"I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more."

—John Adams to Abigail Adams, July 3, 1776



No tanks? No overpriced, underperforming strike fighters?



John Adams. What a loser.



Apparently, El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago is going to have his Peronista moment, come hell, high water, or the National Park Service. From the Washington Post:

Trump, who had already ordered up a flyover by military aircraft including Air Force One and the Navy’s Blue Angels, has pressed to expand his “Salute to America” event further with an F-35 stealth fighter and the involvement of Marine Helicopter Squadron One, which flies the presidential helicopter, according to government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak frankly. He also pushed to bring military tanks to the site of his planned speech at the Lincoln Memorial, prompting National Park Service officials to warn that such a deployment could damage the site, these individuals said...

Trump told reporters late Monday that “we’re going to have some tanks stationed outside,” following a report about the emerging plans by The Washington Post. He cast the spectacle as part of a Fourth of July “like no other. It’ll be special.”

Boy, is he ever going to be shocked to discover during the flyover when he can actually see the F-35s, the Flying Swiss Army Knives, have their customary nervous breakdowns.

The bunting is up. Mark Wilson Getty Images

Oh, and in case you thought the sheer grift had been neglected, fear not. This is a taxpayer-funded, self-promoting campaign wankfest, just like all of those that get him so turgid out in airplane hangars and vacant arenas across this great republic. From CNN:



The perimeter of the restricted area will be "immediately around the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, and about midway down through the Reflecting Pool," said Matthew Miller, special agent in charge of the US Secret Service Washington Field Office, in a news conference Friday with local and federal officials on the July Fourth celebrations in the nation's capital. The White House confirmed to CNN on Saturday that there will be a ticketed area for VIPs, friends, family and members of the military. Those tickets come at no cost, but the White House did not say how it would specifically be allocated. The White House added that the entire event is free for the general public with no ticket requirement. Miller said the Secret Service will provide security for Trump's "Salute to America" event, but that the White House is issuing the tickets.



Other details of the July 4 celebration remain up in the air with just days to go. White House officials plan to give out tickets for attendees to sit in a VIP section and watch Trump’s speech but did not develop a distribution system before much of the staff left for Asia last week, according to two administration officials. Officials also are still working on other key crowd management details, such as how to get attendees through magnetometers in an orderly fashion. Traditionally, major gatherings on the Mall, including inauguration festivities and a jubilee commemorating the start of the new millennium, have featured a designated event producer. But in this case, the producer is the president himself.

Just the way they did it in Philadelphia when the Declaration of Independence was read out on the steps of what became Independence Hall. (John Hancock made sure all the best customers of his smuggling business got seats in the VIP section.) At this point, I'm amazed he hasn't demanded that they float the Nimitz up the Potomac.

Because this is a celebration of all Americans, and not a political event at all, the tickets are being handed out by the Republican National Committee. Some of the president*'s loudest and proudest supporters are planning a real hootenanny for themselves; after all, yelling at detained and destitute migrants through a cyclone fence can only go so far as a demonstration of your commitment to the country's founding values. This thing has the potential to be the biggest, chewiest cluster of fck in Washington since the last time Louie Gohmert dined alone. And an infinitely more perilous one.

The tanks remind us how big and powerful the president is. Mark Wilson Getty Images

This is out-and-out banana republic authoritarian performance art. That it also is obviously a multimillion-dollar exercise in low comedy is sadly beside the point. It should be mocked, relentlessly and everywhere, by every American who still has a sense of dignity and a vague memory of what an actual celebration of patriotism feels like. Instead, all of us have a certain new awareness of what Frederick Douglass was talking about in 1852.

As the sheet anchor takes a firmer hold, when the ship is tossed by the storm, so did the cause of your fathers grow stronger, as it breasted the chilling blasts of kingly displeasure. The greatest and best of British statesmen admitted its justice, and the loftiest eloquence of the British Senate came to its support. But, with that blindness which seems to be the unvarying characteristic of tyrants, since Pharaoh and his hosts were drowned in the Red Sea, the British Government persisted in the exactions complained of.



Douglass, of course, went on to explain to his audience that Independence Day meant nothing to the people held in slavery elsewhere in the country. But that he prefaced his condemnation with a expression of respect for the courage it took the Founders to declare what they declared demonstrates that Frederick Douglass in 1852 had a better idea of what the day truly represents, at least theoretically, than does the President* of the United States 167 years later. In the recorded accounts of the Second Continental Congress, there is no mention of tanks, overpriced and underperforming strike-fighters, or aging narcissists who need to spend millions of dollars to overcompensate all over the National Mall.

Losers.



Respond to this post on the Esquire Politics Facebook page here.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io