Military birthday parade rolls quietly in Trump’s Washington

A soldier in a revolutionary war uniform sat under a tree, scrolling and scrolling with his cell phone. It was the Army’s bicentenary celebration in Washington, D.C., and I was looking for the entrance to their fitness competitions and cake-cutting rituals before the grand parade at night. Walking along Independence Avenue before noon, I heard a hustle and bustle. Behind the Agricultural Building Department, thousands of soldiers are being formed. They have been sleeping all night at the federal agency’s headquarters – workers have been asked to telework remotely to accommodate them – and now they are pouring into a stuffy day. Every conflict in Army history should be restored in a carefully choreographed performance, so soldiers wear period costumes: some from the Revolutionary War, some from the Civil War, World War, South Korea, Vietnam and the Gulf War. The uniforms were rented from Hollywood and shipped to them.

A year ago, when the army submitted a permit to celebrate its anniversary in DC, the idea was about three hundred personnel and four cannons, with more than a hundred folding chairs. But the agency happens to share birthdays with the president Donald Trump. Until now, the whole thing has been taken in a completely different context. The parade will cost $4 million. After Trump deployed the National Guard and Marines a week ago, he entered the streets of Los Angeles in a unified army protest ice Raid. Trump has said that any protester who opposes the military march in Washington, D.C. will encounter “very great force.” Around the capital, I heard people’s muse, whether Saturday would be like Tiananmen Square. In other cities, a series of “King-free” protests are planned on the day of the event. Laura Loomer, a Magazine Influential people warn her followers “You’re going to be in trouble when you’re in public this weekend.” On the day of the march, it appeared to be an act of political violence, and in Minnesota, two Democratic lawmakers were shot (one killed and another injured).

At DC, near the transport input of the engraving and printing office, a group of soldiers booed another passing unit. “It makes everyone hype,” one of the men told me. “It’s hard to explain to people outside, that’s how we stay united,” he added. “If I walked by, they might boo me because I’m the boss.” He told me that many of his men were 18 or nineteen. Most people have never been to DC, and they have explored the city together over the past few days, traveling, and then lying on the floor on the USDA’s floor or the General Services Administration’s regional office building, a list of buildings Trump plans to get rid of. When I asked him questions about Trump, he politely made it clear that the question was unreasonable. “Our job is to fight the war of the nation,” he said of the parade, “Get politics away from it. I told my guys, focus on the mission only. It’s huge for our history.” “We’ve been doing the mission. Execute the mission, and then we succeed, and come home safely.” He continued, “The next one we’re going to do is the three centenary anniversary, fifty years from now, so I might have gone long ago, or nearly.”

Earlier that week in Fort Bragg, when Trump summoned his political opponents, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, soldiers booed: “They are incompetent, they pay the troubled people, instigators and insurgents,” the president said. He sold his own goods at the Army Base and the soldiers who appeared in his audience had obviously been selected to ensure proper appearance and political leanings. When I stood in the crowd in my teenage costume, in DC, it was different from the viewing universe, in a few hours, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Pete Hegseth Will sit behind bulletproof glass with the President. A bunch of green berets walked by, then a band unit, practicing the instrument. As I looked up, I could see a woman in a white dress standing on the window of a luxurious high-rise apartment, staring at the scene.

I returned to the mall, where a sanitary ad for soldiers recruiting flashed with a large flag blowing in the wind, saying “January 6 is an internal work.” I passed some protesters, including protesters who had Trump and Putin embraced nakedly “photos of original Moscow Moors.” The city has a creepy abandonment, feeling the events it takes place on a large stage where giant security agencies lag most of its federal buildings behind black fences. Occasionally, a tricycle driver rides along empty downtown streets and is blocked from traffic by DC garbage trucks. Tanks arriving from the country have been idle in the shopping mall for a few days. Now, summer thunderstorms are threatening to lower the president’s march. I saw an ad on Craigslist, paying for “a fixed fee of $1,000” to “maximize and attendance” with red hats and gold accessories.”

At dusk, the sky was filled with wildfire smoke from New Jersey. The Army’s Golden Knights were originally the ending of the parade captain, almost landing at the beginning of the event, so that they would fall from the sky before the rain. There are no lines entering the safe perimeter, which is the responsibility of TSA workers. An old woman in front of me was told that she could not bring the mini American flag unless she took them out of the stick, which was a potential weapon. Following the parade route, the Revolutionary War troops were parading as I entered. “There is George Washington, straight from the grave!” someone called out. The parade announcer thanked Lockheed Martin and Coinbase for sponsorship.

A group of hundreds of protesters gathered in the “Zero Fascism” demonstration marched into the White House from Logan Circle. On the parade, many attendees held signs with messages such as “The Monarch is a butterfly, not the President”, standing next to the bystanders who leaned against the tank and occasionally broke into the “America” ode. There is no friction between them. The crowd was mostly quiet. A baby in a diaper crawled in the grass outside the National Construction Organization of the United States; TSA workers who completed the shift screening, gathered on a horse with the statue of Simón Bolívar – “The Liberator”. A woman in neon light chats with a family coming to the town to watch the parade. Nearby, a man holding a banner with a “practice nonviolence” told me that he worked with the poor and homeless population of the District of Columbia, “One hundred and twenty of them had no place in the city and we spent 400 million on this, the U.S. addiction to military idols.” A soldier passed by on a tank and made a heart-shaped sign with his fingers. “We love you! Happy birthday!” A woman wearing a pink Trump hat cried. “This is by no means Trump,” said a man in a vest. “It’s crazy for experts to say that. They’ll slander our American military.”

On January 6, some pardoned thugs went to the city to celebrate. A man is selling Trump merchandise outside the gate of the parade. “Baby, baby, baby, baby,” his friend told me, “Biden and his handlers did everything they could to humiliate this country.” “The United States needs this.”

Most of the attendees near me slowly flowed out before the fireworks show began. A friend of mine who grew up in East Germany came down from New York to see the tanks in the capital. The scariest thing she saw was at an Army Expo held earlier that day. “It’s not like my annual military parades like the wall fell in 1989,” she said. “Those are very loud, grim and cruel things. Every year I’m a kid, I think World War III has begun.” She continued, “We’ll never go if we have a choice. But we can’t. The sparse crowd of Trump parades are fascinating to her – you can offer Craigslist people to pay, but in the United States, you can’t force them to attend. Even most Republican lawmakers have attended the event.

In the oval shopping center, Trump took the podium and was sworn in to a group of soldiers standing in front of the stage. “Living a good life,” he said. When I quit, I passed by a man who was on a lawn chair under a red umbrella who he called himself the truth command. He sat under a sign that read, “Because you don’t agree, don’t hate each other.” The parade wanted to avoid the rain that flowed through him when he asked for a donation. “If I put ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ on this sign – that means fucking Joe Biden – I’ll get rich overnight.” “When you do the right thing to bring people together, people will walk past you. As we saw this morning, there’s no even home.” A man passed by in an American Legion hat and told him to go home. The conductor replied: “Take it your Old butt family. This is mine Home. I don’t even know where you are from. “Shut up,” another guy yelled