The Shame of Trump's Parade

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Today—250 years since the Continental Army officially formed to fight for the independence of the American colonies against the British monarchy—marks a milestone in President Donald Trump's effort to politicize the U.S. military. Though they are rare, military parades have happened before in Washington, D.C. For the most part, these have been celebrations of military achievements, such as the end of a war. But today is also Trump's birthday, and what he and his supporters have planned is a celebration of Trump himself.
A mark of a free society is that its public institutions, especially its military, represent the body politic and the freedom-enabling equal rights that structure civic life. If service members and the public begin to believe that the military is not neutral but is in fact the servant of MAGA, this will threaten the military's legitimacy and increase the likelihood of violent conflict between the military and the public. Today's events bring us one step closer to this disaster.
[Read: Trump's un-American parade]
I have seen the politicization of the military firsthand. Last month, I resigned my tenured position as a philosophy professor at West Point in protest of the dramatic changes the Trump administration is making to academic programs at military-service academies. Following an executive order from January, the Department of Defense banned most discussions of race and gender in the classroom. West Point applied this standard to faculty scholarship as well. As a result, my research agenda—I study the relationship between masculinity and war, among other things—was effectively off limits. I consider what the Trump administration is doing to the military-service academies as a profound violation of the military's political neutrality. That destructive ethos is the same one apparent in the parade scheduled for today.
Before Trump was reelected, the Army had planned significant celebrations across the country to mark this day, including the release of a commemorative postage stamp and a visit to the International Space Station by an Army astronaut. But according to The New York Times, arrangements for today's D.C. event, unlike the other plans, began only this year.
The day is scheduled to begin with a variety of family-friendly concerts, a meet and greet with NFL players, and military-fitness competitions, all on the National Mall. If all goes to plan, the celebrations will culminate with what organizers are calling a 'grand military parade' that starts near the Pentagon, crosses the Potomac River, and ends near the White House. The parade is anticipated to involve 6,700 active-duty soldiers and a massive display of Army equipment: dozens of M1A1 Abrams tanks and Stryker armored personnel carriers, along with more than 100 other land vehicles, 50 helicopters, and a B-25 bomber. Trump is scheduled to give remarks after the parade and receive a flag delivered from the air by the U.S. Army Parachute Team known as the Golden Knights. A fireworks show is set to follow later tonight.
The organizers have made it abundantly clear that today's purpose is to directly laud Trump and his politics. In promotional materials, they tell us, 'Under President Trump's leadership, the Army has been restored to strength and readiness.' They credit his 'America First agenda' for military pay increases, enlarged weapons stockpiles, new technologies, and improvements in recruitment, declaring that he has 'ensured our soldiers have the tools and support they need to win on any battlefield.'
Monica Crowley, the State Department's chief of protocol and a former Fox News host, went on Steve Bannon's podcast WarRoom to say that the concurrence of the U.S. Army's anniversary and Trump's birthday is 'providential.' She called it 'meant to be. Hand of God, for sure.' She added, 'It is really a gift, and we want to be sure that we celebrate in a manner that is fitting, not just of this extraordinary president but of our extraordinary country.' She also expressed hope that the crowd would serenade the president with 'Happy Birthday.' Clearly, Trump isn't merely the guest of honor; he is the reason for the party.
During his first administration, members of Trump's own Cabinet often thwarted his efforts to corrupt the Pentagon. This time, Trump has appointed a secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, who is willing to tear down the boundaries separating politics and the management of national defense. Trump and Hegseth claim to be purging the military of politicization instilled by previous administrations and resetting the DOD around the nonpartisan matter of readiness for war. But in reality, they have used this rationale as a cover to insert an unprecedented level of political partisanship into the military.
Other events in recent months have pointed in this same direction. For instance, in February, the administration fired the top lawyers for the Army, Navy, and Air Force. The only meaningful justification given for the move was Hegseth's claim that the fired lawyers might be roadblocks to the president's agenda—a frightening admission.
In January, the administration banned transgender people from serving in the military, not because they allegedly pose a threat to unit cohesion or because their medical treatment is unusually expensive, but because they are supposedly bad people ('not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member'). At present, transgender soldiers who have met all performance standards are being discharged simply because of the administration's bigotry against them.
[Read: A parade of ignorance]
The administration has also inserted its politics into all the military-service academies—the reason I left West Point last month. Trump and Hegseth have denied the validity of ideas that are taken seriously in a variety of disciplines and banned them from the classroom, including, as I noted above, matters pertaining to race and gender. Books and other works, most of which are by women and people of color, have been removed from the curriculum. The academic programs of the service academies are now structured around the Trump administration's ideological worldview. Faculty and cadets wonder if they are allowed to entertain perspectives inconsistent with the administration's politics.
In May, Hegseth led an evangelical prayer service in the Pentagon's auditorium. Standing at a lectern with the Department of Defense seal, Hegseth led the audience in prayer to 'our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ.' The main speaker at this service was Hegseth's pastor, Brooks Potteiger, of the Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship, in Goodlettsville, Tennessee. This church restricts all leadership positions to men, declares homosexuality immoral, and asserts that women should not serve in combat. Of course, there is nothing wrong with a secretary of defense acknowledging his religious faith. What's objectionable is the use of his authority to push his personal religious views on subordinates, especially as the director of a major institution of the secular state.
The president now routinely speaks to uniformed service members in his red MAGA hat, using his trademark rhetoric centering himself and belittling, even demonizing, his critics. He openly suggests a special alliance between him and the military. At Fort Bragg on Tuesday, for instance, Trump encouraged uniformed soldiers to cheer his political agenda and boo his enemies.
This is all extremely dangerous. Keeping the military a politically neutral servant of the constitutional order, not of the president or his political ideology, is vital to ensuring the security of civil society.
Up until a week ago, the blurring of the boundaries between the administration's ideology and the military had not yet manifested as an attempt to employ the military directly on Trump's—or the Republican Party's—behalf. The steps taken until that point had been mostly symbolic. (The one possible exception was the deployment of the military at the southern border in what is essentially a law-enforcement matter.)
But these symbolic expressions of military politicization have paved the way for that endgame—presidential orders that deploy the military for directly partisan ends. In just the past week, the Trump administration responded to protests against the enforcement of his immigration policies with military deployments. The likelihood that the administration will try to use the military against its political opponents is now very high. If that comes to pass, we will then learn just how successful Trump's efforts to politicize the military have been.
Illustration Sources: RoyalFive / Getty; Tasos Katopodis / Getty; WoodysPhotos / Getty; gerenme / Getty; JohnnyPowell / Getty; Win McNamee / Getty.
Article originally published at The Atlantic