President Trump's Fourth of July Military Parade Is Authoritarian Performance Art

"Iam apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty.It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more."

Apparently, El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago is going to have his Peronista moment, come hell, high water, or the National Park Service. From the Washington Post:

Boy, is he ever going to be shocked to discover during the flyover when he can actually see the F-35s, the Flying Swiss Army Knives, have their customary nervous breakdowns.

Oh, and in case you thought the sheer grift had been neglected, fear not. This is a taxpayer-funded, self-promoting campaign wankfest, just like all of those that get him so turgid out in airplane hangars and vacant arenas across this great republic. From CNN:

Just the way they did it in Philadelphia when the Declaration of Independence was read out on the steps of what became Independence Hall. (John Hancock made sure all the best customers of his smuggling business got seats in the VIP section.) At this point, I'm amazed he hasn't demanded that they float the Nimitz up the Potomac.

Because this is a celebration of all Americans, and not a political event at all, the tickets are being handed out by the Republican National Committee. Some of the president*'s loudest and proudest supporters are planning a real hootenanny for themselves; after all, yelling at detained and destitute migrants through a cyclone fence can only go so far as a demonstration of your commitment to the country's founding values. This thing has the potential to be the biggest, chewiest cluster of fck in Washington since the last time Louie Gohmert dined alone. And an infinitely more perilous one.

This is out-and-out banana republic authoritarian performance art. That it also is obviously a multimillion-dollar exercise in low comedy is sadly beside the point. It should be mocked, relentlessly and everywhere, by every American who still has a sense of dignity and a vague memory of what an actual celebration of patriotism feels like. Instead, all of us have a certain new awareness of what Frederick Douglass was talking about in 1852.

Douglass, of course, went on to explain to his audience that Independence Day meant nothing to the people held in slavery elsewhere in the country. But that he prefaced his condemnation with a expression of respect for the courage it took the Founders to declare what they declared demonstrates that Frederick Douglass in 1852 had a better idea of what the day truly represents, at least theoretically, than does the President* of the United States 167 years later. In the recorded accounts of the Second Continental Congress, there is no mention of tanks, overpriced and underperforming strike-fighters, or aging narcissists who need to spend millions of dollars to overcompensate all over the National Mall.

Source: Esquire.com

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Keywords:

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