A Parade Fit for a Despot

The president is having a military parade for his birthday.

Just as Putin, Hitler, or any other dictator.

He’s trying to make it look like it’s a military celebration.

He wants people to believe that he and “friends” are paying for it.

We’re paying for it, and not only with our tax money.

We’re paying for it right now on the streets of Los Angeles as National Guard troops and Marines have been deployed as if the city needs an intervention.

It only needs a president that respects the rule of law and the right to lawful protest.

These are peaceful protests.

Every day, America looks increasingly like countries we mocked and derided for their lack of freedom.

Countries with tinpot dictators who propped themselves up to look powerful and important.

The President of the United States of America is already powerful.

The military he or she commands is the most powerful on the planet.

That ought to be enough.

Garish displays of military might impress some, but we have no need to impress.

This is how far we’ve fallen.

We have a president who wants to be a tyrant.

Even the worst presidents before him, some who stooped very, very low, would be impressed or horrified at the current one.

He renames military bases to revert back to the names of Confederate traitors.

He uses jackbooted hoodlums wearing masks to snatch people off the street as they do in countries with leaders that wear military uniforms with epaulets and sabers.

And if all of this isn’t enough, he does this under the guise of Christian leadership.

He represents Christianity like Charles Manson represented sanity.

Like Elmer Fudd represents elocution.

Like Fat Albert represents svelteness.

He isn’t enough of a Christian witness to be a corruption of the faith, not sound enough to be considered counterfeit.

He’s a walking, talking abomination.

He is as close to Jesus as the east is to the west.

People of Faith who are enamored with him, who believe that he was sent by God to reclaim and redeem the country for Christ are eating reprobation for breakfast and dining on blasphemy for dinner.

He’s the final solution for those who would remake America as a fascist, racist Sodom and Gomorrah masquerading as Eden.

The president isn’t fooling anyone who has a passing relationship with morals and ethics.

He is unfit and unwell.

He is churlish, uncouth, and unrefined.

He is capricious, loquacious, and obtuse.

He is everything a president shouldn’t be, yet he is lauded by some admirable and exemplary.

Those people may celebrate the president’s birthday.

They may appreciate this display of military preening.

Many of us will not.

History will not appreciate it, and its judgement will be most unmerciful.