The Kingdom of Feelings Has No Clothes

by Tammy Pondsmith

There they were again last weekend: the No Kings crowd, out in full regalia, chanting their feelings about tyranny while livestreaming from their smartphones—devices designed by corporations they’d kneel to faster than any monarch.

Their message, translated from the dialect of perpetual indignation, seems to be that we’re all living under some invisible crown—a gilded ghost in a red tie oppressing the collective soul. Never mind that the supposed “King” isn’t sitting on a throne, doesn’t command armies of the unwilling, and can’t even get a post past the fact-checkers without a warning label.

But this was never really about kings. It’s about the commerce of conviction. There’s an entire industry devoted to keeping people perpetually enraged—an economy that sells rebellion by the click. Keep the fear fresh, the feelings raw, and the donations recurring. Carve out enough villains and victims, and democracy turns into a subscription model. The outrage is organic; the marketing isn’t.

You almost can’t blame them. When every news cycle screams the world is ending, outrage feels like the only way to prove you’re paying attention. Fear is easier than thought; certainty is cheaper than doubt. In a world this noisy, silence feels like surrender.

Meanwhile, the real tyrannies don’t march in lockstep or crown themselves. They run in code. They monitor our moods, track our habits, and quietly decide what we see and what we don’t. The thrones we fear most these days aren’t gilded—they’re glowing. And every time we scroll, we bow a little deeper.

And let’s not forget the professionals of protest—the salaried soldiers of dissent—those who stage-manage rebellion on company time. They show up, livestream their righteousness, and clock out for brunch, proof that even moral revolution now comes with a W-2.

Still, their sincerity is almost touching. Like toddlers staging a coup against bedtime, they truly believe they’re saving civilization from a tyrant who somehow rules just by existing.

The rest of us will go on living under the weight of invisible monarchies—algorithms, agencies, and appetites—paying our bills, raising our kids, building our lives, and wondering if maybe the throne everyone fears is just the one they can’t control.

Maybe the problem isn’t that some people still want a king.
Maybe it’s that we’ve all built one—out of glass and Wi-Fi—and we can’t stop kneeling to it.

*Article 107 News: The Facts, Before They Happen
Article 107 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice covers “false official statements.” As the name implies, Art107 News is Havok Journal’s satire wing, and you shouldn’t take anything published under this byline seriously. You should., however, mercilessly mock anyone who does.

Tammy Pondsmith is the Chief Cynicism Correspondent for Article 107 News, who chronicles society’s emotional cosplay, exposing every faux revolution one self-pitying hashtag at a time.

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*Article 107 News: The Facts, Before They Happen
Article 107 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice covers “false official statements.” As the name implies, Art107 News is Havok Journal’s satire wing, and you shouldn’t take anything published under this byline seriously. You should., however, mercilessly mock anyone who does.