More thoughts on Trump’s parade-envy.

We should note that while Trump was impressed with the Bastille Day parade he attended in France, he has been hoping for a military parade for a lot longer. As Trump told The Post before taking office a year ago:

“That military may come marching down Pennsylvania Avenue. That military may be flying over New York City and Washington, D.C., for parades. I mean, we’re going to be showing our military.”

I remember that. I think I probably ranted about it here. I remember the disgust I felt.

The news of this urgent parade mobilization comes just after Trump complained at a rally that Democrats who failed to applaud sufficiently for him during the State of the Union address had committed a crime punishable by death. “Shall we call that treason? Why not? I mean, they certainly didn’t seem to love our country very much,” he said.

It can be hard not to get inured to the stupid, appalling and despicable things that come out of Trump’s mouth, but linger for a moment on that. The president said that not applauding him is treason against America.

No doubt he thinks of the military as his personal set of soldiers, just as he thinks of the Justice Department as his Justice Department. None of it is ours, all of it is his.

This parade is surpassingly dumb for any number of reasons both practical and symbolic. It will not only cost millions of dollars, it will divert the participants and planners from their actual jobs defending the country. How many hours of practicing, how many personnel pulled from their duties to handle the logistics, how much in transport costs and cleanup costs and repairs to streets ripped up by tank treads will the whole thing involve?

Many many many hours of practicing – I saw a senior military dude pointing that out with emphasis on CNN last night. The troops hate parades, he said, because it takes endless practice to get it right, and they have things to do other than marching. Marching doesn’t actually accomplish anything, he noted.

We all know what the real purpose of a parade is: not to show that the American military is big and strong, but to make Donald Trump feel big and strong. Don’t be surprised to read afterward that Trump had to be talked out of appearing in a military dress uniform complete with decorative medals and a golden sash.

Talked out of it? Are we confident that he will be talked out of it?

n reality, like everything Trump orders, this will be about him, not about the troops or America or anything else. He is the most self-focused president we’ve ever had. This is a man who regularly refers to “my generals and my military” and says things such as “I’ve created over a million jobs since I’m president,” who slaps his name on everything in sight, who is so childishly self-centered that his national security briefers make sure to mention him every few paragraphs in any document they give him, knowing that’s the only way he’ll read it.

And many Republicans can’t get enough of it. They cheer his attacks on any media outlet that doesn’t give him glowing coverage, they join in the assault he launches on whoever he decides is his enemy today, they pretend it’s no big deal when a hostile foreign power meddles in our elections so long as it helps Trump, they proclaim him the great and noble leader America has been thirsting for. They do all this for a man who possesses not a single identifiable human virtue.

And so far it’s not even harming them all that much. Why? Partly, at least, because so many of us actually like that kind of thing.

This guy for instance.

https://twitter.com/jeanneheo/status/958120713147228162?lang=en