Cross-posted at Letters Blogatory.
Americans love parades. My kids and I look forward to the Roslindale Day Parade every year. The local schools send marching bands and dancers. All the local businesses have floats. The politicians are there shaking hands and kissing babies. There are fire engines and antique cars. And sometimes the army sends a band, too. It’s a great neighborhood parade, and something similar happens in neighborhoods around the country on holidays.
There’s another kind of parade. I remember it from news reports during the Cold War. Each year the Soviet Union would parade its military hardware through Red Square. Octogenarian leaders would stand in the reviewing stand, and intelligence analysts would study photos of them to try to divine what was going on inside the Kremlin. These parades were kind of scary, at least for children: just whom were all those missiles aimed at?
President Trump has decided he wants a big military parade down Pennsylvania Avenue. The idea is about as popular as the President himself:
Members of Congress from both parties joined retired military leaders and veterans in heaping scorn Wednesday on President Donald Trump’s push to parade soldiers and weaponry down the streets of the nation’s capital—calling it a waste of money that would break with democratic traditions. …
“I think confidence is silent and insecurity is loud,” Sen. John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, told reporters in expressing opposition to the idea. “America is the most powerful country in all of human history; you don’t need to show it off.”
“This is definitely not a popular idea,” added Paul Rieckhoff, the CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, describing the feedback he is getting from members of the largest group of post-Sept. 11 veterans. “It’s overwhelmingly unpopular. Folks from all political backgrounds don’t think it is a good use of resources.”
But because he’s the President and Commander-in-Chief, Trump is in the unique position of having the power to order whatever parade he likes. So unless something changes, it looks like we are going to have a big military parade in Washington.
Yes, I know they do such things in France; military parades aren’t just for totalitarians. But it seems to me that in France the parades are just a symptom of Gaullist insecurity about France’s place in the world of great power politics. As Senator Kennedy said, we don’t need the reassurance. And yes, President Bush ordered a big parade after the First Gulf War. That, too, was sharply criticized at the time, but at least there was a traditional justification, namely, an unambiguous and complete victory on the battlefield.
Much of the criticism of the parade idea turns on the cost of it. But the more fundamental criticism is that we don’t do that kind of thing. Is it legal? Sure. Can we afford it? If we can afford more than $1 trillion in tax cuts, then why not? But is it American? No way.
What else don’t we do in America? We don’t accuse our political opponents of treason for any reason, let alone for failing to clap for the President during a speech:
“They were like death and un-American. Un-American. Somebody said, ‘treasonous.’ I mean, Yeah, I guess why not? Can we call that treason? Why not? I mean they certainly didn’t seem to love our country that much.”
Contrast President Trump’s tin-pot dictator attitude with one of the first Republican candidates he vanquished during the primaries, Jeb Bush. Bush would have been an ordinary bad President, in my view, but he seems to be a decent, thoughtful person. “Please clap,” he said, when no one did. He knew he was losing and was able to make a mordant joke at his own expense. Trump never laughs, and he certainly never laughs at his own expense. And if you laugh at him, or don’t clap for him—treason.
Leave aside all of the worries about obstruction of justice, profiteering in office, and other wrongdoing. Leave aside all of the policy ineptitude. There’s a limit to how much un-American stuff our political culture can take.
It’s amazing how someone who largely seems to have won the lottery of life can seem to have so many insecurities.
You just answered your own question…
Use of the term “lottery of life” suggests happenstance and randomness outside of ones control and that the recipient of such a prize has no individual merit whatsoever. If ‘deserving’ has nothing to do with it, what’s the stability of having it? A greater mind might accept and go with it. A lesser mind concocts an airy fantasia of ‘stable genius’ to justify what isn’t understood. Isn’t that the very definition of “insecurity?”
There is a reason Gandhi said that one of the seven deadly sins was “wealth without work.”
Well said and on point. Talk to most “successful” people, Republican or Democrat or other, and they will tell you that they “worked hard” for what they have, or it was somehow, “God’s will” or some other grand design of the universe. That sort of assurance frees them from the obligation to share with others, If they dare look into the possibility that a great deal of their “success” came from random chance (as clearly it has for all of us), they risk knowing that that same random chance can take all their success away.
I guess if I were as rich and successful as he has been I wouldn’t constantly need my ego stroked, but maybe that’s just me.
He did not amass his fortune (assuming he really has one) by being kind to others or improving the lives of others. He did do by exploiting others. Deep down in his subconscious, he knows this and he thinks that a majority of people are like him and would exploit him and steal his fortune. That’s what drives him to behave as he does.
I worked for a man like him once or twice. He never trusted anyone and would screw his employees out of a nickle at every chance with his rationale that his employees were screwing him every chance they had.
You have to pick one or the other, Christopher. First you said “lottery” then you said “successful.” A lottery, by definition, is wholly apart from individual endeavor whereas ‘success’ is defined as the “accomplishment of an aim or purpose’ and is a means of saying what you wanted to do, you did. The two words, ‘lottery’ and ‘successful’ are opposed to each other.
And therein lies (again) your answer: He wants to be ‘successful’ (that is to say having accomplished a stated aim or goal by his own effort) but fears that it had nothing whatsoever to do with him. He wants to ‘deserve’ everything he has, but fears, truly, that he doesn’t.
You’re latching on to my particular word choice a lot more than I intended. Point is one way or the other he is very rich. Therefore, IMO he has absolutely no reason to feel either financially or psychologically insecure.
Oh, my mistake, I didn’t know someone could ‘intend’ to be sloppy.
Though I’m having difficulty see where, precisely, that’s my fault.
Carry on, then.
That doesn’t follow. As we see with Trump feelings have nothing to do with reality… and, frankly, the reality is a complicated relationship to his father tied up with his wealth, his sense of self-worth and the shady things he (and his father) did to amass it. (And really, we don’t even know that Trump is ‘financially secure’ as his continued chasing after shadier and shadier credit might attest.)
As Ray Charles once sang:
“I got plenty of nothing,
and nothings plenty for me.
Folks got plenty of something
are always locking the door
afraid that someone gonna rob ’em
while their out a gettin more…”
“This is some tinhorn dictator shit.” Martin O’Malley
“This is some tinhorn dictator s…” Martin O’Malley
Adam Gopnik is on fire…
Fixing the VA, ending veterans homelessness, ending veterans unemployment, and ensuring we stop wasting American lives in endless foreign wars would be a far better way to honor the troops than a frackin parade.
He doesn’t want to honor the troops.
He did not amass his fortune (assuming he really has one) by being kind to others or improving the lives of others. He did do by exploiting others. Deep down in his subconscious, he knows this and he thinks that a majority of people are like him and would exploit him and steal his fortune. That’s what drives him to behave as he does.
I worked for a man like him once or twice. He never trusted anyone and would screw his employees out of a nickle at every chance with his rationale that his employees were screwing him every chance they had.
This is why the Dems won’t retake Congress this year. We could fight Trump on policy, but instead, we cave on policy and fight him on dumb stuff like parades. Anyone who believed in progressive policy would want him wasting his time on a parade instead of spending it finding ways to deport more people.