This past Saturday, like many other big cities, Las Vegas found itself as an involuntary host for a fetid rasher of endless nonsense called the No Kings movement.

At the same time, I found myself a “victim” of their No Kings protests, an over-the-top name for a fairly feminine (or feminist or effeminate) “event.” 

More than half of the people I saw were men, but one look made it clear that they were light-years away from the masculine ethos.

Intentionally, at least in Vegas, No Kings arranged to be scheduled for an a free-speech/protest zone located a half a mile or so away from the annual Las Vegas Book Festival, which was what brought me downtown.

An avid reader, as well as a writer of forty-one published books (with one more due later this year).  I was there to embrace books and the people writing them. 

However, predictably, No Kings did not limit their focus to the territory their designated parade permit location. 

Specifically, after they saw a large crowd at the book festival and not much of an audience there to see No Kings in action, they quickly began encroaching on the book event.

Saturday's No Kings event, including its encroachment into the Book Festival, became a problem for thousands of politically-unaligned book festival attendees, including those who – like me – also have mobility issues. 

By choking both pedestrian and motorized street travel, denying those of us who depended on a pair of overworked shuttle busses to travel to and from off-site parking, this No Kings event's obviously well-planned intrusion all-but ruined our book festival experience. 

They denied handicapped people like me easy access to the book festival site, booths and events.

In this instance, I’d taken a bad fall in the book festival's food court area, thanks to some of the more obnoxious No Kings bullies.  Slamming my head, my back and my right elbow onto hard tarmac made my travel restrictions even more painful.

Sure, I had a Rollator – a walker with four wheels and a seat – but the aftermath of that fall limited how far I could walk, even with the Rollator.

As we tried to walk back to the free-ride bus pick-up point, I found myself being forced to sit, way too frequently. Using my Rollator, I could usually walk maybe 100 yards between “breaks.”

Even discounting the No Kings protesters purposely getting in my way, walking a half mile or so to my destination was a real trial.  Getting from my accident site to the book festival pick-up location was tough and painful.  Getting back to the bus station while dealing with the fall-induced pain was even more difficult. 

Realizing the shuttle pick-up point had been relocated away from the book festival, disappearing to who-knows-where, made the trip much more difficult and painful.

This was the closest location not touched by the No Kings “revised,” ever-changing protest locations.

The No Kings leaders also infringed on two book-festival support set-ups: the porta-potties and the food court. For instance, I had my bad fall in the middle of the way-too-crowded food court area. You can play connect-the-dots on this “co-incidence” of location. Sure, the food court vendors welcomed the bigger-than-anticipated crowd, but those of us waiting in way-too-long lines were not happy campers.

The encroaching protesters ensured that the most popular food trailers enjoyed very long lines. As a result, there were way too many protesters forcibly cutting the food court vendors' lines.

BTW, I really enjoyed my pulled-steak BBQ sandwich with a side of truly superior potato salad.  The food truck claimed to serve “authentic Southern BBQ,” and while the claim was a bit off the mark, I'll give them 4.5 stars for trying. To this Southern Boy, they were a reminder of all the different and wonderful BBQs I've enjoyed.  This would rank well up in my Top Twenty-Five!

You can also imagine what happened when way too many people needed far too few available port-a-potties. These port-a-potties had been ordered based on the expected number of book-festival attendees. 

However, when you add in hundreds or thousands (depending on which news service you trust) of No-Trumpers/No Kinger crashers, you can see the sanitation problem we bookies had to face. 

A book festival without all the obnoxious, holier-than-thou, line-jumping No Kings clowns, you get a sense of what we bookies had to endure.

As for the “protesters,” there seemed to be two kinds:

One group were mostly kids, white males from 16 to 25 or so.  They seemed to drive around in their wealthy-ish parents' big SUVs, windows open and horns blaring. They continually circled the No Kings protest areas, expanding their range while they circled the event. Loudly, they encouraged those on foot to close into the area reserved for the book festival.

The other group was made up of people mostly those well beyond Social Security's threshold age. Oddly, they seemed to be on foot more than in cars. These septi seemed to carried machine-printed posters advocating issues having little or nothing to do with the No Kings event. 

There was a great gaggle of different, ill-conceived causes represented by the motorized marchers, and a completely different issues linked to the foot-bound geriatric protesters. These issues were endemic to two diverse age groups that did not conflate one set of causes  to the other.

Though I fit into the latter group (in age) I had nothing to say in favor of either of these groups or their causes.

Most of these causes and issues had clear affinity to the writings of Marx and Engels, Mao and Stalin. However, none had anything to do with any of my own political beliefs.  

If you appreciate the quality of American Thinker’s content – what the late Rush Limbaugh called his “go-to show-prep source” – I hope you’ll join me by subscribing to American Thinker.  Also, please consider making a one-time or periodic contribution to American Thinker. Charlie Kirk’s tragic death encouraged me to donate – I’m already a subscriber.  So please join me. 

***

Ned Barnett is a prolific writer and a regular content contributor to American Thinker.  A long-time political activist – he worked with the late, great Lee Atwater in President Ford’s reelection campaign, along with many candidates for the US Senate, the House of Representatives and state Governors. Earlier this year, Ned ghost-wrote a campaign bio for a candidate running for Governor in the Midwest. 

When he’s not being “political,” Ned ghostwrites books – 19 published so far.  Ned also writes and publishes his own books as well – 41 and counting. He helps writers as a co-writer or writing coach. He helps authors “self-publish” their book, as well as promoting their books, which he’s done since 1982. For more information, contact Ned at 702-561-1167 or nedbarnett51@gmail.com.

Image: News 3 Las Vegas video screen shot via YouTube