. And so I had this tension in my mind about, you know, remembering censoring going on during the COVID era, the forced masking, the closing of public spaces and all of that. And I kept thinking to myself, why is it that people who apparently come out of that political millu are calling everyone else fascist?

Anyway, let's go ahead and roll clips eight and nine. All right. Well, I found the students. How's it going, guys? Wow, this is quite the event. I've already got a few interviews, so that was good. Year. Yes. Love to share footage. All right, we'll come back soon. All right, making my way down to the front, Fort Worth, Texas. We're going to turn down the rhetoric when they turn down the fascism. Are you here because you love our country and you're willing to and you are willing to fight to make sure that we do not slide into the authoritarianism that these fascists want to establish in our country.

Really inspiring me to be active today at closing down the schools and the churches and making us wear masks from the time of is that right? He said yes. And it breaks my heart like I know it breaks yours that that this administration is dismantling that system and turning back people who are coming here who are going to be the best possible members of our communities. Now I've learned a thing to from asylum seekers. Well um you know I've had my fun at this point. Now I'm going to start asking more serious questions. I'm looking at this protest as a philosopher might and I'm asking I mean there's no doubt when you look at the signs what people are against.

They seem to be against Trump. They seem to be against fascism. They seem to be against uh ICE and various other features of of of you know the current administration I guess but it's not exactly clear what these protesters are for. It seems like a lot of energy but there's no platform. And so um I got a little bit lengthier clip here. This clip 13. Apparently, we are for or at least the protesters are for America, for democracy, and for patriotism. That sounds pretty bipartisan to me.

You'll hear some swearing. I don't know if I'm going to have to beep that out or just let YouTube deal with it. Um, and that starts to ramp up in the discourse. And then it talks a lot about keeping our rights. Excuse me. What are we talking about here? Citizens rights. Are we just talking about human rights around the world? Um, are we the United Nations or are we the United States of America? I mean, that's another question that keeps ringing through my ears. And then they mentioned the first amendment and the constitution. And that's really when I thought about that because that's of course a typical mantra on the right in the political uh spheres.

Are we talking about the same thing when we talk about the first amendment and the constitution? So, let's go ahead and roll clip 13. We are here to error grievances. We are here to We're going over the first amendment. This should be a good lesson. Thinks he's a king and he ain't no Say it once. Say it twice. We will not give up our rights. Say it once. Say it twice. We will not give up our rights. Say it once. Say it twice. We will not give up our right.

I know what we're against. I can't figure out what we're for. What are we talking about? We won't give up our rights. And you know what? Another thing. The incoherence is astounding. We are so full of truth and love. No matter what happens, I know it's been said. I know it's been said already, but I will say it again. If there are agitators in the crowd, if there are Proud Boys or whatever the hell you want to call themselves, I know you have a witty retort in your back pocket and I know you got some you want to say to them, but you know what?

This day is not about them. This day is about us. This day is about us. And this day is about how we love this country. How we love this country. That's something we all agree with. Love the first amendment. Amen. Amen. Yeah, we can get behind that. We love the Constitution. Yes. Yes, we do. We will not back down. So once again, repeat after me. When we march, when we march, stand proud and stand strong. Be loud. Use your outside voice. All right. Use your outside voice because Craig Abbott thinks that he can send the troops here and we'll be violent. No. No. I want you guys to be loud. I want you guys to be loud. So say it again. I am not afraid. I am not afraid.

I am not afraid. All right, there we go. Looks like the march is about to begin. All right, so we got a dog in the front ready to run this march for us and we got to meet that moment. All right, I got some important people to get in front of the marcher. If you're a part of clergy, signs of fascism, the handsmaids, no kings banner team, bearers of large US flags. I need you to go that way behind. All right. Well, that's me making my way to the front in clip 13. But now I'm going to look at clips 14 and 15.

Here's where I start interviewing some of these characters because I'm just trying to get a sense of who these people are and what their positions are. what are they protesting and what are the what's their platform? So, in the first clip, you're going to see me interviewing a unicorn and uh she defends um I guess freedom freedom which seems to be a mantra again that is bipartisan and and that everybody holds. So, I'm beginning to ask myself, do we mean the same thing by these words when we say them to each other? She seems to be defending an unbridled kind of freedom where you can do and be anybody you want.

And when I think of freedom, I think of freedom within limitations. You can't, for example, a bird can't fly infinitely high. He has boundaries. you know, uh, a a a a person is able to do stuff because of the limitations that they have. And the law is one of those things that creates freedom because it creates boundaries. And uh, if you have unbridled freedom, you have, you know, anarchy essentially where everyone's freedoms can be taken away by any other person at any time. So I I'm as a philosopher, I'm beginning to sort of process and trying to think through what is it that this platform is holding to.

Then I interview a character called exelatto. I'm not even sure to this day who this character is, but he's protesting fascism, Trump 2025, and seems to be for democracy, America, and patriotism. Again, a bipartisan set of of of um of ideas. And then you'll hear him ask, "Are you standing against this regime?" And uh well, let's let the clip speak for itself. Um we're talking about here clips 14 and 15. Let's go ahead and roll those. I'd like to get an interview with this guy if I can. Hey, how's it going? What are you a unicorn? Unicorn. What brings a unicorn to this event? I'm LGBT and a woman and I'm against all the going on in general.

I see. I see. They're taking our lives and up everything. Well, what I know what we're against. What are we for? Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. All right. For freedom. All right. I'm going over for another interview. decided to I want to know who this fellow is here. Who's this guy? What? What's that? Who's this character? Axel. Axelato. Yeah. I I'm an older guy, I guess. I don't know. What's he protesting? What's he protesting? Yeah. Well, we're all here protesting. Yeah.

Just joining the No Kings rally. Yeah. Okay. So, we're Why not? I'm just trying to get it clear. We're against fascism, against Trump. against what else are we against? Project 2025. Project 2020 out of there. Yeah, I'm against all of that. I see. And what would you say we're, you know, majorly for? What are we for? What are we for? Democracy. Democracy. America. In America. All right. Patriotism. Patriotism. Super cool. Yeah. All right. What are you for, are you? I'm for those things as well, my friend. So, excellent. You're standing against this regime. I'm standing up.

As you can see in clips 14 and 15, it seems like we have a lot of common ground except the lack of willingness to put oneself in subservience to the current administration. I guess I'm willing to give the current administration the benefit of the doubt. These people are not. Um, hard to figure out what the platform was. Now, I do have an image in one photograph. Um, I call it the pro sign because the pro sign is the only thing I saw. We can go ahead and show that while I'm speaking here. The pro sign is the only thing I saw that seemed to have a platform. It was pro- America, pro- democracy. But it was also a pro-immigrant, pro- diversity, pro-woman, pro-choice, pro- love, pro-justice, etc.

And it did raise a question for me. How can we be firm as people who are under the law but also have a heart? That seems to be what the basic issue is here is that people are concerned that Donald Trump and perhaps this administration are heartless or they in the application of the law they somehow uh don't have empathy or something along those lines. So if I'm trying to make the best case I can for the platform that seems to be it to me. um something about the way in which laws are are are are um sanctioned or or or um upheld. And so um that was clips 14 and 15.

Now I'm going to turn um to clip 16 and 18. In clip 16, I meet an what I'm calling an American eagle. And the American Eagle doubles down on the on the platitudes. I think adding one that I hadn't heard before. No pedophiles. Um, and I kept thinking myself, I'm looking around this this crowd. I'm thinking, man, that might eliminate a few of these folks. Um, but anyway, don't know for sure, but uh that seems to be what the American Eagle and clip 16 holds to. And then there's clip 18. I meet Optimus Prime. And I guess Optimus Prime is a transformer and appears to be a no king's guy, but getting exactly what he holds to is well tough to do.

The whole thing seemed rather strange. Um, then I met Uncle Sam, uh, an eagle kind of blended with Uncle Sam and he held to freedom, I guess. And so let's go ahead and roll a series of clips one after the other here. Clip 16, 18, and what I'm going to call 22A, the beginning part of the clip 22.

File. Oh jeez, man. That's a little dictator. I see what you did there with a dic. Here we go. All right. What I see what I got here. Peace, love. Can I smell hatred with a red the Cheeto? Come on now. There we go. All right. I love it. I love it. Democracy and freedom. It's Are you a forward person? We can start moving to the right slowly. It's wet. There's We're going to start moving to the right. You're going to start lining up. Just trying to get a feel for the event. So, don't be afraid to talk to the booths on the side. Start talking to them.

But we're going to go ahead and move and we're going to start spread out. Yeah. I mean, keep going. Oh, you want the files? All right, ma'am. Oh, they want me to keep kind of new to all this as he's in his return. The eagle. The eagle. I'm just pissed off that this is how this chapter has to be. Eagle waves to us. That's great. All right. Well, we're moving on to another as my life animal. And I said, Roy, who's this character? Is that the Star Wars? No, I'm too old. I don't know. Transformers. Transformers. You can subscribe to anyone. Now, which one is that?

Optimus Prime. Optimus Prime. And Optimus Prime is a no kings guy. All right. I guess Optimus Prime's a no king guy. It is pouring rain out here. And uh as you can see, we got everything going on back. Oh, we got a we got an eagle here. Is that American Eagle? Uncle Sam eagle, actually. How come you're not walking? You can't walk in this thing. I think we're waiting until there's a Oh, that's probably a wise idea. What brings you out here? Freedom. Freedom. Okay.

Well, as you can see, I was having some fun meeting some of the characters that are present there because I'm trying to get into the mind of who would put themselves in such a silly suit and um and protest in no kind of obvious way or with no obvious platform. But as we mentioned so far here, we do have this notion of the heart that somehow the language or the application of the law feels rough to people. I get it. Um, check that one off. I I I I I I know what's going on there. And that they may well have a point.

Um, if we look now at clip 19, this is a short clip that I got of my student asking questions of a person dressed as Lady Liberty. And the reason I think this clip is significant because it adds another piece to the puzzle in my inquiry here and that is why are they wearing these these cartoon suits? And I think that the best answer I heard out there was that people think that the left is inherently violent and we are here in these cartoon suits to demonstrate that we are harmless. So um let's go ahead and roll clip 19.

And it just made a really good picture and so everybody kind of takes off with it. Oh, okay. It doesn't really mean anything. It doesn't mean anything other than we stand with the court once for all, right? That's really it. Then there's a ridiculousness of ridiculousness cuz they're saying that we're bad and that we're violent, that we're mean and all of that and we're all dressed. So that's really what it's about to make it ridiculous. Yeah. No, good question. I had to ask too. Okay. 67. All right.

Well, okay. So, now we've got at least two points that I think I understand about this group maybe more clearly than they understand it themselves because a lot of people are struggling to to give a positive platform. They all the platitudes that they mention actually are shared in common with people on the right. And so I guess that's a sense of hopefulness that I have is that the people at these no kings protests, at least the one uh here in Fort Worth, actually have quite a bit of overlap as Americans with Americans on the right hand of the spectrum. So that was kind of cool. uh be people who have a heart, be nonviolent, and be willing to sort of bend over backwards, if you will, by wearing costumes even to demonstrate that your intentions are not violent.

Well, that brings me to the next suit that I saw. This one's a little different than the other, so I'm I'm giving it some special attention. That was a Donald Trump uh costume that someone wore. A Donald Trump in a diaper. I guess this was a replica of something that was in London flying overhead at one of their parades. Um, and that's what I learned from the person who I interviewed inside the Donald Trump suit. Um, I asked her, you know, does it have to do with immaturity or whatever? And I and she didn't really have a solid answer there. Her husband was kind of looking out for her on the side.

So, that was I think one of the interesting takeaways cuz I asked the husband, "You let her go uh out in a suit like this?" And he basically said she's got a mind of her own. So, let's go ahead and roll clip 20. Uh Donald Trump in a diaper. All right, we uh follow found Donald Trump in a big suit. So, I'm going to make my way over there and see if we can interview Donald Trump. See what Donald has to say. I wonder if he'll confess or do something extraordinary. I'd like to This is the suit. This is the suit of the day right here.

I'm surprised he had the courage to wear it. Hey, Donald. How's it going? Hi. You have a lot of courage wearing a Donald Trump suit here. I love this costume. I got it years ago. I've been saving it for this moment. Yeah. He's Is he in diapers? Is that what it is? Yes. It's a big It's a Trump baby costume. Whenever he went to London, they had a big uh balloon like flying over her head during a march. And this is like a replica. And this was it? Oh, this is a replica of the suit. So represent immaturity. Is that Huh? Immaturity. Is that what it represents?

Yeah. That being a big baby, I guess. But he grows with I say, okay. Yeah. I'm just curious. I like the hair on his chest. That's pretty good. But a spaghetti maybe. I don't know. Are you the husband? Are you allowed this? What's that? Can't stop your wife. their own person. That's funny. That's pretty cool. Well, that's Donald Trump in a diaper about to start the No Kings March. I hope she can make it in this suit. It's hard to see the ground even. I guess that's why her husband's here. All right, here we go. All right. Well, I'm now to the pretty close to the front.

Not all the way at the front. As I found out from my students later on who were at the front, it was actually a little more intense up front. You had people wearing masks. You had uh confrontations up front. Um didn't turn violent, thank goodness, but there were definitely some angry moments that could have turned violent, but they didn't. So, that was good.

Um, when I Let's go ahead and look here at clip 21. It's right when the march is about to begin. The rain begins as well. And uh, you couldn't help but notice the symbolism here as these protesters started, you know, continued their chants of various types. Uh, the rain just had another had another plan in mind altogether. So, let's go ahead and roll clip 21. All right, it's starting to rain, but doesn't seem to be discouraging people from getting into the street.

Starting to rain pretty good now. Perhaps God's speaking. Trying to put the damper on this kind of behavior. All right. Make my way through the crowd and get back to my car. There's only so much of this I can take. Yeah, the rain started and as I got myself out into the crowd and into the march, I kind of pulled over to the side there and observed the marchers going by. And as they were really starting to get going, so did the rain. It began to uh have a torrential downpour. And you couldn't help but realize the symbolism here as these people were just getting utterly soaked.

And so um they you know we we uh talk about the first amendment and the right to protest and I'm all for that. Um but the tension in of the moment is was hard to miss. Here these chants started and here the rain begins to pour and uh and uh well let's go ahead and roll clip 22B. Torrential downpour. Oh my goodness. What did I get myself into? Well, I think I'm going to head back to the car. Um, I hope all these folks don't get pneumonia or something like that. This is about as cold as Fort Worth has been in a long time.

Man, you can't miss the symbolism of this torrential downpour. I did learn something here in the last 30 minutes and that is everybody in America agrees with freedom with the uh the importance of democracy. I'm not sure what to make out of the fact that democracy has spoken and yet they're against the results of the last election. But hey, that's that's part of the first amendment. Part of the first amendment. You get to say what you want. Well, there was a lot more to that clip, believe it or not. Uh, I wish I would have been able to capture that, but with the torrential downpour, it looked like my camera was was fluttering and uh ended up stopping uh the shot prematurely.

But you got what we got what we got, I guess. And that was me getting utterly drenched trying to capture the the the the moment of this protest and the mood of this protest. And uh to be honest, I thought it went reasonably well overall. The people were for the most part pretty kind. There was a little bit of tension. Anytime you asked a question, people would kind of give you a little bit of push back, but it wasn't it wasn't unruly or anything like that. And so, and I think I learned something. I think I learned that we have a lot more common ground as Americans than we think we do.

Um, all the platitudes that were mentioned were things that were bipartisan for the most part. It's only when we got into the weeds of the actual disagreements that um people kind of shut down. Um I guess I got the impression that these folks wanted to be heard but they really didn't have a solid position and the position anytime there was a positive position portrayed it was always in tension what with what was actually going on. And so when we saw at the beginning, you know, all these claims that the people in control are morons and here we have all these cartoon Mardigra suits running around uh making really kind of incoherent tensionfilled claims.

Um, you hear chants going on that are chants that every American would agree with and, uh, you hear a lot of complaining about Donald Trump and about the, you know, say heavy-handed way in which ISIS is is working. Um, but honestly, it's hard to know why this protest had any real teeth. It didn't seem like there was any hill really to die on. You're dealing with people who primarily are here um outside of the legal parameters of being here and they're being ushered out, but they're being ushered out in a way that is safe for um for the police officers and for the ICE agents. Uh we know that if you unmask yourself, uh people will come after you these days.

And so, um hard to hard to blame them for masking themselves. And one of the big ironies up front is one of the students told me that a person was complaining about ICE agents who are masked taking people off the street and this guy had a mask on. And so the the the tension and the irony in these positions is is really quite astounding. So uh I finished the protest, you know, I was soaking wet. I started to walk back to the car and uh as I was walking back to the car, I was able to do one more good deed.

So, I was able to really felt good about myself because at the beginning of the protest, I managed to give a guy $20 in gas. And at the end of the protest, I managed to help Cookie Monster get out of his suit. So, let's go ahead and roll my exit from the uh from the protest. Uh clip 24, helping Cookie Monster. All right, I might get one more interview. There's a guy with another suit on. Is that the Cookie Monster? Yeah. You didn't decide not to walk? Oh, no, no, no. I am, but I need my phone. Oh, okay. Can I help you with anything? Um, if you're going to unzip me. Yeah, just uh No problem.

Yeah, no, no. I'll walk. But yeah, hold those two together. Oh, there we go. There we go. There we go. I got it from here. Thank you, sir. No problem. Have a good one. You, too. Take care. Thank you. You, too. had to help Cookie Monster. Uh, good stuff. Well, those are the clips I want to show you here, uh, on this Firestone file. As promised, this wasn't going to be business as usual going forward. If I saw an opportunity to take you into the fray, if you will, or to an event that I thought was timely, historic, and and significant, I'm going to try to do that.

So, this uh that past weekend, I was able to go to the No King's Protest in Fort Worth, Texas, and just give you a few thoughts of a philosopher as he walked around talking with people and experiencing the event. Um, it did seem like with a couple of opportunities I had to help them and to converse with them that a couple things are beginning to show themselves to me as being important as Americans, as Christians, as citizens, as people who are trying to be consent with the bibl biblical authority. Um, and to be thoughtful in doing so. There's at least three things I think we agreed upon. One is friendship.

Um, you can meet people anywhere, even these people in suits. I felt like I may have a couple friends there. Um, particularly the Cookie Monster there at the end. Um, decency. uh other than the four-letter words that were being uttered here and there at the uh at the protest, for the most part, people were decent with one another, able to converse with one another. And I think that decency in open rational discourse is going to be important if we're ever going to get out of the situation, this polarization that we find ourselves in. I did. I was happy to and I'm happy to report that love of country is still something that appears to be on both sides of the fence.

Now, as I said, it was a little bit different upfront. Some of the agitators in the front of that crowd were different than the people that I was interviewing in the middle and in the back of the crowd. And so I'm concerned that there is a um you know a dir or a growing sense of not loving the country. Um but the people who were at this protest, these older folks still have a modicum of of of love of country that I think we found common ground in. And so that's encouraging to me. Perhaps there's still hope um for us to come back together as a nation.

So, those are some of my thoughts. I hope you enjoyed this uh episode of the Firestone Files. Do feel free to share with your friends or like us and uh and I'll try to bring you more of these things as they come along. So, that's it for now. Hope you have a good one. Take care and see you next time.

Thanks for stopping by to spend some time with me here on the Firestone Files. I hope today's reflections offered you some new insights and perspective on Bible. If you enjoyed the episode or found it valuable, I'd appreciate it if you'd take a moment to like, subscribe, and share it with someone you care about. I'd also love to hear your thoughts. What resonated with you? What challenged you? Or what would you like to hear more about in future episodes? Drop a comment below or send in your suggestions to the email in the description. Your input helps shape where we go next. This has been Dr. Chris Firestone. Until next time, keep asking the big questions and remember the kingdom journey is always best with your friends. Further up and further in. Bye for now.