The Journal’s Julie Bykowicz reported this week that the Pentagon is beginning to plan the big military parade ordered up by the president. He saw one in France during his state visit in July and liked it a lot. So we should have one too, perhaps on July 4, to honor the military.
It is a ridiculous and embarrassing idea. If you want to show respect for the military make the Veterans Affairs Department work. A big, pointless, militarist display with gleaming weapons and shining tanks is so . . . Soviet. What do you gain from showing off your weaponry? What are we celebrating—that we have nukes? That we have to have them is a tragedy.
“The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power.”
I see a line of thinking among those normally critical of the president that the idea’s a ten-strike: The people will love it, what’s wrong with it, who doesn’t like a parade?
But I think people will see right through it.
If there’s a parade that purports to honor our military men and women, they will go. But they’re not stupid, they’ll know what it is. It is Trump being Trump, and obsessing the nation. It’s bread and circuses.
And it is not like us, at least the old and honored us.
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