October 20, 2025

What's the difference between a king, a dictator, and a tyrant? I suggest the next national protest be renamed No Dictators, or better yet, No Tyrants.

 


This story has been given a lot of coverage. Here’s the HUPPOST story about it.

This should elicit a “well, duh, this ought to be obvious you brainwashed eejit” response and need no explanation. 

This means you Megan McCain and everyone else saying this. Her’s what she tweeted with a few replies. (You can read all of them here.)

For the one person who may stumble on this Substack I searched the question “what’s the difference between a king and a dictator?” and this is what came up on the AI search assist:

If you’ve been reading my recent Substacks about the No Kings protests

here

you know I noted that Indivisible is offering both No Kings and No Dictators signs.

You also saw Ann and I with the custom made signs I ordered for the No Kings protests we went to.

I didn’t depict Donald Trump as Hitler. I just put orange hair on a drawing I found on a poster that said No Fascism and changed that to Hitler. 

There are signs that make it clear the the Hitler referenced is Donald Trump. (They are simple to make thanks to the Hitler making the Charlie Chaplin toothbrush mustache infamous.)

None of this bullshitting would have happened if Indivisible hadn’t named their protests “No Kings.” I’d speculate that at the time of the first No Kings protest on Trump’s birthday, June 14th, there may have been discussion as to what to call it. Wikipeda says:

The No Kings protests, also known internationally as the No Dictators or No Tyrants protests, is a series of demonstrations, largely in the United States, against what the organizers describe as authoritarian policies of Donald Trump and corruption in his administrationProtests took place on June 14, 2025 (labelled as No Kings Day by the participants), on the same day as the U.S. Army 250th Anniversary Parade and Trump’s 79th birthday. Further No Kings protests took place on October 18, 2025.

In countries with constitutional monarchies such as Canada and the United Kingdom, the alternate “Dictators” or “Tyrants” titles were favored over “Kings” to avoid confusion with anti-monarchic movements; Hawaii did the same to avoid confusion with a King Kamehameha Day parade held on the same day.

Looking back I certainly understand why the stronger “No Dictator” or “No Tyrant” name wasn’t used. Trump had not demonstrated fully implemented his ruthless and cruel dictatorial intentions. We can, with considerable justification, use the more evocative, though some may say, inflammatory, term “Hitlerian.”

My preference is that the next national protest not be called “No Kings.” I prefer “No Tyrants” over “No Dictators” primarily because it has been used less frequently. I find it a harsher sounding word as well. The term tyrant also fits a duly elected president who becomes tyrannical:

Dictator and tyrant are both terms used to describe individuals who hold absolute power and exercise it in an oppressive or authoritarian manner. However, there are subtle differences between the two. A dictator is typically someone who seizes power through force or manipulation and rules with absolute authority, often without any legal or constitutional basis. They tend to concentrate power in their own hands and suppress any opposition or dissent. On the other hand, a tyrant is someone who abuses their power and uses it to oppress and exploit the people they govern. While a dictator may have initially gained power through undemocratic means, a tyrant can also emerge within a democratic system, gradually eroding freedoms and rights. Ultimately, both dictators and tyrants are characterized by their disregard for the well-being and rights of their subjects. Reference with more explanation

What do you think? Please 

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October 19, 2025

If a Substack falls into cyberspace and nobody reads it, is it really there? What I learned from an X tweet about Pam Bondi that had over 58,000 vists after Gavin Newsom quoted it. By Hal M. Brown

 



Okay, this Sunday afternoon post is an indulgence and a bit of self-promotion. It is about a missed opportunity I had to, putting it bluntly, get more people to subscribe to my Substack. My title here is, of course, a version of the well known philosophical question “if a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?” It can be answered differently depending on how one defines sound. It could be a physical event like a tree falling or something you percieve like the message of a Substack.

I am writing this as a follow-up to an addendum I posted on this morning’s Substack under the topic:

This is what I posted:

I just came across this from something I posted on Twitter in August:

I don’t know how Gov. Newsom found it. It was in response to my tweet:

Amazingly over 58,000 people viewed it. I rarely post on X. I never looked at how many people viewed that tweet.

Here are the replies to the X tweet from August.

This may not seem like a lot, but it is probably a record number for anything I ever tweeted.

While I was really pleased so many people saw my image and that Gavin Newsom was one of them, and of course that he saw fit to quote it with his own comment, I wish in retrospect that I’d included this magic link: 

I have no way of knowing how many, if any, new subcribers, and eventually how many regular readers I would have gotten if I’d done this. After all, of 58,000 people who saw my tweet I’d assume a few of them would have been curious enough to check it out and maybe liked what they saw enough to both subscribe and read what I wrote on a regular basis. Who knows? I may have gotten 10 regular readers, 100, or none. Since many people subscribe to 50, 100, or more Substacks I doubt they read them all.

Looking back, had I known how many people, including Gov. Newsom, would have seen that tweet I would have done a better job with the illustration of Pam Bondi. For one thing I would have used the hat from a real Washington, DC police chief instead of a regular police officers hat.

I might have embellished her jacket with a badge too.

After all, why not? If anyone is full of themselves it is Chief Pam Bondi. If she decided to wear a unform it might look like these:

The Honorable Pamela Jo Bondi, the U.S. Attorney General who is the chief law enforcement officer of the federal government and who oversees the Department of Justice which includes the FBI, and who also serve as the principal legal advisor to the President of the United States, hasn’t gotten my attention since she visted my (supposedly burning) city of Portland earlier this month and afterwards said “I was in Portland and had the chance to visit with the governor of Oregon and also the mayor there in town, and they are absolutely covering up the terrorism that is hitting their streets.”

Who knows what tomrrow will bring? She competes with Pete Hegseth, who actually has a much larger contingent of people with guns he can order around, for the limelight so it’s anybody’s guess what she’ll do to outdo the guy who can bomb boats in the Caribbean.

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...

What's the difference between a king, a dictator, and a tyrant? I suggest the next national protest be renamed No Dictators, or better yet, No Tyrants.

  This story has been given a lot of coverage.  Here’s the HUPPOST story about it. This should elicit a “well, duh, this ought to be obvio...