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France is a despotism, says Guardian

So it is with his latest scheme, his instruction to the top brass of the US armed forces to lay on a military parade in the nation’s capital, perhaps on 4 July. He’d been nagging the generals about this for a while but, according to the Washington Post, he gave the order at a meeting at the Pentagon last month.

Donald Trump orders Pentagon to plan grand military parade
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No need for us to deconstruct the motive behind this instruction. It came after Trump was the guest at France’s Bastille Day parade, where he stood at Emmanuel Macron’s side and watched tanks, gun trucks and column after column of starchly uniformed soldiers. “We’re going to have to try and top it,” Trump said afterwards. (The actual order to military chiefs was phrased in the language of a spoiled child: “I want a parade like the one in France.”)

Trump’s desire for a military parade reveals him as a would-be despot
Jonathan Freedland

28 thoughts on “France is a despotism, says Guardian”

  1. You have to realise that for some people,every national leader of white European origin is potentially a new Hitler or the Czar. They never seem to worry about the coming of a new Stalin though. Call it paranoia or just plain animosity YMMV.

  2. Like the May day parade in Moscow you mean, those despots?

    Wouldn’t the military jump at the chance to show off, though?

  3. For the squaddies it is days spent polishing and rehearsing, then a weekend spoiled by the parade itself. PITA, to put it briefly. However, a nation (or a newspaper) which is ashamed of its military is without honour.

  4. And DJT has always seemed like..well find the Youtube of Mussolini at Ancona and tell me who his speaking style reminds you of. Not politics, just manner.

  5. If they are parading they aren’t killing folk in more bungled and expensive invasions of mid-east shitholes.

    Seems like a good idea to me. Esp if they put in a few “And now a word from our sponsor” type moments and have the thing pay for itself.

  6. The guardianista position seems to be that Macron’s military parade was a venerable French tradition, while Trump’s proposed parade is an egotistical innovation. Which is a strange position to hold when you generally despise both tradition and the military.

  7. Bloke in North Dorset

    RLJ

    “Wouldn’t the military jump at the chance to show off, though?”

    Nope, as RK says, they’re a pain in the arse. They affect leave and training schedules, require a lot more than just those on parade because of security and they take a lot more than just a week in rehearsals.

    We have a day when we honour our armed forces and those who served alongside them and in the USA its called Veteran’s Day.

  8. The efforts of the American Left are a threat to Trump’s tenure in office, potentially to his liberty, and even to his wealth and his life. They are pushing him in the direction of sucking up to the military. They are pushing him in the direction of being reluctant ever to leave office. They are not only twats they are fools.

  9. Military parades are for show-offs, despots or countries unsure of themselves. Grown-ups don’t need to wave their military around in public like this.

  10. Clarissa: You are mostly right. But better a parade than a war.

    And a lovely “V-EU” Day parade would be very welcome. Like the new British Passports playing “Soldiers of the Queen” when they are opened.

  11. With Trump, as with other magicians, you have to watch what his other hand is doing.

    It may be that he truly just blurted out this bit about parades, (as well as his off-the-cuff remarks on how the Dem politicians are all treasonous), but experience tends to show that while everybody is riled up about his ‘gaffes’, something else is going on that no one quite notices.

  12. Grown-ups don’t need to wave their military around in public like this

    Is that some sort of euphemism?

  13. BiND, agreed. Military Parades are a pain in the arse. A week’s worth of rehearsals on the parade ground just to march from one end of Adderley Street, Cape Town to the other for the State opening of Parliament in the mid 1980s. In full dress uniform.

    An excuse for the senior non-coms to fuck us about for a week.

  14. Kevin B is onto what this is all about.

    The crazed reaction to the election of DT – both here and in woglands near and far – centers around the fact that DT is not just fighting a war on the political front, he is fighting a war on the cultural front. He is unabashedly and unashamedly pro-American. Trump looks to the Founding Fathers for inspiration, whereas BO and the Progressive cadres look to the likes of Fidel Castro and the Mullahs of Iran.

    So…

    The idea of a July 4 military parade is simply the next battle in the Culture War. DT is betting – and with good reason – that the reaction of Democrats and Progressives will become so extreme over time that it will graphically demonstrate (once again) just how much those people hate everything associated with the USA.

    This is DT setting up the Democrats for the coming November elections. DT doesn’t give a fuck about what some Guardian pussy thinks, he’s focused on what some plumber in Peoria thinks. And rightly so.

  15. Grown-ups don’t need to wave their military around in public like this

    What the fuck would any European know about having a truly effective military capable of being deployed anywhere on the face of the Earth at a moment’s notice?

    Out of one side of the mouth comes hate of the US and its military, out of the other comes begging that the US never lower its commitment to NATO. Because, God Forbid, you can’t have wogs actually paying or fighting for their own survival.

  16. Pain in the arse? WRONG! Only for the grunts. Who don’t count.

    But the grunts will remember the parades for the rest of their lives.

  17. @ DtP
    Try looking at some non-Hollywood facts – the USA thinks it can do anything but Russia has been the more effective fast-response superpower in the last decade.
    Also “at a moment’s notice” is a bit rich coming from a country that joined WW I three years late and WW II more than two years late.

  18. Try looking at some non-Hollywood facts – the USA thinks it can do anything but Russia has been the more effective fast-response superpower in the last decade.

    Only if you narrow the definition of fast response to dumping some troops in Syria.

    Also “at a moment’s notice” is a bit rich coming from a country that joined WW I three years late and WW II more than two years late.

    That comment isn’t just stupid, it’s Richard Murphy stupid.
    You going to start lecturing us about stock market valuations?

  19. @ Dennis the Peasant
    I am not stupid enough to lecture anyone about Stock Market Valuations that are simply a multiple of shares in issue and the latest dealing price.
    OTOH De Gaulle determined to have a Force de Frappe because he did not expect WW III to last long enough for the Yankees to get round to intervening. In view of Roosevelt’s treatment of the Free French, I do not see why anyone should disagree with him [NB I said “should” – lots of Americans and some British did disagree because it was a political claim that the USA would protect their European allies from attack from enemies such as Argentina].

  20. “Also “at a moment’s notice” is a bit rich coming from a country that joined WW I three years late and WW II more than two years late.”

    LATE ?!?!

    The U.S. came into WWI two years too early.

    Had we stayed the hell out, there would have been no WWII. Maybe never a Soviet Union.

    The U.S. entered WWII only concerned with the Japanese. It was Hitler who drew in the U.S. to the European war by declaring war 3 days later.

    Note that Syria is only a few hundred miles from Russia.

    Only the U.S. has the capability of quickly placing large numbers of troops on any patch of the earth. Timing of entry into the World Wars is a non sequitur.

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