Interesting times.
Two dozen Abrams Main Battle Tanks rolled onto the streets of the U.S. Capital on Tuesday night. Ominous as that might sound, they were presumably not carrying any live ammunition. The tanks were accompanied by about two dozen Stryker armored fighting vehicles. Combined, this badassery weighs about as much as the U.S. Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship USS Manchester. It was all hauled up from the Fort Formerly Known as Hood, down in Killeen, Texas, for a grand military parade on Saturday.
The purpose of the parade is to celebrate the 250th Birthday of the U.S. Army. At least, so sayeth the Army. As it is with war, so it seems with this parade: the first casualty is the truth.
The Continental Army was created by the Second Continental Congress, two months and a few days after the Battles of Lexington and Concord. You can read about those battles in our paper of Friday, April 21st. “BLOODY NEWS,” read the headline, over a dispatch from Newburyport’s Committee of Correspondence. That Army was long gone, and the Continental Congress had been replaced, when the new Congress of the Confederation created a new Army on June 3, 1784. So, Happy 241st Birthday, U.S. Army. Enjoy your Stolen Valor™.
All of this, of course, is merely one of those irrelevant historical nits we so enjoy picking. The real lie is the reason why this parade is taking place.
It was 79 years ago this Saturday that McDonald’s most famous future customer came screaming and squalling into this poor, unsuspecting world. That’s what all this fuss is about.
Towards the end of the day on Saturday, the aforementioned rolling stock will tear up Constitution Avenue, much as the President has been doing to the document for which it is named.
Meanwhile the Air Force will roar overhead, its burnt jet fuel polluting the air so as to match what the honoree has been doing to our political discourse.
Uniformed members of the U.S. armed forces will smartly salute as they march past the highest ranking draft dodger in U.S. history. Their numbers, it is said, be about 6,600. We’ll see that estimate, and raise it 66.
Earlier on that Tuesday when the tanks first appeared, the public official who ordered them there spoke to a captive audience at The Fort Formerly Known As Liberty. This was, in several ways, entirely appropriate. Established in North Carolina in 1918, this installation was initially named for Braxton Bragg, a notoriously incompetent traitor.
The decision to name a facility of the U.S. Army after a man who had once taken up arms against that army seems paradoxical. It makes perfect sense when one takes into account the Compromise of 1877, more accurately known as the Corrupt Bargain. In exchange for the Presidency, Northern Republicans sold out those who were formerly enslaved, halted Reconstruction, and ceded control of the South to unreconstructed Democrats. Eventually, without noticeably changing either their hearts or minds, they began to call themselves Republicans. This coincidentally took place after Ronald Reagan kicked off his presidential campaign at the closest fairground he could find to the site of an infamous Civil Rights-era lynching.
This speech at Fort Bragg could almost be seen as a homecoming for the guest of so-called honor, particularly since he’s the son of a man who was once arrested for taking part in a 1920’s Klan riot. If it accomplished nothing else, his speech at least provided a rich vein of material for the Cognition Police to work on. “You know recently, other countries celebrated the victory of World War One” he said. They did not; they celebrated V-E Day on May 8th, marking eighty years since the end of World War Two. “Without us, you’d all be speaking German right now,” he said, repeated a barroom brag even older than he is, adding “Maybe a little Japanese thrown in.” Ah, yes—who could forget the Japanese Navy’s sneak attack on Paris?
Over the weekend, in probable violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, the president had nationalized 2,000 California National Guard troops, over the objections of that state’s governor. About 700 Marines from 29 Palms were also deployed.
Trump—who four years ago instigated the deadly January 6th insurrection, in a failed effort to remain in office—said at Fort Bragg that the troops were sent to “liberate Los Angeles” from “rioters bearing foreign flags with the aim of continuing a foreign invasion of our country.”
Soldiers in the audience at Fort Bragg were screened for appearance, according to Military.com: “One unit-level message bluntly saying: ‘No fat soldiers.’” They were also given the opportunity to buy Trump campaign merchandise.
Trump denies any knowledge of the 1,800 “No Kings” protests scheduled to take place tomorrow all across the country. He did say, in the Oval Office Tuesday morning, “For those people that want to protest, they’re going to be met with very big force.”
In unrelated news, on Wall Street, TACO is now an acronym for Trump Always Chickens Out.