This past weekend, although there as a social justice action in Boston, I drove to Providence, Rhode Island, it being closer, smaller, and less congested than Boston, to join up with a group of people there who planned to counter the Make America Great Again gathering at the City Hall steps.

As I arrived at the designated assembly place by the Bajnotti Fountain in Burnside Park, I had to pass the front of City Hall and was initially a little surprised at the number of young people who had already gathered on the steps and how few were in the park as the official time of the beginning of the gathering approached. I couldn’t understand why so many young people would be celebrating the presidency of Number 45.

After getting some instructions, the usual kind that included the admonition to avoid confrontation and to not engage either verbally or physically with the opposite side, no matter how inviting it was or wanted by them, I walked with those who had gathered at the park’s fountain back toward City Hall where I realized that the ant-Trump people had arrived before the Make America Great Again people had and had claimed the steps.

I had been mistaken in assuming the young people who had gathered were on the MAGA side. I was greatly relieved.

As the official time approached for their gathering, the MAGA celebrants found they had to assembly across the street, and as the size of the crowds on both sides grew, there was an a bit of a comical game of Stratego as those there to celebrate Trump attempted to gain possession of the steps while those who had it calmly resisted.

There were banners from both side that intermingled, sometimes gaining the steps, sometimes being forced to cede ground and be replaced, but there was no pushing or shoving, and although both sides did not agree, for the most part there was no angry yelling, and other than one moment when two participants engaged in a heated exchange that resulted in people gathering in the center of the street, each side facing the other, nothing physical broke out.

A woman with a foot high crucifix that she was shoving in people’s faces while brandishing a set of blue glass Rosary beads was patiently tolerated as she yelled Bible verses and preached salvation while trying to win the top step in front of City Hall, something she accomplished for a moment until she was surrounded by anti-Trump signs and blocked from view.

At the prearranged time, the Make America Great Again people began their march to the State House, and the people I was with gathered in a more organized body and followed behind.

Half way there a small band consisting of drums, a Sousaphone, and some brass instruments joined those of us carrying signs and those who had been banging on plastic buckets with drum sticks and kept playing or beating cadences for the next two hours, countering the speeches of the Trump gathering at the Capitol.

Because they had the permit, the MAGA group assembled on and in front of the steps of the Capitol, and we gathered behind them leaving a neutral zone between us and them.

There was a large police presence, which was only to be expected, and they formed a line in that neutral zone to ensure there would be no verbal or physical contact between groups.

Throughout the speeches the band played and people occasionally chanted, but our attention was on the gathering as a whole and not the individuals involved.

Some of the MAGA people stood behind the police line yelling at us, but they were not engage.

I was at the police line, and one woman with a video camera, obviously hoping for a photo op, was walking behind the police line yelling comments across it, and when she got to me called me a Communist Fascist, and I assumed by the smirk on her face and her body language that she was expecting a recordable reaction. However, as those two political ideologies are opposed to each other rendering me politically neutral by her assessment, I just accepted that she didn’t know what either actually was, and was just hoping to get a rise out of me, an objective she failed to achieve.
It generic cialis samples browse this link helps the impotent women to achieve the satisfactory climax. Danger, Danger Most of spam is a scam and nothing cheapest viagra tablets else. He went on to say “It is one of the biggest reasons why people started showing a lot of the lists that I belonged to started to distribute similar content in their newsletters. cialis generic But using medications like lowest price on cialis will not cause complete elimination of your problems but rather is a solution designed to ensure that you can resume living an exciting sex life.
In time, the police line reshaped itself so that the Trumpettes could exit to the right of the steps with no chance of any altercation, and when that as completed, straightened out and began walking away from the steps signaling that it was time to leave.

We marched back along the street to where we had assembled earlier and broke up from there.

The number of people celebrating 45 were outnumbered by those who opposed him, and it was made clear in the broadcast news coverage that this bothered them.

It was obvious from what the Make America Great Again people were saying they are still in campaign mode, and have not adjusted to the realities of the post inauguration days.

They were clinging to what they thought would be because of the claims and promises Trump made to them during his campaign either because they were not paying attention to current events, or had simply chosen to ignore them in some form of desperate hope for what is not to be.

In spite of the death of the Republican replacement health care plan the day before their celebratory gathering, many kept making claims that Obamacare was about to be repealed and replaced.

They were praising Trump’s plan to institute a Muslim targeted travel ban as if it had not been stopped a few days before by a federal judge.

Some still wanted Hillary to be locked up while others kept yelling that, in spite of the number of Wall Street, Goldman Sachs, and corporate CEOs being on his administration team, Trump was going to drain the swamp.

Others had signs saying that anyone who did not vote for Trump was a sore loser because the people had voted for Trump. When one of those people with such a sign yelled this at the man next to me and he responded that in reality the majority who voted had chosen Hillary, the sign bearer responded that the majority vote does not count.

In one of the most incongruous and least informed displays I witnesses, a woman was prancing around the crowd waving her “Trans Women for Trump” sign in people’s face, obviously totally oblivious to the fact that just the day before, Trump had appointed a man who claimed Transgender people had no right to equality or healthcare as head of the Health and Human Services Civil Rights office. She seemed to be celebrating the official impending loss of her rights and access to the health care related to her needs as a Transgender woman.

What was made clear to me from this experience is that while people make the attempt to explain reality through facts, they will be rejected because people do not want to deal with the facts, but rather with what they want to believe. Those who hold the thought that reasoned and calm discourse and rational explanation will educate the uninformed must face the reality that education will be rejected, and progress in that area will be blocked.

This makes any rational discourse rather difficult, if not impossible.

And when the facts come out about the falseness of the wiretap claim, the relationship with Russia, the benefiting of corporation over the people he said have been too long forgotten but for whom he would now fight, and how his presidency is more beneficial to Trump than the American people, these MAGA people will simply reject that as it does not fit what they would rather believe.

Meeting in the middle will be impossible as there will be no middle.