Don’t you Americans already have parades on July 4th?
But Nov 11th is absolutely the wrong day for a military parade.
I’ll take the chicken teriyaki with mac and two scoop rice.
All TV stations will broadcast the Dear Leader saluting as the Parade of Military Might passes by. Anyone who doesn’t applaud will be guilty of treason and disloyalty.
Our Independence Day parades are usually organized at the local level and usually are a bunch of locals with homemade floats, high school bands, local fire departments, etc. The military may participate sometimes, but they’re rarely a big part of the parade. As noted above, a big military dick-waving like this is very rare in the US.
I agree that November 11 is a terrible day for it. But we’ve already bastardized Armistice Day into Veterans Day, so it’s only a short step to a military parade.
Are 4th of July parades common? I don’t think they are around here. Memorial Day tends to have more parades. Independence Day usually has a more static community event centered around the fireworks. I don’t know about aboutvthe rest of the country.
Memorial Day is about BBQ and parades and not about honoring the dead. I see no problem with 11/11 being about all Veterans and not about a war few people even know much about.
I can’t wait! Trump will cut a dashing figure in epaulets and mirrored shades.
The (Houston area) community I live in has one, which I have always thought a bit stupid, as it’s always stinking hot, with 80-90% humidity. They start it at 9 in the morning, most likely to avoid hundreds of heat stroke cases.
Agreed that Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day may not be appropriate for a military dick-waving event. I therefore propose Trump Day, to be held on Feb. 30th of each year.
This. It will be absolutely miserable for everyone involved. It seems profoundly disrespectful to make a lot of hardworking professionals jump through hoops for anyone’s entertainment.
I understand military parades are tradition for a lot of countries, but it’s not an American tradition – why start now?
A military parade is a big ostentatious display of wealth and power that he gets to take credit for. It’s exactly the sort of thing that he loves - like one of his beauty pageants writ massive.
I’m honestly surprised that it took him this long to order one.
Because we now have a child in the White House who likes parades and playing with trucks.
It’s another step in the undermining of our political norms, it’s another indication that Trump is a wanna be autocrat and that his supporters yearn for fascism. Just another day in America, really.
I was under the impression they are indeed an American tradition. Aren’t there’s the presidential inauguration and farewell parades for starters? The Marine Corps have an evening parade too, though I’m guessing that’s more like our Changing of the Guard.
So the Golden Loo-sitter-in-chief wants a bigger and better parade? That fits entirely with his inflated ego. But it will serve to highlight a military that is all too often neither seen nor heard by foreign countries.
Most bases have a parade grounds, it’s not what one would normally think of as a parade (although there is marching). It’s more or less just marching from one end of the parade grounds to the other and throwing a salute to the brass. And those are also miserable.
I’m not familiar with the others.
Most of the small- to mid-sized towns around where I live (St. Louis area) have a parade of one kind or another. When I was a firefighter I got to ride in one of the old “parade” trucks my department kept on hand for special events. That was cool! I threw candy to the kids and everything!
The last inaugural parade was described thus (https://www.inaugural.senate.gov/days-events/inaugural-parade/index.html):
Note: “ceremonial military regiments”. That would be guys in traditional getups, often on horseback, with old fashioned rifles, like these guys from the 2005 inaugural parade for George W. Bush: File:US Navy 050120-F-3231D-692 he U.S. Navy Honor Guard marches past President George W. Bush during the 2005 Presidential Inaugural Parade held in Washington D.C.jpg - Wikimedia Commons
The inaugural parades are like other parades. Performers, bands, scout troops, floats, and maybe a few ceremonial military folks.
It has been explained several times in this thread that the big “military parade” where tanks and missiles and shit roll down the street in an orgy of jingoistic fervor, are very rare in the US. Yet you continue to argue that they are common. None of the Americans in this thread are agreeing with you, and I (for reasons I can’t even explain myself) continue to provide evidence that your impression of American parades is wrong. What are you expecting here?
An egregious waste of tax dollars to celebrate his inadequacy and tiny penis.
Your impression is incorrect. The US does not, in general, do large parades of current military hardware of the sort done by France, North Korea and/or the old Soviet Union. As several people mentioned, small military units sometimes are included in parades for holidays such as Independence Day. In the local parade I mentioned upthread, for example, the entire military was represented by a few Marines, in uniform, escorting a cargo truck filled with veterans of the Korean and Viet Nam conflicts.
Well, except, perhaps, for the 70 countries within which the US maintains some 800 military bases (as of 2015).
Ignorance fought!
To what extent is the general population of those countries aware?
Plus all the countries we’re currently bombing. In the first 6 months of 2017, we dropped almost 21,000 bombs in places like Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan. (Trump Is Dropping Bombs at Unprecedented Levels - Business Insider). It’s safe to say the people there have seen and heard our military. In fact, I’d go so far as to suggest that having an under-noticed military is not among the highest priority problems we currently face.
Does the Parade of Ships up the Hudson River during Fleet Week count?
I didn’t like any of the poll choices. I’m just against it. It doesn’t squick me out, but I think it’s a waste of money and not the kind of thing our country should be doing. I’d like to see us de-emphasize our military rather then promote it so ostentatiously.