Flexing America’s muscles

Flexing America’s muscles

According to Fox News and other “fake news” sites, President Trump thinks it might be a good idea to parade our military strength next Fourth of July. I’m all for it.

Apparently he was inspired by the French, a has-been international power that has that kind of parade on Bastille Day. We’ve always had parades on our Independence Day too, but until now they featured farmers, veterans, school marching bands — whatever it is that exemplifies our freedoms as opposed to our military power.

We did have big-time parades after helping defeat the Nazis. But then we were the world’s shining light; no one could threaten us and we didn’t need to threaten anyone with shows of military power. Those were victory parades. But that was over 70 years ago. Not a lot of victories for us lately, though. Too bad.

The Nazis, of course, were famous for their parades designed to threaten others with their military power, and the Soviets had similar parades. (How did that work out?) The Russians, Chinese and North Koreans still have them regularly. Such parades were, however, forbidden in the city of Rome when it was the capital of a democratic republic. Julius Caesar ignored the prohibition, crossed the Rubicon River with his victorious legions, staged one hell of a parade and the Roman Republic became the Roman Empire.

So why not us? Hail Caesar! Hail Trump! Let’s show those uppity North Koreans what a real parade is like. Never mind our republic. We’re an empire now.

Ron Kokish

Carbondale