Banana Republicans

Fresh from calling Democrats who didn’t applaud for him “treasonous,” Cadet Bone Spurs has gone full-bore Tin Pot Dictator and ordered the Pentagon to begin planning his military parade:

The marching orders were: I want a parade like the one in France,” said a military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the planning discussions are supposed to remain confidential. “This is being worked at the highest levels of the military.”

Shows of military strength are not typical in the United States — and they don’t come cheap. The cost of shipping Abrams tanks and high-tech hardware to Washington could run in the millions, and military officials said it was unclear how they would pay for it.

“The one in France” was the Bastille Day parade that Trump attended last summer, complete with soldiers in uniform marching in formation down the Champs-Elysees, followed by tanks and other military hardware. He’s so desperate to be like his BFF Vlad, isn’t he? So pathetic. Guys, we are *this* close to him showing up somewhere in a fake general’s uniform with gold epaulettes. I’m telling you, it’s gonna happen.

The lengths that Trump’s fluffers and enablers will go to appease their baby POTUS is depressing. This is the end, folks. America doesn’t do military parades. We honor the military at every single sporting event, every Veterans Day and Memorial Day, every corporate freebie and discount from coast to coast. This parade isn’t about honoring the military, it’s about honoring Trump. Get real.

This isn’t who we are. If you haven’t read it yet, let me direct you to The Atlantic’s recent piece urging everyone to “boycott the GOP.” The article isn’t directed at people like me, who have always boycotted the Republican Party, but rather normal Republicans (you know, pre-Tea Party), the ones who believed in low taxes and deregulation but weren’t fascist dictator wannabes with friends in the Klan. Those people have been awfully quiet when it counted lately, and it’s time for them to step up, hold their noses, and vote straight-ticket Democrat to teach this current brand of crazies a lesson. Because electoral losses are the only thing the current bunch of GOPers holding office will hear. They are only in it for the power, so it’s the power they must lose:

The Republican Party, as an institution, has become a danger to the rule of law and the integrity of our democracy. The problem is not just Donald Trump; it’s the larger political apparatus that made a conscious decision to enable him. In a two-party system, nonpartisanship works only if both parties are consistent democratic actors. If one of them is not predictably so, the space for nonpartisans evaporates. We’re thus driven to believe that the best hope of defending the country from Trump’s Republican enablers, and of saving the Republican Party from itself, is to do as Toren Beasley did: vote mindlessly and mechanically against Republicans at every opportunity, until the party either rights itself or implodes (very preferably the former).

These are strong independents saying this, people who agree with many Republican policies. They’re saying that Trump and his enablers are destroying too many political norms, tearing apart too much of our political fabric. They must be stopped, and the ballot box is where we do these things in a civilized country. Even if you love Neil Gorsuch, even if you think the tax cut is Groovy McSmoothie, you should STILL vote against the Republicans because the price of these gains is too high.

A military parade is the kind of authoritarian, bullshit dictator move that is a visible step down a very dangerous path. We’ve already taken too many steps in that direction. Stop it now. Pull the plug.