The streets of America’s capital have been rumbling the last couple of nights, and not just with discontent.

Tanks and other military hardware have been moving around the city ahead of a 4th of July celebration that many believe has been hijacked by Donald Trump, with the aim of “re-branding” the annual event celebrating the nation’s birthday – and which has traditionally been non-partisan – into a taxpayer-funded political rally.

The idea of a military-style parade has been an ambition of this president since he witnessed France’s Bastille Day celebrations during his first summer in office two years ago. He wanted to have such a parade last year but the Pentagon and city officials drew the line, not least because of the expected cost thought to be around $90 million. But now his ambition is about to be realized in an extravagant gathering of his supporters on the National Mall, dubbed a “Salute to America.”

The usual 4th of July celebration and fireworks apparently costs around $2 million. This year, because of the military and security emphasis, the total costs are so far unclear. The National Park Service is already diverting some $2.5 million set aside for parks across the country, but the taxpayer will certainly end up footing most of the bill. Trump himself still owes Washington DC some $7 million from his 2017 inauguration.

Meanwhile, Republican officials are distributing tickets for a special VIP area to big party donors, while prices for rooms at the Trump Hotel in DC have doubled this weekend.

Without a hint of irony, as if you might expect such a concept to exist within anyone who works for the White House, Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway told a reporter who asked about the propriety of turning an event supposed to be for the people into one just intended for some people, “I won’t let you politicize this.”

Good try, Kellyanne, but too late. Oh, and about celebrating “all the amendments” does that mean people can bring their guns? Because that would be interesting.

Conservative commentator Jennifer Rubin writes at the Washington Post: “Absconding with the most American of holidays, Independence Day, he plans to run a Soviet-style military display on the Mall; and just like the Soviets of old, he’ll have rich apparatchiks … er, donors, in preferred seats, because nothing says Fourth of July like preferential treatment for rich toadies.

“The event embodies so much of what is wrong with Trump that a Hollywood screenwriter surely would have been told to do a page-one rewrite of ‘Trump’s Grotesque Celebration of Himself’. It has nearly every Trumpian element.”

 

Tanks on the streets

Transporting the actual military hardware around the streets of Washington has been something of a logistical nightmare – not to mention that the whole notion is just a regular nightmare, with the inevitable echoes of authoritarian self-aggrandizement.

Writing in the Washington Post, Karen Tumulty says: “Some of it sounds, well, pretty great. There will be a flyover of military aircraft, including that instantly recognizable jetliner used as Air Force One, and a performance by the Navy’s elite Blue Angels team. I grew up an Air Force kid and love a good air show.

“More unsettling is the president’s plan to have tanks in the streets — a dark and ominous image we normally associate with times of national emergency, or martial displays in authoritarian states such as Russia, North Korea and China.”

She goes on: “Trump seems oddly taken with tanks. He has insisted on bringing them into downtown DC, despite warnings that armoured behemoths weighing more than 60 tons could make wreckage of the pavement and potentially damage the underground rooms of the Lincoln Memorial. Then again, it’s not entirely clear he has thought this concept through, given his announcement that the Independence Day festivities will showcase “brand-new Sherman tanks,” a model that went out of service in 1957.”

Trump has always been drawn to spectacle and ostentatious displays of wealth or masculinity and tomorrow’s grandiose event has the potential to be the triumphalist apogee of the grand illusion his presidency has become. Meanwhile, in the all-too-real world, the White House will be happy for any distraction from the apparently worsening situation in the humanitarian crisis at the southern border.

While not a single member of Trump’s family has ever served in uniform, the whole idea hasn’t gone down particularly well with members of the armed forces who would probably prefer to be home with their families this holiday weekend. According to the Military Times, veterans groups plan to register their dissatisfaction with a pointed protest featuring one of the president’s famous nemeses.

The VoteVets web site said: “At this year’s national Fourth of July celebration we’ll be distributing T-shirts that feature the USS John S. McCain. We may have had political battles against Senator McCain, but what has bound us together since 1776 — the belief in something larger than yourself — is always worth honoring on the Fourth.”

In all, it is hard to reach a conclusion other that this president is simply so narcissistic that he sees the celebration of America and the celebration of himself as one and the same. While there will be protests, including the ‘Trump Baby’ blimp, the one thing that could pass ultimate judgment is the one thing Trump has no control over: the weather.  And since he appears not to know how to operate an umbrella, that could prove tricky.

Pundits and satirists, understandably, have been having a field day. Charlie Pierce at Esquire calls it “out and out authoritarian performance art.” One of the best and most comprehensive visual comments is by artist Mark Bryan, who produced this piece, entitled The Shit Show.

Amid warnings that the weight of the tanks might actually damage the Lincoln Memorial, where Trump is set to deliver his speech, Bess Levin writes in Vanity Fair: “While the symbolism of the Lincoln Memorial literally collapsing under the weight of Trump’s asinine display would be poetic, we can probably all agree that it would be better if the monument remained intact.”

But as this particular president prepares to stand beneath the stony gaze of one of America’s greatest and inevitably appear, for once, perfectly to scale; perhaps the last word should go to Damon Langlois, winner of the 2019 Texas SandFest for best sand sculpture, for his piece ‘Liberty Crumbling’…