Happy Birthday King Trump!
Today in Washington, DC, Donald Trump is planning a $45 million Soviet-style military parade to celebrate his 79th birthday, while using 4700 military personnel to suppress protests in Los Angeles in violation of Posse Comitatus, and the same week as a US Senator was assaulted and handcuffed for asking Kristi Noem, the head of the Department of Homeland Security, a question. Happy birthday, your highness!
The domestic militarisation of an American empire that has for the past 80 years reserved its power of intimidation for other nations does not end there. Their wannabe-king this week also spoke to a hand-selected crowd of soldiers loyal to Trump at an army base that, in February, he had renamed for a soldier who conveniently had the same name as the Confederate general the base used to be named after.
The speech itself was an assertion of American military might, not its purpose, and was partisan in nature. It was billed as a celebration of the 250th anniversary of the army, but was far more a celebration of the tools available for the commander in chief to assert his power. It is posted in its entirety on the White House’s YouTube page. Donald Trump merchandise was reported to be available for purchase on site.
Which brings us back to today’s parade which, with the speech at Fort Bragg and the deployment in Los Angeles, have to be viewed as a single package.
Trump is signalling to his people that he is willing and able to use the military domestically as a bludgeon to suppress dissent to his leadership. He stated that any protests at the DC parade will be met with “very big force” and, while the amount of military hardware being put on display is comically small for a show of force from the world’s largest military, the defensive preparations are significant.
It certainly offers the impression that he is hoping for a confrontation on which to justify keeping those weapons in the nation’s capital to complete the work of his January 6th, 2021 coup attempt. While he has the presidency, he is after the crown. If there is any doubt of that, his official spokesperson Kristine Leavitt read a statement a few days ago stating:
There is a troubling and dangerous trend of unelected judges inserting themselves into the presidential decision-making process.
That is a fairly transparent assertion that Trump believes himself to be above the law.
As for the 4,700 troops in Los Angeles, the administration has federalised 4,000 National Guard troops against the wishes of the state Governor under whose authority they had been, and deploy an additional 700 Marines in the state, to support Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions to meet their 3000-arrest-per-day quota. In the United States, the Posse Comitatus Act specifically bars the armed forces from being used for domestic policing purposes except to quell a rebellion. Trump’s team argues that only Trump can decide what constitutes a rebellion and therefore legal oversight is not possible. Joyce Vance explains the legal case in depth.
Any one of these incidents in a functioning democracy would be causing nation-wide strikes and protests, but Americans as a whole, having little understanding of world history and little direct experience with authoritarian government, don’t recognise the severity of the situation in which they find themselves. While some 2000 protests are planned today, expect them to be tepid by the standard of defending your country from tyranny. It is said that those who fail to understand history are doomed to repeat it.
Officially, today’s parade is to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the American Army. As Heather Cox Richardson explains, the Army was raised in 1775 to fight authoritarian government. The irony is thicker than the American King’s supporters.
Trump is looking for an excuse to invoke the insurrection act. He’s needling his political adversaries in every way he can to achieve that goal so he can fully detach the country from its legislative and judicial oversight.
This is a seven-alarm fire. For those who think Trump can simply be defanged in next year’s mid-term elections and be defeated at the end of his four year mandate, there’s a naive idealism that has little basis in reality. This is a president whose team thinks nothing of flooring and cuffing a Senator at a public event for daring to question his agenda.
Canada is acutely aware of the threat from next door; the United States of America is the only country ever to have invaded Canada. Prime Minister Mark Carney’s plan is to take us to 2% of GDP for the military this year, far faster than planned and in the face of other economic challenges, and that investment is unlikely to stop there. This would not be necessary if our government’s top analysts, military and civilian leaders were confident that the American situation is a case of mere passionate politics.
Trump tasted defeat in 2020 and is doing everything necessary to ensure it can never happen again. If he is allowed to succeed, history teaches us that dictators cannot be defeated, they can only be deposed. Happy birthday indeed.
The Republican party needs to wake up and impeach him!