President Donald Trump is about to get the made-for-TV image that he has always wanted.
On June 14 — also his birthday and Flag Day — Trump is set to oversee a military parade featuring tanks, military flyovers, and 6,000 troops in modern and historical uniforms marching down Constitution Avenue. Estimated to cost upward of $45 million to taxpayers, the parade, which was a late addition to celebrations planned for the 250th anniversary of the Army, should give Trump the flashy militaristic display he has wanted since his first term. At the time, Pentagon officials shut down the idea because they thought tanks rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue would make the United States look “very Red Square.”
But this weekend’s scheduled festivities provide Trump with the perfect opportunity to project the image of dominance and triumph his administration has worked to cultivate, echoing the styles and visuals of authoritarian nations past and present — even as the country has been engulfed in chaos, including over the last week as Trump deployed the National Guard and Marines to quell protests to immigration raids in Los Angeles.
There is a term for what Trump is doing: the “aestheticization of politics.”
