Parade

For the out-of-towners, forget the First Toddler emceeing for an imitation of NorKo’s Kim Il-sung Square.  Here is what a normal American small town looks like on the Fourth of July.  No tanks and no B-1s.  And best of all no pompous windbag bloviating while staying dry from the rain behind bulletproof glass.  

More typical is my small town,  We had a Shopping Cart Drill Team from the local non-chain grocery, 

the Daffodil Ladies,

and the Butterfly Bicycle Troop.

Plus half a dozen gearheads showing off their antique cars, and Shriners in funny hats and trick cars.   

The only military presence was six old men from the VFW marching out of step, mishandling the colors, and winking at certain ladies in the crowd of onlookers.   

The only politician was a county commissioner in a convertible throwing candy to the kids.  No speechifying!  

Plenty of hot dogs and watermelon afterwards. 
  
I skipped the fireworks.  I miss the huge bonfires of stacked railroad crossties from my youth.  They lit up the night until dawn.

Tanks but no tanks

A couple of thoughts, based on this Politico piece that Sven provided in the comments on the previous post:

1. For a dude who claims to luuuuuurve his military guys El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago has no problems with making at least some of the poor bastards work over the holiday weekend rather than hang out at home or drink with the guys in the billets. I wonder who drew the short straw down in Ft. Stewart to drag ass all the way to D.C. to babysit the Brads and tanks and the M88 so somebody who would rather not have dragged ass to Southeast Asia when he had the chance (cough!bonespurscough!) could pose with the heavy metal and get a little woody?

2. There's a big reason that the Fourth isn't like Bastille Day.

For all that both republics were born in war and the use of force, the U.S. deliberately pushed the troops back into the barracks - hell, the Founders and Framers didn't want "troops" in the sense of regular GIs at all - in a way that France did not. And, in part because of that the U.S. has been spared the sort of man-on-horseback problems France has had with it's armed forces. There's a reason we here revere George Washington; for all his flaws (and he had them, like all of us) he could easily have been Napoleon and consciously turned away from that.

It's a sad comment - not so much on Trump, who is a ginormous toddler with the soul of a cinerious lump of coal and the intellect of a howler monkey who can only be expected to crave the fake toughness of being close to soldiers and military hardware, but - on the state of this nation that the vast bulk of Americans are reacting to this ridiculous Red Square propaganda show with vast indifference.

I'm sorry I'm 3,000 miles away, because somebody owes those 3rd ID guys a beer for having to be part of this Reichsparteitag shit, and I'd be buying.

And someone owes Trump a finger, while they're at it, and I got one of those for his orange ass, too.