Trump loves playing toy soldiers, but it is not a game
Conflating patriotism and division with personality cult, Donald Trump taking the salute as the US Army celebrated its 250th anniversary cunningly serves to give his addicted supporters a much-needed fix as America threatens to split at the seams thanks to his bewildering presidency.
Some 6000 soldiers with weapons marched in the massive grand parade through Washington streets alongside mounted cavalry, 50 military aircraft and 60-ton M1 Abrams battle tanks, while overhead a flyover of bombers, helicopters and vintage warplanes also coincided with the president's 79th birthday. People marching honour the history of the men or women who serve; the thunder of rolling metal is the expression of power. The day inevitably turned the memorial into a Trump rally.
Few seemed to notice the ironies: Trump glories in military might, yet was medically exempt from serving in Vietnam in 1968 after a foot doctor and friendly family business associate diagnosed heel spurs; he later attacked Republican rival John McCain, a Navy flyer and POW at the Hanoi Hilton, saying, 'he's not a war hero. He's a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren't captured '; Meanwhile, the $69 million parade comes just months after Trump slashed funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Meanwhile, as Trump bathed in birthday adulation, protests erupted across the US with the 'No Kings' group adding a personal anti-authoritarian slap in the face to the president for defying court orders and questionable deportations.
The Army celebrations were surely tainted by Trump's decision to send US Marines and the National Guard against fellow Americans protesting raids on immigrant communities in California the week before, and his subsequent threats to use the military against protesters in Washington exercising their First Amendment right. 'These are people who hate our country .… if any protesters want to come out, they will be met with very big force,' he warned.
Spectacle is often the language of empire, and just as the Romans did, Trump used the pageantry of the grand military parade to remind Americans who ruled the world and who was in charge. Trump is pushing a myth that America has fallen from greatness. Yet his empire runs hundreds of military bases across the globe, ensures policies preserve US economic hegemony and exports American ideals.
The late Jimmy Carter in 2019 told Trump during his first term as president how China has not wasted a single penny on war and was ahead of a US that had squandered $3 trillion on military spending and was 'the most warlike nation in the history of the world,' because of a tendency to try to force others to 'adopt our American principles'.
But Trump replaced bite with bark and threw the switch to vaudeville while his supporters lapped up his threats to invade Canada, Mexico, Panama and Greenland and promises to end wars in Ukraine-Russia and Gaza. But when the US Army marched down Constitution Avenue yesterday, in the rubble of Gaza, Israel or Iran, nobody sang Happy Birthday Mr President.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Sydney Morning Herald
39 minutes ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Baby brain: Why MAGA's pro-natalist plans are ill-conceived
America's politicians have babies on the brain. In February, President Donald Trump told officials to make IVF cheaper. Even without its procreator-in-chief, Elon Musk, the White House is thought to be working on a bigger package of pro-natalist policies. Vice-President J.D. Vance is keen. Mr Trump says he favours a $US5000 (about $7700) handout for new parents. In Britain, meanwhile, Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, a MAGA-ish opposition party, has proposed tax breaks and benefits to encourage women to have more children. Politicians have long feared the fiscal consequences of an ageing population, with too few young workers supporting legions of pensioners. Governments in places with very low birth rates, such as Japan and South Korea, have spent billions trying to reverse the decline, with little success. The new pro-natalist policies of the transatlantic right differ from older ones in that they are more targeted at working-class women, whose fertility rate has fallen the most. That might make them a bit more effective. But not at a reasonable cost, or without creating perverse incentives. Previous attempts to deliver a baby boom have either failed or been eye-wateringly expensive, relative to the number of extra births they deliver. Hungary's prime minister, Viktor Orban, started a big pro-natal push in 2011, and has since given parents everything from tax breaks and cash handouts to free child care. These policies cost a staggering 5.5 per cent of the country's GDP annually – more than almost any government will spend on an ageing population in any year between now and 2050. In February, mothers of two were promised a lifelong exemption from income tax. Hungary's fertility rate rose to 1.6 children per woman in 2018, from 1.2 in 2011, making it a poster child for populist pro-natalists everywhere. However, it has since dipped, suggesting handouts encouraged some mums not to have more babies, but to have the same number sooner. Other countries, including Japan, Norway and Poland, have tried tax breaks, handouts, maternity leave, subsidised child care and even state-sponsored dating, to little effect. Such policies mostly soften the blow to the finances and career prospects of professional women from having children, without persuading them to have more. Like Mr Orban, both Mr Farage and Mr Vance see pro-natalism as a way to boost the native population over the immigrants they so dislike. However, they would not spend as lavishly as Hungary, and they would focus the cash more narrowly on poorer parents. Mr Farage would scrap a cap on benefits, which stops families claiming benefits for more than two children, and boost the threshold below which earnings are exempt from income tax for one half of a married couple. Mr Trump's handouts would be a bigger relief for poor households than rich ones. Underpinning these policies is an assumption that poorer women are more likely to respond to incentives to have more children. Indeed, their fertility rates do seem more elastic than those of professional women. Whereas the fertility rates of older, college-educated women have remained fairly steady over the past six decades, most of the collapse in fertility in America and Britain since 1980 stems from younger and poorer women having fewer children, particularly from unplanned pregnancies. Loading In 1994, the average age of a first-time American mother without a university degree was 20. Today, about two-thirds of women without degrees in their 20s have never given birth. Mr Trump's and Mr Farage's policies might therefore lead to more babies being born than the approaches of places like Norway, which focus on offering child care, a benefit that professional women tend to take up.
The Age
43 minutes ago
- The Age
Baby brain: Why MAGA's pro-natalist plans are ill-conceived
America's politicians have babies on the brain. In February, President Donald Trump told officials to make IVF cheaper. Even without its procreator-in-chief, Elon Musk, the White House is thought to be working on a bigger package of pro-natalist policies. Vice-President J.D. Vance is keen. Mr Trump says he favours a $US5000 (about $7700) handout for new parents. In Britain, meanwhile, Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, a MAGA-ish opposition party, has proposed tax breaks and benefits to encourage women to have more children. Politicians have long feared the fiscal consequences of an ageing population, with too few young workers supporting legions of pensioners. Governments in places with very low birth rates, such as Japan and South Korea, have spent billions trying to reverse the decline, with little success. The new pro-natalist policies of the transatlantic right differ from older ones in that they are more targeted at working-class women, whose fertility rate has fallen the most. That might make them a bit more effective. But not at a reasonable cost, or without creating perverse incentives. Previous attempts to deliver a baby boom have either failed or been eye-wateringly expensive, relative to the number of extra births they deliver. Hungary's prime minister, Viktor Orban, started a big pro-natal push in 2011, and has since given parents everything from tax breaks and cash handouts to free child care. These policies cost a staggering 5.5 per cent of the country's GDP annually – more than almost any government will spend on an ageing population in any year between now and 2050. In February, mothers of two were promised a lifelong exemption from income tax. Hungary's fertility rate rose to 1.6 children per woman in 2018, from 1.2 in 2011, making it a poster child for populist pro-natalists everywhere. However, it has since dipped, suggesting handouts encouraged some mums not to have more babies, but to have the same number sooner. Other countries, including Japan, Norway and Poland, have tried tax breaks, handouts, maternity leave, subsidised child care and even state-sponsored dating, to little effect. Such policies mostly soften the blow to the finances and career prospects of professional women from having children, without persuading them to have more. Like Mr Orban, both Mr Farage and Mr Vance see pro-natalism as a way to boost the native population over the immigrants they so dislike. However, they would not spend as lavishly as Hungary, and they would focus the cash more narrowly on poorer parents. Mr Farage would scrap a cap on benefits, which stops families claiming benefits for more than two children, and boost the threshold below which earnings are exempt from income tax for one half of a married couple. Mr Trump's handouts would be a bigger relief for poor households than rich ones. Underpinning these policies is an assumption that poorer women are more likely to respond to incentives to have more children. Indeed, their fertility rates do seem more elastic than those of professional women. Whereas the fertility rates of older, college-educated women have remained fairly steady over the past six decades, most of the collapse in fertility in America and Britain since 1980 stems from younger and poorer women having fewer children, particularly from unplanned pregnancies. Loading In 1994, the average age of a first-time American mother without a university degree was 20. Today, about two-thirds of women without degrees in their 20s have never given birth. Mr Trump's and Mr Farage's policies might therefore lead to more babies being born than the approaches of places like Norway, which focus on offering child care, a benefit that professional women tend to take up.
Sky News AU
an hour ago
- Sky News AU
Donald Trump ‘snubs' Anthony Albanese at the G7
Sky News Political Editor Andrew Clennell discusses US President Donald Trump's decision to leave the G7 early to address the escalating conflict in the Middle East. 'Now, since that snub, the President has reached out to two other leaders who he also cancelled G7 meetings with,' Mr Clennell said. 'Despite the failure of Mr Trump to hang around to meet Mr Albanese, the Australian government's view is that Donald Trump has agreed to a meeting. It really is just a question of when it occurs.'
