Milestones

I was ten during the Bicentennial celebrations.  I was about to enter fifth grade.  For at least a year or two before, America eagerly anticipated the event.  (The actual preparations began a decade earlier.)  I remember the TV documentaries, the American Freedom Train, and the Schoolhouse Rock! spots airing in between my favorite Saturday morning cartoons.  My elementary school had its own celebration that summer, with the remains of red, white, and blue crepe bunting stuck on poles and roof eaves for at least the next year.

My family watched the varied televised coverage of the Independence Day events.  I particularly remember the image of the tall ships sailing into New York harbor and, of course, the fireworks.

The climate of celebration was surprising considering recent events.  Watergate had ended Richard Nixon’s presidency; Gerald Ford’s pardon of Nixon only deepened the public’s bitterness.  South Vietnam had fallen the previous year.  Inflation, high gas prices, and factory closures weighed on national morale.  So, the genuinely joyous embrace of the Bicentennial afforded a weary nation a sense of continuity and revival.

Fast-forward fifty years.  Social and political conditions in 2026 are arguably worse.  The past decade has been particularly rough.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, the insanity of our national politics has spilled over into the America 250 observances. 

The last few weeks have been a head spinning succession of batshit craziness and banal tackiness even for this presidency.  A temporary MMA arena on the White House lawn that killed the grass.  A wholly unnecessary “improvement” to the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool that rendered it algae choked mass contained by an incompetently applied polyurea sealant.  Temporary cyclone fences and concrete barriers blocking access to popular attractions in the capital. 

Then again, there’s occasion for schadenfreude.  The much-ballyhooed Great American State Fair has experienced laughably low attendance since it opened.  Several states declined to contribute official exhibits.  After all the major headliners dropped out of the kickoff concert on June 24th, the president held a rally instead. 

A key issue is the usurpation of the official America250 planning body by the White House aligned Freedom 250. Much funding for the latter comes from the interior department and donations from pay-to-play million- and billionaires.  A holiday that should bring everyone together has become a cheap vanity project.

This year’s holiday just doesn’t resonate, even the more traditional 4^th of July events.  The America 250 celebration lacks the anticipation and reverence and joy I remember from the Bicentennial.  The paucity of gravitas has something to do with it.  The unseriousness of the president’s minions and a chief executive who can’t leave well enough alone makes it hard to take the festivities at the desired value.  Forgive me for being less than enthusiastic.

 

© 2026 The Unassuming Scholar

I Buy What I Like

It’s been a minute since I’ve posted.  The fast and furious storm of bullshit that is the news forced me into decision paralysis around topics.  But I figure that I can write about current events without discussing the War with Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Gaza, Hezbollah, Hamas, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, chronic inflation, Medicaid and SNAP cuts, ICE, cosplaying cabinet members, UFC cage matches on the White House lawn, triumphal arches, painting the bottoms of reflecting pools, that goddam ballroom, and You Know Who.

So, here goes…

I’ll start with the whiskey.  Bourbon.  Woodford Reserve, to be exact.  Even more specifically, the batch purchased by alleged FBI director Kash Patel.  Not content with heading up the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, Mr. Patel wants to be the googly-eyed face of a lifestyle brand.  He’s hawking bottles of Woodford Reserve engraved with his imprimatur.  Kash—sorry, Ka$h—one must carefully safeguard one’s personal branding--has reportedly been giving away these personalized bottles as gifts.  He probably won’t try to sell these due to trademark infringement, but there are other Ka$h tchotchkes to be had.  Seriously.  Just go to https://kashpatel.store. 

Now, it isn’t any surprise if you believe imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  Just look at the long line of products shilled by Patel’s master over the years.  Most of it garbage, but each of these had their eager buyers.  The grift never ends.

But the trend of taking advantage of true believers points up a larger, more prevalent phenomenon.  I think most of us have consumer brands, famous or mundane, that we favor.  For me, there are items ranging from durable goods to breakfast cereals where I will only buy a particular brand. 

In my case, I make these purchases because each of them fulfills a specific need.  What I’m not doing is making some kind of statement.  None of them is tied to group affinity or loyalty to a cause.  I buy what I like.

But for some of us, especially to people who are chronically online, consumer brands have become still another front of the culture wars.  I first commented on this trend a few years ago in this space.  When it came to light that Dan Cathy, the patriarch of the Chick-fil-A family, had spent considerable funds opposing legislation legalizing same-sex marriage, there was a short-lived tempest on both sides of the political spectrum.  Protestors began demonstrating in front of Chick-fil-As across the land.  SUVs carrying real Americans jammed the drive-thrus with those on foot jamming the indoor lobbies.

Chick-fil-A was one of the first times I connected the dots between consumer brands and culture war virtue signaling.  While there are more than a few brands culturally coded as liberal or even left, it’s those attracting a conservative following so strong that any kind of deviation in terms of marketing or brand identity drives some people into conniptions. I can point to several recent examples.

About three years ago, trans actress and influencer Dylan Mulvaney released a video on Instagram featuring a personalized commemorative Bud Light can inscribed “Cheers to 365 days of being a woman.”  True to form, the right wing trolls lost their shit.  In no time flat, Fox and other conservative outlets were fuming that this single social media post was proof of the unstoppable force of insane liberals and large corporations bending the knee to woke ideology.  Calls went out to boycott Anheuser-Busch.

The boycott did have an effect on sales.  Sales of Bud Light dropped by a third over the ensuing weeks.  By many reports, they haven’t fully recovered.  But the news moved on eventually to focus on some other manufactured outrage.  (For the record, I have been boycotting Bud Light my entire life.  Life’s too short for crappy beer.)

Cracker Barrel has had a couple of public relations scrapes of late.  If you’re not familiar with the chain, think of a cornpone Applebee’s.  Attempting to accommodate patrons following healthier diets, the restaurant added a meatless sausage to the breakfast menu.  It did not remove any of the existing meat items.  No matter.  The red blooded meat eaters were horrified that Cracker Barrel, their Cracker Barrel had caved to the soy boys.  The pushback was apparently short-lived.  As of this writing, Impossible Sausage remains on the menu at my local Cracker Barrel.

The other, more recent dustup concerned Cracker Barrel’s logo refresh.  For years, the logo featured a man in overalls sitting next to a barrel.  The old logo catered to both kinds of customer—those who could read, and those who couldn’t.  A few months back, they unveiled a stylized logo featuring just the name in an updated logotype.  Nothing controversial.

I was wrong.  The social media on the right had a fucking meltdown.  Many posters, having discovered Cracker Barrel’s CEO was a woman, accused her of being a woke DEI hire despite her having been in the position for about a decade.  Another lamented that the logo update ruined what he called a family tradition.  (The chain dates back to 1977.  You know, the era of such traditions as disco, platform shoes, bad haircuts, and wide lapels.)  Still another said his elderly parents swore never to eat there again.

Unlike the great Impossible Sausage controversy, corporate quickly reversed course.  As a number of would-be internet wags put it, the faithful got back the cracker and the barrel.  Right-wing outrage has the potential to shape some brands.  It seems that these people internalize brand preferences as identity.  It is much in the way that many of these same folks internalize their affinity with a certain politician as identity. 

Imagine having so little, so few substantial things to hold on to that you have to grasp at the ephemeral to believe you stand for something.  That is the world we live in.

 

 

© 2026 The Unassuming Scholar

Just Another Day...

I began yesterday as I have so many other mornings with a single thought…What the fuck???

Tuesday’s WTF was prompted first by Secretary of Defense WAR! Pete Hegseth’s harangue of our military’s assembled flag officers and their senior enlisted advisors followed by remarks from President Trump.  I imagine for many of them the assembly was two hours of their lives they will never get back.

Hegseth’s talk was the predictable kinetic, motormouthed display of performative masculinity.  He decried DEI, wokeness, “climate change worship,” political correctness, men in dresses, men with beards, low esprit de corps, low physical fitness standards, out of shape personnel, “fat” generals and admirals at the Pentagon, nation building, a lack of warrior ethos, a supposed war on warriors (at which point Hegseth inserted a plug for his magnum opus of the same name), and even the term “defense” itself.  Nothing new here.

This doesn’t mean there weren’t parts of the speech that are cause for real concern.  One is Hegseth’s disdain for rules of engagement. Clearly, this is a dangerous attitude toward the law of war.  Hegseth seems to imply that in the future servicemembers will be shielded from war crime prosecutions.  That is a truly bad message to send to the rank and file, though the audience in front of him surely were unconvinced.

He also promised that leaders would be protected from frivolous complaints from within the ranks.  This will almost certainly create a chilling effect on legitimate complaints to include allegations of abuse by colleagues and superiors. 

On a related topic, Hegseth promised that initial entry training will be toughened up in the interest of making every servicemember a rifleman.  (I’m not sure whether this skill is relevant if you’re, say, a submariner or part of a bomber crew, but I do not share Hegseth’s brilliant military mind.)  Training should be scary and tough and should instill “healthy fear.”  In the future, training cadre will be allowed to put hands on trainees to discipline them.  At a time when it’s hard to attract qualified recruits, I’m sure this policy will improve the picture. 

More ominous still was when Hegseth put his misogyny on full display.   I can’t speak to the thoughts of the female officers in attendance, but they cannot have been impressed.  It is pretty evident at this point Hegseth envisions a significantly truncated role for women in the military.  In the future, he crowed, women will have to meet the same physical fitness standards as men or they will be eliminated from combat roles.  Just as bad is the implication that the elimination of diversity programs will make our armed forces predominately white. 

The few camera shots of the audience showed row upon row of stonefaced people.  Hegseth’s applause bait lines fell flat.  As a veteran, as a former officer, he should have expected this up front.  It was a policy speech from a superior, not a political rally.  You stand at attention when he enters the room, and you stand at attention when he leaves.  There was probably also the annoyance factor at work with some of them, particularly those who came from overseas or otherwise traveled long distances in service of a stupid publicity stunt. 

The worst was yet to come though it didn’t seem that way at first.  After Hegseth’s hyperactive onstage jackassery, the president’s speech came as almost a relief.  Trump shuffled to the podium and launched into the self-pitying, self-aggrandizing word salad typical of the president’s public utterances.  Then, he began to philosophize on the role of America’s military.  Turns out, the fight is not against foreign adversaries.  Unbeknownst to many of us outside the MAGAverse, we are being invaded as he spoke.  The armed forces’ present mission is to fight the “enemies from within.”

Ah, yes, the ubiquitous yet invisible enemies within, the bugbear of authoritarian movements everywhere.  What the president was effectively saying is that the American military’s enemy to be fought are certain Americans.  Hence, the recent and wholly unnecessary National Guard interventions in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C, and Memphis, and coming soon to Chicago and Portland. 

One of the stated reasons has been that the troops are there to safeguard ICE as they round up people for deportation.  ICE’s sudden expansion has been characterized by some progressive critics as a nascent political police doing the administration’s extralegal bidding.  What the military’s role in this will be is anybody’s guess, though Trump made it clear that America’s cities are to be its future “training ground.”   Together with Hegseth’s new emphasis on “lethality,” it ought to worry the most levelheaded observer.

And all this because last fall we were frustrated at the cost of groceries... 

 

© 2025 The Unassuming Scholar

Moral Panic

Now we know.

After a couple of days of wildass speculation in the MAGAverse, a suspect in the murder of the Great Martyr Charlie Kirk has been taken into custody.  He is…wait for it…wait for it…you will be shocked…a twentysomething white male.

After two “persons of interest” were arrested and released, theories surrounding the killer ran amok.  Some concerned the latest MAGA moral panic, the transgender mass shooter.  If you weren’t paying attention, a few weeks ago a transgender person in Minnesota who posted regrets over their transition on their socials shot and killed two children and wounded 18 attending mass on the first day of their parochial school term.  In 2023, a transgender person killed seven and injured two at a Nashville Christian school.

And that’s about it.  Since both perpetrators died in the attacks, we cannot know for certain their motives though their social media presence offers clues.  In both cases, it appears they immersed themselves in websites castigating trans people and others promoting mass shooters. A simpler explanation is the Oswald motive: They did it to be famous.

No matter.  Transphobic rhetoric colored the commentary from the right.  My personal favorite quote came from Congresswoman Nancy Mace, who proclaimed to reporters that a “tranny” was responsible for Kirk’s demise.  She went on to say that she and her staff were afraid to come to work because of the looming threat of radical left violence.

Apparently, this is a common fear in MAGA world.  Because it’s all about them.  Random clicking dredged up videos of bearded white men shouting into the camera about how patriots like them are being targeted for death by the violent radical left.  Some of them—okay, most of them—bemoaned the rising death toll among men like them at the hands of these deranged leftists.  They also promised that this fictitious carnage would be met at gunpoint.  Disturbingly, one of these videos was posted by a police officer in uniform.  I feel reassured that this guy is out there protecting the public.

The ludicrous overreaction continued at the top, at least for a hot second.  The president announced he was awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Kirk, further cheapening one of our most prestigious honors.  The vice president flew Kirk’s remains home aboard Air Force Two, at taxpayer’s expense of course. But when asked for comment about Kirk on the White House lawn, Trump devoted a few seconds to express his regret before launching into a monologue touting the new construction of the White House ballroom.

The president has perhaps moved on, but the MAGAsphere are like dogs with a bone.  The most disturbing revelation of the past few days is the creation of a website which purportedly gathers the names of anyone who might have cheered Kirk’s death on social media.  The idea is to get people to dime them out so their employers will terminate them.  (Trump and MAGA are unpopular among my colleagues, so I think they are safe from the “mass firings” promised by the website’s creators.) 

I don’t think this doxxing website poses much of a threat.  It’s just more posturing.  But the past eight months under Trump 2.0 have been exhausting.  I was raised by a narcissist, and I recognize this feeling as a constant from when I was a kid.  Add to that all the demented shit emanating from the right and the constant state of hypervigilance provoked by it, and one’s sense of wellbeing becomes hard to maintain.

The discourse from the left—the actual left, not the boogeyman living in MAGA’s imagination—is not encouraging.  For all the grandiose talk about themselves as “the resistance,” their writ doesn’t extend much beyond Tik-Tok and YouTube.  They are too few to pose a threat.  Meanwhile, more moderate critics of the administration unself-consciously muse over whether Charlie Kirk is the Trump movement’s Horst Wessel or whether his killing is the administration’s Reichstag Fire.

It doesn’t matter.  Trump and his allies control or have coopted all three branches of the federal government.  We may not yet beyond the point of no return, but that point is edging closer by the day.   Charlie Kirk’s murder, while unfortunate and unwarranted, will be bounced from the headlines in short order in service of flooding the zone.  And the base will move on to fixate upon some other outrage.

 

© 2025 The Unassuming Scholar

Descent

A few months ago, I wrote about a bizarre incident in Colorado where a man stalked a TV news crew, following the news vehicle back to the station.  When they arrived, the man confronted and assaulted the crew’s on-air reporter who was described as being of Pacific Islander ancestry.  During the assault, the man yelled, “This is Donald Trump’s America!”

At the time, I mused that political violence under a second Trump administration would vary in intensity while the legal consequences would depend on local sentiments.  In the case of the Colorado incident, the reporter’s assailant has pled not guilty and is to stand trial in January.

This afternoon, another violent act may put my speculation to the test.  Right-wing activist Charlie Kirk was shot dead while giving a speech at a Utah college.  Details are unclear, but Kirk was apparently shot from a rooftop of a campus building about 150 yards away.  A “person of interest” has been detained.

The reaction to Kirk’s death among prominent Democrats so far is in contrast to Republican reactions when Democrats are physically attacked.  The June murders of a Minnesota legislator and her husband and the wounding of another legislator predictably generated vituperative victim blaming, for instance.  On the other hand, Kirk’s murder elicited condolences and condemnations of gun violence from Democrats.

Personally, I despise everything Charlie Kirk stood for.  But there shouldn’t be a death penalty for expressing despicable opinions. 

Naturally, MAGA has overreacted in ways which border on the absurd.  President Trump has ordered the flag flown at half-staff for the next several days, as ifi Kirk had been a great statesman rather than a self-serving, hate-mongering opportunist.  The next few days will likely bring more hyperbole.

Considering the fate of the shooter, I cannot predict.  Republican-majority Utah has been somewhat cool toward the MAGA phenomenon.  I am sure any trial jury would approach the case independent of political considerations.  But Utah’s governor has said this will be a death penalty case.

Would red state juries impose the death penalty on the murderer of a liberal activist or Democratic politician?  Would they convict in the first place?  Incitement is much more common on the right.  It’s not much of a leap that if a liberal activist or Democratic politician were murdered in a red state, the social media response would find a way to dismiss the crime and find a way to subtly (or not so subtly) put the onus on the deceased.

Returning to the right’s knee-jerk reactions to any threat, real or imaginary (mostly imaginary), let’s look at the ongoing, unnecessary occupation of Washington, D.C. by National Guard troops.  Although it had to have been in the works for weeks, the immediate precipitating event appears to have been an attempted carjacking involving DOGE twerp Edward “Big Balls” Coristine.  (Okay, I don’t condone violence, but the revelation that Mr. Balls was beaten up by a 15 year old girl made me smile.  Besides, his pride was hurt worse than his face) 

Any crime committed against a white person in a city with a plurality or majority population of color is going to set off right-wing alarm bells.  Since most of our cities, whether in red or blue states, have significant minority populations and tend to have Democratic administrations, they draw right-wing ire by their very being.  The planned replication of performative military intervention is certain, all in the interest of preventing violent crime of course.

I wonder if the president will be sending troops to Orem, Utah anytime soon.

Not very likely.

 

© 2025 The Unassuming Scholar

Drag

In the first season of Mad Men, protagonist Don Draper crashes at the apartment of a would-be girlfriend’s bunch of beatnik associates.  Needless to say, they don’t hit it off.  When asked how he sleeps at night, ad executive Draper replies, “on a bed of money.” 

Nevertheless, they agree on one thing.  They eventually fall asleep after smoking a large quantity of pot.  In the morning, they awaken to a police raid in progress at a neighbor’s apartment. 

Draper, needing to report to work, straightens his tie and tugs on his suit coat to pull out the wrinkles.  As he opens the front door, one of the beatniks anxiously objects, “You can’t go out there!”

Don pauses a beat and says, “No, you can’t,“ and walks out, nodding at the policemen in the hallway as he goes.

I was reminded of this a couple of weeks ago as I boarded a plane for a brief vacation in Mexico.  Walking down the jetway, I passed by a Customs and Border Protection agent.  Suffice it to say, he was playing the part.  Body armor, M-4 carbine slung across his chest, etc.  Briefly looking over at him, he gave me a slight nod.  Reflexively, I nodded back.

A fleeting exchange to be sure, but telling all the same.  Like Don Draper, and unlike many other people, I can pass.  I’m an average-looking middle-aged white male who presents conventionally.  In a sense, I’m above suspicion.  I’m just grateful no one can detain me for my thoughts.  Yet.

At least the CBP agents were clearly identifiable. The news of late tells of law enforcement officials unidentifiable by agency or uniform rounding up migrants and student activists.  Are they or aren’t they actual cops? 

The second coming of Donald Trump has provoked a resurgence in militaristic cosplay.  I first noticed the trend the first time around during the lockdown phases of the pandemic.  We were shown the spectacle of white men donning tactical gear and brandishing weapons at urban civil rights protests and setting up unauthorized roadblocks in rural locales asserting authority they did not possess.  The January 6^th insurrection appeared to be the climax of this nonsense which would simmer down with the absence of Trump and his minions from Washington.

Wishful thinking.  Shortly after the election, I was at the airport waiting at the baggage carousel when I noticed a young man milling amongst us.  He was white, with a beard of course.  Otherwise dressed in civilian attire, he was sporting a tactical vest.  He walked slowly, with a serious expression, thumbs hooked at the top of his vest.  I had no idea who the hell he was or why he was there aside from being an arriving passenger, and I asked myself if anyone else was even noticing this.  No one seemed to.  It is common enough lately that such sights scarcely raise an eyebrow.

Much as they had during Trump 1.0, the real authorities have gotten in the act.  News and phone footage showing what seemed to be ICE agents abducting individuals in public are disturbingly frequent.  The agents are generally clad in black or in casual wear, their faces obscured with balaclavas or masks, and they are not displaying badges or other markings identifying which agency they represent.  Homeland Security officials defend the practice as protecting law enforcement personnel from being doxed.   

Maybe, but probably not.  The intended effect is performative intimidation made more ominous by ambiguity.  It also looks cool, if you’re into that kind of thing.

Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem is the poster girl for posturing as substitute for public safety.  We see her in tactical gear joining Border Patrol agents on a raid.  We watch her posing in front of a packed cell of deportees at El Salvador’s supermax CECOT, sporting a $50,000 Rolex no less.  She parries a question from U.S. Senator Alex Padilla at a press conference on the wholly unnecessary federal intervention in the civil unrest in Los Angeles by siccing the Secret Service on him.

The optics are lost on her.  Appearing before a congressional committee recently, Rep. Bennie Thompson greeted her by thanking her for her time amidst her busy schedule “of photo ops and costume changes.”  Noem scarcely batted an eyelash.   

As to be expected, bad actors are getting in on the act.  You, too, can buy ICE merch online.  Young white males have taken to stationing themselves in Home Depot parking lots wearing ICE jackets to scare off day laborers looking for jobs.  Even more troubling are reports of midnight “raids” on immigrant households by people claiming to be government agents.  In one instance, a family was told to hand over their phones and any cash in their possession.  Contacting ICE and Homeland Security offices afterward, the agencies denied knowledge.

The Trump administration’s methods of ensuring law and order have encouraged vigilantism and enabled common criminals to prey upon vulnerable people.  You could reason that this is an intended consequence.  In the first category, we have a small group of MAGA diehards who believe Trump possesses extralegal authority and that anything they do on his behalf is justified.  (I call this the deputization defense; several J6 rioters believed Trump had “deputized” them to stop certification of the 2020 election results.)  In the second category are opportunistic crooks and garden variety assholes exploiting people who can’t go to the police.

Authoritarians are drawn to military and police regalia.  Perhaps even more so when the individual never served in the military or law enforcement.  (Consider Trump’s fixation on parades.)  At a certain point, fantasy and reality blur.  At a certain point, the biggest Walter Mitty losers can delude themselves into believing they’re the good guys simply by cultivating a look. Provoked by the violent rhetoric emanating from Trump and his allies or internalizing a belief that white men with guns are sheepdogs protecting home and hearth, and you have a recipe for tragedy. 

Policing in a stable democracy must operate in the open.  Law enforcement should be clearly identifiable to the public they serve.  If you’re acting legally, there is no reason to hide who you are.  Otherwise, you erode public trust.  When legitimate law enforcement is indistinguishable from the LARPers you don’t believe your eyes anymore. 

Perhaps this moment will stimulate reform.  We can set guidelines for law enforcement agencies at the federal, state, and local levels relating to how they present themselves to the public they serve.  Place limitations on the sale and possession of certain items such as body armor and certain kinds of lethal and non-lethal weapons (though this probably wouldn’t pass constitutional muster in some cases).  Introduce stronger sanctions against impersonating law enforcement and military personnel.  Any of these would be a good start.

What we may not be able to fix is a cultural toxicity that long predated Trump and MAGA.  They are a symptom or the latest permutation of that ugliness.  The only road to improvement is through individual hearts and minds.  And that is a task fit for Sisyphus.

 

 

© 2025 The Unassuming Scholar

Vanity

Tomorrow’s the big celebration.

President Trump is finally getting the parade he’s been after for years.  On his birthday, no less.

There will be several thousand soldiers marching through the national capital.  There will be Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, and self-propelled howitzers rolling down the streets, and a swarm of helicopters in the city’s skies.

But wait, there’s more.  There will be fireworks, musical performances, and appearances by astronauts and NFL players.  In other words, the parade looks as if it will be the sort of cheesy corporate spectacle[1] that has characterized any number of “patriotic” celebrations of the last twenty years or so.

I don’t plan to watch.  I dislike these kinds of overblown displays as a general rule, and the fact that the administration has misappropriated the United States Army’s 250^th anniversary to serve the Narcissist-in-Chief’s unbounded vanity is a bitter pill.

But, you’re probably thinking, the president is making a heartfelt gesture celebrating soldiers past and present.  How could anyone object to that?

Well, it doesn’t look like it’s going to be awfully pleasant for the soldiers marching past the reviewing stand.  According to the Army’s public affairs office, the soldiers will sleep on folding cots in vacant federal buildings.  Rather than providing them with at least two hot meals a day, something easily achieved with mobile kitchen trailers, the soldiers will enjoy two MREs and one catered hot meal daily during their stay.  (Each will also receive partial per diem which will undoubtedly go far given the cost of takeout and fast-food meals these days.) Some news sources report that personal hygiene opportunities are being rationed, with field showers operating on rigid schedules.

Now that’s what I call military leadership, screwing the troops you profess to care about.

What’s most concerning are the optics.  There’s the frequently voiced objection that such displays are worthy of Russia, China, and North Korea.  That’s bad enough, because it’s true.  The mindboggling cost of the parade, not to mention the street damage which will inevitably result from numerous tracked vehicles passing over them, provokes wonder at the administration’s priorities.

However, the widespread perception across the political spectrum that this event was planned solely as Trump’s “birthday parade” is what I find most galling.   On the right, Saturday’s quick-time lollapalooza will be yet more justification for the MAGA revolution.  For the left, the association with Trump serves as further proof of our military’s supposed evilness.

Neither camp appreciates the planning and logistics involved.  It’s been known for a very long time that the Army’s sestercentennial was coming up, and you don’t just throw together a large-scale public display at the last minute.  In other words, there would most likely have been a public commemoration even if Kamala Harris had won the election.  With less bombast, perhaps, but a military parade nonetheless.  The emerging details of the logistical clusterfuck housing and feeding 6,600 people suggest the original plans had been more modest before blowing up at the last minute.

Context dismissed, the Big Parade will be always remembered as Trump’s celebration of Trump.  Before the media hype conflated the Army’s 250^th anniversary commemoration with the president’s autocratic fantasy of one-upping Putin, Xi, and Kim, I had privately looked upon the milestone with quiet satisfaction.  It was a satisfaction borne from the longevity of an institution which had played a part in shaping me as a person.  It was satisfaction that I had played a part in its story.  A trivial, momentary part, but I had been there for it all the same.

I don’t feel that now.  It’s as if something special of mine has been sullied.  I am also concerned by the MAGA influence on the military.  President Trump’s address to troops at Fort Liberty Bragg this week reflects this.  The speech was the usual word salad complaining about political correctness and how Joe Biden, Gavin Newsom, and Karen Bass ruined America.  The soldiers’ laughter, cheering, and boos were disturbing.  Subsequent reports said these soldiers were prescreened volunteers attending what was for all purposes a political rally.  While it’s reassuring that the audience were self-selected MAGA-heads who are not (we hope) representative of all Fort Bragg’s soldiers, an important norm is eroding.

That norm is the traditionally apolitical military.  Servicemembers are expected to keep their political opinions to themselves while on duty or any other occasion they are in uniform.  That custom is fading into the past.  The unprofessional conduct of the soldiers at the president’s speech, gratifying as it may have been to Trump, is a bad sign.

The public is noticing, and their conclusions do not augur well for the military’s reputation and its societal role.  You cannot turn the military into a political instrument in a democracy and have it remain a democracy.  This is what is at stake.  The question now is whether there is any turning back.

 

© 2025 The Unassuming Scholar

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[1] The Army reports that “more than 20” confirmed sponsors are (partially) funding the festivities.