Glocester Ancients & Horribles Parade

Politically incorrect and populist to its core, the beloved Ancients and Horribles parade will continue a tradition of irreverence without eloquence this Independence Day in Glocester. The parade starts at 4 pm on Monday but is in fact going to be the final element of a four day series of festivities for the whole family.

The parade dates back to 1926 and was created as a spoof of a nearby Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company in Boston that had as a member the consistently mute President Calvin Coolidge. Whether this mockery intended to include Coolidge’s views on ethnicity is unclear. He was amazingly progressive in some regards and supported laws against lynching, fought the influence of the Ku Klux Klan in national politics, appointed African Americans to prominent federal offices, and signed the important Indian Citizenship Act. Though the Swamp Yankee irreverence has been known to be reactionary in some instances, last year included a float featuring Bernie Sanders, showing that progressives can have an impact and perhaps change hearts and minds when they like.

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There is nothing more American than a parade, and parades are paeans to socialism. They run on publicly funded streets, feature military equipment and fire apparatus paid for with taxes to protect the public good, and are supported by local governments.

The Glocester Ancients & Horribles Parade is a Rhode Island institution famous for its political and social commentary. Usually that commentary is very un-PC, runs to the right politically, and is mostly unfunny.

There was some of that this year, with the float to “honor” Caitlyn Jenner a case in point, but for the most part, the political commentary was decidedly left of center. There were marchers from Northwest Rhode Island Supporters of Open Space, a float promoting the dangers of Climate Change and opposed to the expansion of the Spectra pipeline in Burrilville, and an entire float dedicated to the presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders.

Is this an early sign of a political left turn in Rhode Island?

Time will tell…

In election years, no candidate for statewide office can afford to miss it. This year, Senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse were the only politicians who bothered.