Friends,
Consider joining us for our annual Interdependence Day Demo at the National
Security Agency, located at Fort Meade, Maryland. We will be leaving
Baltimore at 9:15 AM for a 10 AM to 11 AM demo against the NSA’s illegal and
unconstitutional behavior. Generally on the Fourth of July, besides the
demo, we would do a picnic. However, after the demo at the NSA, some of
us will head to D.C. to join CODEPINK for the Trump is a Big Baby July 4
Festival with the Baby Trump Blimp from 2 to 6 PM on Thursday, July 4 at the
Northwest corner of the National Mall at 17th street, Washington, D.C.
So instead of a July 4 picnic, some of us will dine in D.C. The evening
picnic will instead take place on Saturday, July 6. For details about the
demo at the NSA, the festival in D.C. and the July 6 picnic, contact Max at
727-256-5789 or mobuszewski2001 at Comcast dot net.
Kagiso,
Max
Trump’s July Fourth Tank
Display Is a Glaring Sign of Fascism
A worker washes one of two
M1A1 Abrams tanks that are loaded on rail cars at a rail yard on July 2, 2019,
in Washington, D.C.MARK WILSON / GETTY IMAGES
July
3, 2019
Let’s see how many boxes
have been checked so far: Is the right to vote being dismantled? Check. Does one political
party control virtually the entire government,
including the highest court? Check. Are the concentration camps up and running? Check. Are there threats of violent retribution against
those who speak out against all this? Check. Are many mainstream media
outlets willing accomplices? Check.
What are we forgetting? Oh,
right, a gaudy display of military might on the
front lawn of the nation.
Multiple reports have confirmed
the July Fourth celebration on the Mall in Washington D.C. will be transformed
into an armed and armored outdoor fortress in the service of Donald Trump’s egg-fragile
ego. According to CNN, this will
include M1 Abrams tanks that will have to be brought in by train, because there
are no battle tanks housed in the district. “We have the brand-new Sherman
tanks,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Monday. M4 Sherman tanks have not been
in service since the 1950s.
Along with the Abrams tanks will
be two Bradley fighting vehicles and an M88 Recovery Vehicle. There will be
flyovers by a B-2 stealth bomber, F-22 fighter jets and the new F-35 stealth
fighter jets, provided the notoriously fussy and gruesomely expensive F-35s
can actually get off the ground and avoid tumbling out of the sky. The Navy’s
Blue Angels squadron has been dragooned into the show, and Air Force One along
with Marine Helicopter Squadron One will also make an appearance.
“Mr. Trump, who is to speak at the
celebration, has requested that the chiefs for the Army, Navy, Air Force and
Marines stand next to him as aircraft from each of their services fly overhead
and their respective hymns play on loudspeakers,” reported The New York Times on
Monday. Along with the brass will be around 300 military service people,
surrounded by what I can only assume will be eleventy billion U.S. flags.
Perhaps Trump will try to hug them all.
Having an understanding of history
means knowing this country would probably still be part of the British empire
without the intervention of France during the Revolutionary War. I never went
in for the “freedom fries” thing after 9/11 (neither, in the end, did the guy who came up with it). That being
said, I’m going to lay a portion of the blame for this hot military mess at
France’s feet.
Trump is calling this thing “A Salute
to America,” which is precisely what Richard Nixon called it in 1970.
“Trump was clearly impressed by a
Bastille Day parade he witnessed in France last July,” reported New York Magazine in
February 2018. “The marching orders were: I want a parade like the one in
France,” an anonymous military source told The Washington Post that same
month. Going forward, it would probably be best not to let Trump pal around
with French President Emmanuel Macron without a chaperone present at all times.
Trump was so hot and bothered
after his Bastille Day experience that he wanted a full military parade through
D.C. on Veterans Day, but sullenly backed down after the price tag for such an
event soared past $90 million. Predictably, neither the White House nor the
Pentagon will comment on the cost of Thursday’s well-armed shindig, even as the
argument over the cost of giving water and blankets to children in
concentration camps grinds on. A hint of the expense was revealed
by a report that the National Parks Service is
diverting $2.5 million in funds to the show, funds originally intended for
national parks across the country.
Because good is not yet dead,
there will be protests. Code Pink has been granted
permission to display a 20-foot version of the Big Baby Trump blimp at the event. Two different veterans’ groups
will also be handing out “Big Bad John” t-shirts to honor the military and
Senate career of the late John McCain. Trump’s loathing for the former
Republican senator is the stuff of legend. If the activists could get one of
those t-shirts onto the blimp, Trump may very well melt into an orange ball of
volcanic fury right there on the Mall.
Speaking of protests, Trump is
calling this thing “A Salute to America,” which is precisely what Richard Nixon
called it in 1970, the last time an embattled president tried to change the
conversation with an extravagant July Fourth celebration.
“The main event was the televised
evening show at the Lincoln Memorial,” reports The Washington Post. “Police
set up barricades between protesters and the audience seated to watch the show.
Just as the show was about to get underway, protesters overturned a Good Humor
ice cream truck, and anti-riot police moved in. The police or someone in the
crowd threw a tear-gas canister, and the tear gas ‘wafted’ over the back rows
of the audience. Some protesters threw bottles. As he prepared to go onstage,
master of ceremonies [Bob] Hope looked out at the scene and remarked, ‘It looks
like Vietnam, doesn’t it?’”
Thursday could be the moment future
students of history point to one day and say, “It was right there, how did they
miss it?”
A New York Times editorial
by Michael Tomasky recently asked if the Republican Party still
believes in democracy. “It doesn’t have a name,” he wrote, “this thing the
Republicans are trying to do. It’s not true democracy that they want.” Perhaps
more than anything else except power, the Republicans want profit. That’s where
the tickets come in, because nothing says “egalitarian” like roping off swaths
of the people’s public property for a pack of wealthy Republican contributors.
“The Republican National Committee
has been offering major donors tickets to Trump’s speech,” reports the Huffington Post, “as
have political appointees at the White House and executive branch agencies. ‘He’s
going to have tanks out there. It’s going to be cool,’ joked one RNC fundraiser
on condition of anonymity. ‘He wants to have a parade like they have in Moscow
or China or North Korea.’”
Wocka wocka, you bootlicking
bandwagon clown. It’s difficult to tell from reading that quote if this
anonymous RNC fundraiser really thinks modeling a July Fourth celebration after
the martial demonstrations of Russia, China and North Korea is actually funny,
or if they’re just obliviously excited about getting to stand next to a tank.
Neither option is palatable.
I am running out of ways to say
it: This is fascism, and it is staring us dead in the face. We can make fun of it as
we please, because sometimes humor is the only refuge, but Thursday could be
the moment future students of history point to one day and say, “It was right
there, how did they miss it?”
If you seek a fireworks show that
does not involve Trump or battle tanks in your face, I recommend the event put
on by the Boston Pops at the Esplanade down by the Charles River. You can find it on
a few TV channels or stream it online, and trust me, it is spectacular. Barring
that, you can always go outside and burn a flag for your pyrotechnics fix.
That’s still legal, for now.
Copyright © Truthout. May not be
reprinted without permission.
William
Rivers Pitt is a senior editor and lead columnist at Truthout. He
is also a New York Times and internationally bestselling
author of three books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn’t Want You to Know, The Greatest Sedition Is Silenceand House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and
America’s Ravaged Reputation. His fourth book, The Mass Destruction of Iraq: Why It Is Happening, and
Who Is Responsible, co-written with Dahr
Jamail, is available now on Amazon. He lives and works in New
Hampshire.
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives."
Eugene Victor Debs
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