Politics

In one version of the story, you can blame the French. Evidently it was in France, watching the 2017 Bastille Day military parade alongside Emmanuel Macron at the outset of his first term, that Donald Trump initially got the idea to stage an armed spectacle in Washington DC in honor of himself. Back then, the military said no. In a now-famous anecdote, Gen Paul Selva, who grew up in Portugal under its integralist regime, told Trump that such parades are “what dictators do”. James Mattis, his then-secretary of defense, reportedly revolted against the idea, saying he would “rather swallow acid”. Trump never got his parade.

Until now. Restored to power after an interregnum in which all American institutions failed to hold him accountable for his crimes and abuses, Trump has now set about a second term in which he is pursuing vengeance against his perceived enemies, using his office to enrich himself, and indulging all the impulses that were checked by his staffers and advisers back when anyone serious still worked for him.

Having stuffed the military and defense department leadership exclusively with sycophants and incompetents, Trump is now surrounded exclusively by the kind of people he likes best: people who can’t see any reason not to give him whatever he wants. On Saturday, they gave him a military parade for his birthday, complete with tanks, missiles, airplanes overhead and parachutists. A band sang Happy Birthday. The spectacle was mostly paid for by taxpayers, but there were corporate sponsorships, too – among them the Thiel-backed venture Palantir, and the crypto exchange Coinbase.

If Trump was expecting a display of pomp and pride that rivaled his own egotism, he may have been disappointed. The parade, as it turned out, was something of a disappointing affair. The uniformed soldiers marched irregularly, slightly off beat; the turnout was small and the crowd seemed defeated, low-energy, a bit wilted and unenthused after spending hours in DC’s brutal summer humidity. It rained. It was all a great contrast to the large-scale protests that had exploded across the country earlier that day, with millions taking to the streets in jubilant displays under the banner “No Kings”.

SAD!!!!!