I am reading William Shirer’s “The Nightmare Years, 1930-1940”.
I was surprised to learn that Germany held a military parade on Hitler’s 50th birthday in 1939. I would think that every leader in the world would decide that having a military parade on your birthday was a Very Bad Idea.
If you surround yourself with people who tell you how great you are then there are no bad ideas.
1939 was only 20 years after Germany had a monarch. For millennia, a monarch’s birthday was the biggest state celebration of the year. Also, (you may have missed this) Hitler was an egomaniac.
Another case for having a “Like” button.
You left out a key word there. Try this amendment plus addition:
I would think that every Good leader in the world would decide that having a military parade on your birthday was a Very Bad Idea.
Conversely, every Bad leader in the world would decide that having a military parade on your birthday was a Very Good Idea.
On the one hand: Yes, it’s a Very Bad Idea. On the other: unlike most of Trump’s Very Bad Ideas, this one doesn’t actually hurt anybody, and will probably keep him in a good mood for a little while, and given that he tends to get more angry / paranoid / vindictive when he’s in a bad mood, well… (I hate that this is the calculation I’m making, but it is a consideration.)
I’d like to see a large group of protestors block the parade route.
Will he have them “shot in the legs”?
A parade will provide employment for people to repair the streets after tank treads chew them up, although I believe the army has rubber cleats that attach to treads for that reason.
Reprising a moldy oldie from Laurence Britt’s “14 Characteristics of Fascism”. This is #4:
The supremacy of the military/ avid militarism
Ruling elites always identified closely with the military and the industrial infrastructure that supported it. A disproportionate share of national resources was allocated to the military, even when domestic needs were acute. The military was seen as an expression of nationalism, and was used whenever possible to assert national goals, intimidate other nations, and increase the power and prestige of the ruling elite.
And a reminder … Britt wrote this paper in the Spring of 2003, when most of us had barely even heard of Donald Trump. This isn’t Monday Morning Quarterbacking and making the evidence fit a preordained conclusion. It’s based on his in-depth analysis of “the following regimes: Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal, Papadopoulos’s Greece, Pinochet’s Chile, and Suharto’s Indonesia.”
We’re in stellar company, aren’t we?
The point of my post. I hadn’t studied much about pre WWII until “The Nightmare Years”. That book and Britt’s list is certainly frightening when one compares them to the current administration.
You are mentioning a lot of Trump’s heroes.
Here is almost another one:
The parade, also known as Trooping the Colour, is always in June, and thus has no correlation with when the king or queen was actually born. And there are no tanks..
Googling, this already is being discussed.
Please no.
Best case is long jail sentences.
Medium case, Kent State.
Worst case, Tiananmen Square.
If a loved one proposes this, I will offer to go with them to any other protest location except the parade route.
I think what doesn’t get said enough when this issue comes up is how much it absolutely SUCKS to be part of a military parade from the point of view of the rank and file soldier
You spend hours days before the parade making sure your uniform is meticulously order… Then there’s usually a lot of marching practice around practice before the parade just to make sure everyone still remembers how to do it.. Then there’s quite often an inspection a day or two before the parade so your supervisors can check your uniform..
Then on the day of the parade you wake up at the buttcrack of dawn to meet at the predesignated staging areas and you spend the whole day marching in the blazing sun under several layers of clothing…
The whole deal just sucks, if you want to make the rank and file soldier truly happy on veteran’s and memorial day then just let them stay home with their families instead of going through all that B.S.
I’m pretty sure this president gives zero shits about the happiness or well-being of anyone in uniform. Especially since the strongest form of dominance assertion is the power to inflict pain, misery , or discomfort with impunity.
The cruelty is the point.
Since I didn’t see any actual links to at least one of the prompts for what’s being discussed:
Just in case for those wandering into the thread and missing context.
Otherwise, yes, I agree that the optics and the historical parallels are absolutely disturbing to any casual student of history’s lows when it comes to autocratic/fascist regimes.
I just had an idea…the news stations should broadcast the parade with a split screen . Show the parade live on one side, and on the other side, show historical footage from Berlin 1939.
Yeah, it would be horribly unprofessional journalism. But it would get ratings.
Just following the steps of Liutenant General Scheisskopf.
Bad journalism, maybe, but a GREAT idea for a YouTube video.
Yeah, it’s major suckage for sure. We had to march in a much smaller parade in Santa Monica one year. No idea what it was for. All I remember is that we were in dress uniforms, which meant wearing those horrible dress shoes and having to deal with the blisters afterward.