I Love a Parade

[vandrendehare]

Whatever else you or I have to say about the United States, one of its founding cultural values is a boundary between the military and civilian government, which extends all the way back to Washington resigning his commission before going into politics and the presidency. This is something I cherish as a citizen of this country, and when modern politics promotes the crossing or blurring of that boundary, it upsets me, not as a liberal, or someone who is opposed to militarism, but as a patriot.

Whatever purpose a French Bastille-Day style parade would serve, expression of national unity or martial pride, there is something un-American and tacky about the notion of having one here. Let the towns have parades to honor their returning veterans, and leave it at that.

Whatever grim portent a French Bastille-Day style parade would signify, the blending of partisan politics with military force, the trappings of historical fascism or totalitarianism, that sense of tacky un-American-ness hits me first and deepest. It did when 43 wore a flight suit, it did when then-candidate Dukakis rode around in a tank, it definitely would now.

There are other things a feel in particular about 45's advocacy for such a display; dread and dismay, primarily. I won't pretend that my feelings against this aren't stronger against his desire than I would for some member of my supposed team. I would trust a member of my team not be so tacky, and if they were, I would not consider them a member of my team anymore.

It's not lost on me that France is significantly to the left of the US in just about all the ways you care to measure. I don't think it's wrong for them, or any other country to have such displays if that's what they do. I think it is wrong for us, not in the sense of morals [though I have opinions on that], but in the same sense that I think taking up singing as a career, or owning an exotic bird is wrong for me. We are many things, some good, many bad, but we aren't that.

Comments

[sovay]

This is something I cherish as a citizen of this country, and when modern politics promotes the crossing or blurring of that boundary, it upsets me, not as a liberal, or someone who is opposed to militarism, but as a patriot.

That's a good way of framing the issue, because it dodges all that disingenuous BUT DO YOU HATE OUR SOLDIER BOYS IN BLUE nonsense, and also I think true.

Tell the Folks at Home what a Good Job We're Doing

[vandrendehare]

...glorify your exploits, send you home a hero. You'll have parades in your honour. You can make speeches, raise money for war bonds. All you have to do is be our pal!

My sense of patriotism is, in many cases, a negative one; as an American, I need not make any time for the British royalty, nor endure national martial spectacle. When a community celebrates the return of a son or daughter who went to fight, I think that's great. When we do our pomp and ceremony in the cemetery in Arlington, that's good too. But, God, is 45's idea fucking offensive, and in a way that I didn't see coming but really feel stupid for not having seen.

Actually, that last sentence covers my reaction to everything he does.

Re: Tell the Folks at Home what a Good Job We're Doing

[sovay]

...glorify your exploits, send you home a hero. You'll have parades in your honour. You can make speeches, raise money for war bonds. All you have to do is be our pal!

"What luck to be allowed to be a soldier!"

When a community celebrates the return of a son or daughter who went to fight, I think that's great. When we do our pomp and ceremony in the cemetery in Arlington, that's good too.

And for me both of those examples differ from the American military cult (which does exist in both popular culture and political rhetoric, but has traditionally not been state-supported in the way that 45 is proposing and I don't want to see it become so) because they are in their most ideal and often practiced forms about service and remembrance and recognition of loss, not the chest-swelling, dick-measuring pride that our mighty armaments and our moral superiority can wipe any other motherfuckers off the face of the planet, America fuck yeah. That's been around since before I was born, but it's really been sharpening for the last fifteen, seventeen years and has now reached the stage where if this were not a metaphor for the architecture of the republic, I'd say the house has tzaraat and call in a kohen. Maybe we should anyway.

Actually, that last sentence covers my reaction to everything he does.

I do not think that you should feel stupid. No one wants to wake up every morning racking their brain for the most morally bankrupt, globally destructive, individually cruel, and just plain offensive things that a government without regard for its people or its planet could devise to amuse and further profit themselves at the expense of the present, the future, and the memories of the past and then wait to see if they'll be enacted today. It might make you feel ahead of the eight-ball, but it would come with a high cost. It is enough to live in a dystopia without having to anticipate a worse one at every turn. I don't mean that you shouldn't be braced for it, or that you don't need to know in advance what you'll do when it comes: that's just good planning. But it's not stupid to be occasionally, even more unpleasantly surprised.

Re: Tell the Folks at Home what a Good Job We're Doing

[vandrendehare]

I'd say the house has tzaraat and call in a kohen. Maybe we should anyway.

Wow. That is something fascinating of which I was utterly ignorant. Also, you can imagine where my mind went with it.

I do not think that you should feel stupid.

Maybe "foxed" is a better term for it, though 45 would make as poor a fox as anything else. To be surprised by such a banal, small-minded little creature devoid of any single virtue is appalling, but you're right, gnosis of such an entity has got to be unhealthy. Talk about need for confinement and purification.

Perhaps I've started to crawl out of shock and denial into the bargaining phase, and am trying to get a handle on the disaster that is this administration by categorizing and dissecting it. I'm starting to get why people speak of him as though the grift is something with which he has proficiency. I never saw it. Calling what he has low cunning grossly inflates the altitude and devalues cunning. But, when he kicks the ball into his own goal and wins the Stanley Cup as well as the World Cup, it engenders a horrible cognitive dissonance.

It's easier, I guess, to imagine him a proficient con man than to recognize that he is merely a spoiled manchild who has been gifted with some monkey's paw-capitalist jinni that hates him slightly less than it hates literally everyone and everything in creation, and grants his wishes in the way that minimizes his satisfaction and maximizes everyone else's pain.

It occurs that I faced this with 43, wondering, wondering if he was more clever than he appeared with each success that seemed to simply resolve into being independent of his actions or capabilities. I suppose it is the same, writ larger and with more misspellings.

Truly, it may be that the difference between the two men boils down to 43 behaving as though he was dimly aware that there were expectations placed upon him, and, perhaps even the desire to live up to them.

Right, time to curtail this line.

Re: Tell the Folks at Home what a Good Job We're Doing

[asakiyume]

No one wants to wake up every morning racking their brain for the most morally bankrupt, globally destructive, individually cruel, and just plain offensive things that a government without regard for its people or its planet could devise to amuse and further profit themselves at the expense of the present, the future, and the memories of the past and then wait to see if they'll be enacted today.

--strong assent.