Last year, Donald Trump was an honored guest of French president Emmanuel Macron at that country's Bastille Day military parade, an annual event in which thousands of French and foreign servicemembers in formal dress march through the streets of Paris alongside rumbling tanks and trundling missile launchers, and underneath thumping helicopters and roaring fighter jets. The only thing Trump didn't love about this idea is that he didn't think of it first.

Upon returning home, he ordered the Pentagon to plan something even bigger and more theatrical than what he'd just seen, because no one bests the United States in theatrical displays of unabashed nationalism and raw power. At last, the first of what he assuredly hopes will be the first of many iterations of this parade is scheduled for November 10—the Saturday before Veterans Day—in Washington, and the latest cost projection, according to CNBC, is a cool $92 million.

On some level, it gets exhausting to argue too strenuously that a particular allocation of taxpayer dollars is outrageous, because wrapped up in these arguments is some sort of value judgment about which people of different ideological persuasions will always disagree. I happen to think that $92 million would be more prudently spent on, say, the Affordable Care Act subsidies the White House is refusing to pay, or on reuniting the hundreds of immigrant families that, despite the government's promises, still remain separated from one another. But funding these initiatives isn't mutually exclusive, because the federal government has a lot of money, and Paul Ryan is happy to run a deficit when he wants to write checks he can't afford to cash. Trump isn't gutting health care for poor people because of this parade; he's gutting health care for poor people because he's an asshole.

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These decisions do reveal plenty about the psychology of those who make them, though. And as baffling as the urge to throw a jingoism party may seem—the fact that, as CNBC reports, officials only just concluded that Washington's crappy street grid can withstand the weight of tanks should have been one of many red flags about the wisdom of proceeding—it is exactly what you would expect a deeply unpopular president to make a priority. Thanks to this country's cult of troop worship, men and women in uniform will always have an approval rating of 100 percent. His gamble is that people watching at home will allow their respect for servicemembers to stand in the place of their contempt for the commander-in-chief—a man who celebrates the military deserves to be celebrated, too. This boondoggle could cost a billion dollars, and he'd still put on a camo MAGA hat and flash the double thumbs-up.

Besides, while grousing about ballooning estimates is temporary, performative patriotism is timeless. Trump knows that the moment boots hit the ground on Pennsylvania Avenue, no one will be able utter a peep about propriety any longer without being excoriated as an ingrate. Even now, the retort to dubious objectors is an easy one: This is for the troops. Who cares what it costs? Do you really not think the troops deserve this?

It's not about the troops, though. The military parade is a treat for himself, a cheap ego boost barely disguised as a tribute to real selflessness and sacrifice. There is no amount of your money that he wouldn't pay for that.