Image by Filip Andrejevic .

Military parades are a joke, like an old man driving a convertible or marrying someone fifty years younger than them (or both). In other words, they are a false conceit and damn expensive. To be fair, I suppose an old woman marrying someone fifty years younger than them is also a false conceit and probably expensive. One difference between such marriages and military parades might be that such relationships may actually be mostly about some version of love that works for both participants. Military parades, on the other hand, have nothing to do with love—not even love of country, whatever that is. At best, they are exercises in some kind of fetishism revolving around guns, planes, tanks, and dominance and submission via the use of weaponry.

It doesn’t surprise me that Donald Trump wants a military parade. He fetishizes power and thinks he has more than anyone else. Seeing all those big guns sticking up in the air as the treads on vehicles painted in camouflage tear up DC’s streets might get him the thrill the women and girls he assaulted might never know because of his actions. Will the Blackhawks in the parade take a day off from endangering civilian airliners near National Airport and drop lines and kidnap people who are protesting or just look like immigrants? I bet when he discovered that the US Army was celebrating its birthday on June 14th, which also happens to be his birthday, he knew in the fatty tissue surrounding his heart that the moment had come. General Patton eat your heart........

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