Generalissimo Francisco Cheeto didn't get his Pentagon inaugural military parade through the streets of Washington 13 months ago, so he wants it now to show the world that he's the greatest guy ever, or something.
President Trump’s vision of soldiers marching and tanks rolling down the boulevards of Washington is moving closer to reality in the Pentagon and White House, where officials say they have begun to plan a grand military parade later this year showcasing the might of America’s armed forces.
Trump has long mused publicly and privately about wanting such a parade, but a Jan. 18 meeting between Trump and top generals in the Pentagon’s tank — a room reserved for top-secret discussions — marked a tipping point, according to two officials briefed on the planning.
Surrounded by the military’s highest-ranking officials, including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., Trump’s seemingly abstract desire for a parade was suddenly heard as a presidential directive, the officials said.
“The marching orders were: I want a parade like the one in France,” said a military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the planning discussions are supposed to remain confidential. “This is being worked at the highest levels of the military.”
Shows of military strength are not typical in the United States — and they don’t come cheap. The cost of shipping Abrams tanks and high-tech hardware to Washington could run in the millions, and military officials said it was unclear how they would pay for it.
A White House official familiar with the planning described the discussions as “brainstorming” and said nothing was settled. “Right now, there’s really no meat on the bones,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.
Naturally, Trump's militaristic fascist impulses must be fed, because he's Trump. If Obama had done this, we would have had armed Tea Partiers in the streets lining up to remake that famous Chinese Tiananmen Square picture of the guy in front of a tank.
Trump does it, it's funny because it makes stoopid libtard heads explode, or something. But it is a big deal? Does it even matter and is this worth getting upset over?
Not really. I agree 100% with Steve M. who says let the child have his toys and move on.
If Trump were smart, he'd be using this to troll liberals. If he were a shrewd, cynical manipulator of public opinion, like the message-shapers of the Reagan administration, he'd be using this to drive a wedge between his critics and heartlanders, who'll take this at face value and embrace it (though probably not as enthusiastically as they might have in the 1980s, when their anger at '60s/'70s critics of America was still raw). If he were an adept totalitarian, he'd use this as a genuine assertion of his power.
But he's Trump, so he'll just spend hundreds of millions of dollars to ship weaponry to the streets of D.C. because he's an overgrown eleven-year-old boy still mentally living in the 1950s, and also because he's a crushingly insecure plutocrat who needs a steady succession of gaudy displays in order to feel that he's adequately demonstrating his own greatness to the world.
This parade won't be part of a grand plan to crush democracy in America -- there won't be roaming goon squads, and a protest will probably be permitted, though at some distance from the main event. Trump might want the parade to intimidate foreign foes, but it won't accomplish that goal, because the military will probably agree to display only weapons our enemies already know about. This will just be a pointless moment of excess, with Trump using weapons the way, in his hotels, he uses gilt.
Steve's right, to say like the SOTU, just don't watch. but my counter-argument would be this: Trump wants his parade and the right-wing will just scream WHY DO YOU AWFUL TREASONLIBS HATE AMERICA SO MUCH WE SHOULD USE THESE WEAPONS ON YOU HURR DURR anyway. They'll make liberal resentment the story just like they have since 1982, not because Trump is trying to troll people, but because the people surrounding him certainly want to and will do so.
In fact, if I'm a GOP consultant my eyes are lit up like a kid on Christmas because I can't wait to play commercials with marching band music and Trump's parade footage in it against black and white scenes of mean ol' troop-hatin' Obama or Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer. Believe me, it'll play goddamn great in Kentucky and Iowa and North Carolina and Wisconsin.
It doesn't matter if we rise to the bait in the era of Trump. They'll say we did and that's all that matters. We've gotten to the point where an event has already accomplished the goal of "pissing off the libs" months before it happens, as an assumed truism, whether it actually happens or not.
Ds and most media will decry this, objecting to the costs. When it happens, many Ds won’t like it because it’s militaristic. But most Americans will eat it up. They’ll love the pomp and will take pride in the show of force/honor of the troops. https://t.co/E53nN1J3bq— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) February 6, 2018
Going after this is a mistake. There are fights to have, and this isn't one of them, guys. It's a lose-lose, non-starter, no-brainer level of bad.
On the other hand...maybe FOX News will kill the parade for us.
We'll see.
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