Trump’s military parade is no show of strength

“This is a big day for America!!! DJT” wrote on his Truth Social account, kicking off the day of his great parade to mark the 250th anniversary of the United States Army. It was good of the President to take the time to speak directly to the public on the “big day” – his birthday – before preparing himself to see the tanks and missile launchers rolling through the streets of Washington, DC to mark his 79th year.

Let’s hope he feels special: the kid in all of us deserves a cake and a $45 million parade, full of the country’s best military equipment, to mark their latest trip around the sun. 

The real purpose behind the parade remains unclear. If the President has been eager to have his own parade – the kinds he sees take place in Russia and North Korea, looking strong and well-attended and not staged whatsoever – perhaps his ambitions were a bit too small. If President Putin and Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un are the men of history Trump feels he needs to measure up to, that’s a low bar he’s set for himself. There are other men of history he might consider competing with: ones who could build nations up, not just destroy them. He could start with the leaders whose paintings and portraits hang in his Oval Office right now.

Then again, if he was looking to prove something – something about America’s strength, its might – he didn’t go big enough. Indeed, it would be impossible to go big enough. The capabilities behind America’s hard and soft power, combined with the morals and values of its people: it’s a strength you can’t convey by parading weapons down the street.

If the purpose really was to have a party – just as plausible a reason as the others – let’s hope it’s a spectacular day. It remains a strange choice from a President who sold himself to the American people as the pro-peace, pro-isolationist candidate. But no matter: let’s cross our fingers that enough NFL celebrities showed up and the applause levels were to his liking, so we don’t need to repeat these scenes again. Because the scenes in the nation’s capital these past few days are not neutral. They are scenes of aggression – exactly the kind that most Americans want to see de-escalated across the country.

There are many privileges to being American: one of them is that tanks and rocket launchers don’t usually roll through our neighborhoods. Veterans and their families have been deeply impacted by the horrors of war. They come home with the scars, stories, and trauma created by conflict abroad, having bravely and deliberately shielded us from experiencing these things at home.

But we’ve been testing this in recent years. The militarization of some police forces has led to scenes in America that look like they’re taking place in a war-torn country. Violence from the left has been spilling out onto the streets in America (a topic of this month’s Spectator cover in the US). American Jews are increasingly targeted, including the Governor of Pennsylvania whose home was set on fire in April. Just hours ahead of this military parade, Democratic state senators and their spouses were targeted and shot in Minnesota. Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark did not survive.

The last time war was formally fought on American soil was when we were pointing guns at each other. We have avoided military battles in our country for 150 years, but we know those guns are still loaded. The military parade does not de-escalate any of this: it is a reminder of the increasing levels of force being used across the country: sometimes to protect, sometimes to harm, always because political violence and big government are increasingly being normalized.

It’s strange how desperate Donald Trump seems to test the boundaries of all this.