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Trump's wankfest 4th of July parade…

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Kiwithrottlejockey
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« on: July 04, 2019, 08:05:18 pm »



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Kiwithrottlejockey
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« Reply #1 on: July 05, 2019, 04:45:39 pm »


from The Washington Post…

Goodbye, America! Tanks for everything!

A farewell to a beloved friend.

By ALEXANDRA PETRI | 11:48AM EDT — Thursday, July 04, 2019

One of two Bradley Fighting Vehicles near the Lincoln Memorial for President Trump's “Salute to America” event for Independence Day in Washington on July 2. — Photograph: Andrew Harnik/Associated Press.
One of two Bradley Fighting Vehicles near the Lincoln Memorial for President Trump's “Salute to America” event
for Independence Day in Washington on July 2. — Photograph: Andrew Harnik/Associated Press.


WELL, AMERICA, it has been great.

On the Fourth of July, President Trump and his followers are taking over the Mall and the Lincoln Memorial, as tanks roll down the streets and jets fly overhead. The Park Service has diverted $2.5 million to pay for this extravagance. This, apparently, is a Salute to America, some sort of combination birthday-retirement-funeral? It is unclear where America is going, but you certainly seem to be on your way out.

Since you've invited us to this party, America, the girls and I wanted to get together and do something sort of special before you leave for good. We all signed a card. We put our John Hancocks on it and cried, thinking back to when we first saw you, to that big document with the enormous signature and a few dozen other, smaller signatures on it, which meant that a brand-new idea was in the world.

We've had some times, America. Who would have thought that some 18th-century men objecting to paying taxes without representation would have been responsible for so much liberty, so many milestones and such a weird cheese?

Truly what was up with that cheese? It managed to give the impression of still being wrapped in a thin layer of plastic even when removed from its thin layer of plastic. It was always partially melted. Its aftertaste clung to the roof of your mouth for hours, long after the thing itself was gone.

Sorry, I got distracted. This day is supposed to be about you. You were very protective of your flag, but you also were chill about it when people wanted to burn it as a protest. You sort of let people do their own thing, but you had values. It was a good balance, eventually.

Oh man, remember when you gave up drinking for a hot second, though? You were a mess. I’m glad that's not happening still.

Remember that time you built the Hoover Dam? Remember the Gold Rush? Man, remember that speech from William Jennings Bryan, about being crucified on a cross of gold? I remember we looked at each other like, is this guy for real? We can agree now that that was a little dramatic, can't we? Woof! Remember populism? Oh man, remember “The Wizard of Oz”? Did we ever figure out what that was a metaphor for?

Remember Daniel Webster? Didn't he make a deal with Satan, or something?

I know I complained about how you would try to get everyone to sing a song about you, and the fact that it was an unsingable drinking song! Can we all agree, now, that it was not singable? Maybe it was a metaphor.

I don't know why I'm crying. It's fine. I am sure whoever comes to fill this position next will do a good job, even if they are not represented by a confusing goateed uncle in a loud outfit drawn by Thomas Nast, as you were. It was a weird choice, but one that I gradually became fond of. And I'm sure wherever you go next, you're going to be very happy. Even if I don't like it, personally.

You know what, no. I'm going to say it. You spend all this time hanging out with creepy autocrats, and I think something is starting to rub off. What is this whole event? Why are there tanks? This isn't like you at all. You weren't perfect as you were, but — I don't like this new you.

I just — I wish we weren't saluting you like this.

You've been a mess, sometimes. That is an enormous understatement. A mess, a disappointment, a mass of divisions and contradictions. But at your best, you were really something. I'm starting to wonder if you weren't irreplaceable. Without you, who is going to welcome the poor, the hungry, the downtrodden, the masses yearning to breathe free? That was your whole thing, but if the photos I've seen from the border lately are any indication, with people crowded into unthinkable conditions for months and days, you seem to have given up on that.

It doesn't seem like you, to just not care about what happens there. Maybe that was you once, but — I really thought …

And this Donald Trump guy — what do you see in him? Is this for the long haul? Because I wish you wouldn't, America. I really wish you wouldn't change yourself so much for him. No, that is not quite right. I guess, rather, he brings out the parts of you that I always hated the most. I wish you were with someone who did not do that.

But it's not up to me. It's up to you and your electoral college.

No, I'm sorry. This is supposed to be a salute.

We will try to remember you — not quite as you were; we have never been good at remembering exactly that. But certainly not as you are now.


__________________________________________________________________________

Alexandra Petri is a Washington Post columnist offering a lighter take on the news and opinions of the day. She is the author of A Field Guide to Awkward Silences. She joined The Post as an intern in 2010, after graduating from Harvard College.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related to this topic:

 • Greg Sargent: Trump's hijacking of the Fourth of July just got a lot uglier

 • Erik Wemple: ‘Fox & Friends’ treads on dumb terrain: What if Obama had called in the tanks?

 • Jennifer Rubin: Trump's celebration of himself is the perfect reminder of why he must leave

 • Karen Tumulty: The brightest star this Fourth of July? Donald Trump. Oh, and the tanks.

 • The Washington Post's View: Trump's Fourth of July plans just keep getting worse


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/07/04/goodbye-america-tanks-everything
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Kiwithrottlejockey
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« Reply #2 on: July 05, 2019, 04:46:34 pm »


from The Washington Post…

Trump tried to make Independence Day all about him.
He ended up looking small.


Missing from the president's speech was any sense of humility as a vital aspect of American greatness.

By EUGENE ROBINSON | 8:49PM EDT — Thursday, July 04, 2019

President Donald J. Trump with first lady Melania Trump at the Lincoln Memorial on July 4. — Photograph: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post.
President Donald J. Trump with first lady Melania Trump at the Lincoln Memorial on July 4. — Photograph: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post.

PRESIDENT TRUMP chose the wrong backdrop for his attempt to make Independence Day all about himself. Standing beneath the majestic statue of Abraham Lincoln, occupying a space where great orators have stood, Trump looked and sounded quite small.

He gave a triumphalist speech, of course. “Our nation is stronger today than it ever was. It is its strongest now,” Trump claimed. He went on to give extended salutes to each of the nation's armed services, punctuated by flyovers by Coast Guard, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Army aircraft and the singing of the corresponding anthems. Anyone who came to see an elaborate military pageant did not go home disappointed.

Trump declared that “we are one people chasing one dream and one magnificent destiny,” but that misses the point. We are, in fact, a nation, bound together not by blood but by our creeds, our institutions and our laws. Trump treats the law like an inconvenience, an annoyance.

Missing, as Trump spoke in Lincoln's shadow, was any sense of humility as a vital aspect of American greatness. But you might have guessed that.

Since he visited French President Emmanuel Macron two years ago and witnessed the Bastille Day parade in Paris, Trump has wanted a big military extravaganza of his own. On Thursday, he got one — and, predictably, he put himself smack at the center of it.

All week, reporters and citizen-journalists spotted heavy-duty Defense Department hardware being trucked into town for Trump's martial-themed celebration of “your favorite president, me — Bradley Fighting Vehicles, M1A2 Abrams tanks, an M88A2 Hercules recovery vehicle. The flyovers included a B-2 stealth bomber, two F-22 Raptors, two V-22 Ospreys, two F/A-18 Super Hornets, two F-35s, one of the planes used as Air Force One, the famed Blue Angels and various other military aircraft. All that was missing was a reviewing stand, like the one on Red Square where grim-faced Soviet leaders used to watch the tanks roll past.

Oh, wait, there was a reviewing stand of sorts — a closed-off VIP section near the Lincoln Memorial where Republican Party donors and bigwigs could sit up front, basking in the glow of their maximum leader. Democratic Party luminaries were not invited.

That is outrageous, of course, but not surprising. It was clear from the beginning that Independence Day meant nothing more to Trump than an opportunity to choreograph a made-for-television re-election event and give himself an obscenely expensive ego massage.

Presidents, as a rule, have treated the Fourth of July with special reverence because they understand that the day belongs to us, not to them. The few attempts by presidents to take partisan advantage of the holiday have not gone well.

In 1970, at the height of unrest over the Vietnam War, Independence Day was turned into something called “Honor America Day” — an extravaganza staged, like Trump's, at the Lincoln Memorial. President Richard M. Nixon videotaped a speech to be played at the event; even he had the good sense not to attend in person, instead decamping to his home in California.

That event, billed as apolitical and non-partisan, turned out to be anything but. Evangelist Billy Graham led off by blasting opponents of the war as “a relatively small extremist element.” Raucous, drum-beating protesters came out in force; some of them overturned a Good Humor truck, prompting riot police to move in. A few neo-Nazis showed up for good measure. The smell of tear gas hung in the air. Before going onstage, the program's host, comedian Bob Hope, reportedly surveyed the scene and quipped: “It looks like Vietnam, doesn't it?”

Actually, it looked like an America that didn't care to be told how to think about Independence Day.

That's what Thursday looked like, too. Protesters were not allowed to fly the now-famous “Baby Trump” balloon, so they inflated it and sat it on the Mall. MAGA hats and Trump T-shirts abounded. There was some friction between pro- and anti-Trump revelers, including a brief clash near the White House at the scene of a flag-burning whose organizers had been granted an official permit.

This is the most collective of our holidays, in that it celebrates our common heritage and enterprise, but it is also the most individual. It commemorates not a battle but a document, and each of us gets to decide what the Declaration of Independence means — what patriotism entails, what the flag represents, what the fireworks symbolize. Your view of what the Fourth of July means is every bit as valid as the president's. Mine is, too, and it excludes fighters and bombers over the Lincoln Memorial.


__________________________________________________________________________

Eugene Robinson writes a twice-a-week column on politics and culture for The Washington Post and hosts a weekly online chat with readers. In a three-decade career at The Post, Robinson has been city hall reporter, city editor, foreign correspondent in Buenos Aires and London, foreign editor, and assistant managing editor in charge of the paper's Style section. He started writing a column for the Op-Ed page in 2005. In 2009, he received the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for “his eloquent columns on the 2008 presidential campaign that focus on the election of the first African-American president, showcasing graceful writing and grasp of the larger historic picture.” Robinson is the author of Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America (2010), Last Dance in Havana (2004), and Coal to Cream: A Black Man's Journey Beyond Color to an Affirmation of Race (1999). He lives with his wife and two sons in Arlington.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trumps-salute-to-america-was-a-made-for-television-reelection-event/2019/07/04/b58c9b34-9eaa-11e9-b27f-ed2942f73d70_story.html
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Kiwithrottlejockey
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« Reply #3 on: July 06, 2019, 02:21:11 pm »



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Kiwithrottlejockey
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« Reply #4 on: July 06, 2019, 03:20:25 pm »



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Kiwithrottlejockey
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Having fun in the hills!


« Reply #5 on: July 07, 2019, 02:17:03 pm »


This is waaaaaaaay more interesting to watch than Trump's wannabe wankfest military parade…



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