CSI: American Carnage (Sunday, November 18, 2018)
Philadelphia. Many people don’t know this, but democracy was born in Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, where back in the day a group made up of many slaveholders decided they had had enough of a king across the ocean telling them what to do. Yesterday, the results of this noble experiment were on full display. About 25 right-wingers were on one side of the street and about 500 left-wingers were on the other side. Between them were what seemed like thousands of police commandeering bicycles and deploying bicycle racks to create mazelike conditions near Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, Icons of Freedom. The Editors took a field trip to observe the political process in action. Nearby, at Mikvah Israel, the nation’s oldest synagogue, normal Shabbat services were underway. One congregant took a break from prayer to tell The Editors that Trump is “a moron.” Another invited The Editors to have a drink of vodka and some hummus. Children scrounged for candy. Outside, with American and Trump flags flying, the right-wing group debated constitutional issues. What is the greatest country in the history of the world? a speaker pointedly asked the group. One woman raised her hand. USA? she ventured. Others began chanting, USA! USA! USA! Across the street, a sax and a sousaphone provided musical punctuation for the demonstrators. The Action News theme figured prominently in the repertoire. A group of witches clustered near a faux fireplace on the President’s House site, where George Washington and a number of enslaved people used to live in the good old days of early freedom. The witches said they hexed Nazis, and what’s more they hexed Trump. They offered The Editors an apple, which The Editors declined. Arising from the crowd around the witches were many chants. No fascist USA. Whose streets? Our streets. Oldies but goodies. A couple of arrests were made by Philadelphia police who largely had nothing to do but maintain their bike-rack maze. After several hours of standing around, the gathering of the right-wingers broke up and they were escorted away by dozens of police. One rally goer told The Editors he was “a Jew.” The Editors were skeptical. No cabs would accept them as passengers. Uber drivers declined. The rally goers ended their day being picked up by cars in the parking lot of the police headquarters. The Editors, who could not determine if any of the pickup cars were driven by moms, completed their visit with a renewed faith in the crack reporting team deployed by CSI, and a powerful hunger due to missed luncheon.
— Sunday, Nov. 18, 2018