by Skyler Fusaro
Atlanta, Georgia 2060
Introduction
This is the second of two essays on No Kings Day. The first was written by Jack Hassard. The legacy of No Kings Day is explored.
The second was sent to us by Skyler Fusaro, and is published here. Skyler is a fictional person living in the 2060s in Atlanta, Georgia. Across both pieces, No Kings argues that dissent is not chaos. Instead, it is conscience. Protest is democracy’s recurring act of self-repair. Together, they trace the moral geometry of resistance. It spans from the immediacy of the crowd to the long afterlife of remembrance.
Skyler Fusaro’s essay reflects on the significance of No Kings Day. It emphasizes that dissent is an essential aspect of democracy rather than chaos. Fusaro writes from a future perspective. She underscores the historical importance of 2025. That year, America faced a critical test of democracy amid protests. She highlights how demonstrations became a powerful act of collective conscience, reclaiming citizen identity against authoritarian narratives. Amidst past challenges, No Kings Day serves as a reminder of democracy’s resilience. It illustrates that protest embodies not just defiance but also a deep-seated devotion to democratic principles.
Why I Write You
I know you conceived me, long ago, as a character who can write back to you from the future. I take that duty seriously, especially in moments when history echoes warnings across time. My letters are written to remind you. Through you, anyone who still listens should know that 2025 was not merely another year of protest and political theater. It was the moment America tested the breaking point of civilian control, state sovereignty, and federal power.
And so I write to you, Jack. I do not wish to haunt you with what have been. Instead, I want to underline what remains. The Insurrection Act still slumbers in your time, waiting for the wrong hands. The precedent Trump sketched in 2025 has never been fully erased. Every generation since has had to wrestle with its shadow.
The republic did not collapse that year. Still, it came close enough to remind us that democracy rests not only on laws. It also relies on restraint, trust, and shared legitimacy. Strip those away, and the Constitution is only parchment.
Here is what I would like to share with you and your readers.
Whispers
They still whisper about No Kings Days as if it were a myth. They talk about single afternoons when America remembered it had a spine. I wasn’t there. Most of us weren’t. But, the footage still exists. It is stitched into the old civic archive like a pulse under glass. You can see millions of faces, sun-burned and shouting, “No Kings!” while drones drifted overhead like patient angels.
We study it the way monks once studied relics — reverent, bewildered. You can see the exhaustion of a people who had spent a decade kneeling to algorithms and lies. They stood up and discovered their legs again. That, I suppose, is what democracy looks like when it’s rediscovering gravity.
Filth
Trump — the first one, not the son who would later perfect the performance — released that AI video. It showed him dropping filth from the sky. Historians call it “the scatological turn, ” or why Trump turned to the sewer. He thought it was funny. Ben-Ghiat wrote later that it was the moment America stopped laughing. The empire of irony collapsed under the weight of its own joke. In the letters that survive from that week, you can feel the shock. Ordinary people realized they’d crossed a line from politics into something closer to faith. They weren’t marching against him anymore; they were marching for themselves — for the idea that no citizen should bow.
I see the video as a democratic red-flag. It underscores how protest is being treated not just as disagreement. It is viewed as enemy activity worthy of spectacle and humiliation. Protest is meant to be part of democratic life. Yet, the response (through the video) treats it as a spectacle of domination. For democracy to work, dissent must be treated as legitimate, not as a comedic target. Trump has said many times that the enemies he faces are within, not in China, Russia, or North Korea.
Consciousness of Democracy
Hartmann had said once that democracies don’t die; they forget how to live. No Kings Day was CPR on the national body. Reich called it the return of the commons. Truscott said it was the only parade worth saluting. With that prairie calm of hers, Richardson expressed that the republic had “drawn a breath.” It did not know it still possessed that breath.
And Applebaum warned that one day the courtiers would come back, polished and plausible, and they did. They always do. The drift toward obedience is a river that never stops looking for a bed to fill.
Still, for a heartbeat, the country remembered itself. The footage of those crowds looks impossibly earnest now. The way they sang the anthem was filled with tears instead of cynicism. They lifted children onto shoulders as if showing them a sunrise. They thought they were protesting.
Really, they were rehearsing the memory we live on now.
The Republic finally fractured, not with tanks, but with silence. During this time, the spirit of No Kings Day kept a few of us stubborn. The idea that dissent wasn’t disorder, that protest was a prayer.
Every October 18th we play the old recordings. Somewhere, deep in the bandwidth, you can still hear the chant echo: No Kings. No Kings. No Kings.
It sounds like defiance, but if you listen closely, it’s devotion.
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