I love a parade. Give me a crisply uniformed high school marching band, tall hats smartly strapped under chins, horns held high, playing “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” A line of fire trucks, lights flaring, sirens whirring. I’m lucky enough to live around the corner from where parades — Memorial Day, July 4, Labor Day — pass by in Northbrook.
My wife and I don’t bother with folding chairs. Just stroll over and park our butts on the curb. Though that means we’ll have to groan to our feet when the knot of veterans pass, so we can stand and applaud. We’re spry. We’re still up to it.
Saturday’s parade in Washington, D.C. is different. The stated purpose is to honor the 250th anniversary of the Army. But it has — like so much in this country — been seized, retrofitted, and put to work serving the greater glory of one Donald J. Trump, president of the United States, honoring his 79th birthday.
Given how Trump has festooned the Oval Office in gold bling, I can see how the humility of that title, “president,” might begin to gnaw at him, and he’ll declare himself to be, oh, Emperor of Everything, Supreme King and Gloria Mundi.
Assuming he hasn’t already. There’s so much to keep track of. You miss important stuff. Trump could have ordered the original Bill of Rights sent over from the National Archives to use as kindling in his fireplace and, I swear, the news would blip for 6 minutes until pushed aside by the next jaw-dropping violation of national norms.
A president, remember, is a governmental official. Elected by the people. Subject to the laws of the nation, running the country as co-equal in power with Congress and the judiciary. Instead the bare Republican majority in Congress is sprawled prostrate, twitching to every whim of Trump, and the judiciary, increasingly packed with handpicked Heritage Foundation nestlings, either sings hallelujah or, when a dissenting voice is heard, can be ignored.
Who dares to enforce a court decision that crosses Trump? To echo a line credited to Stalin: “How many divisions does the U.S. Court of Appeals have?”
Trump has an army, which he’s forcing to parade down Constitution Avenue, mimicking his idol, Vladimir Putin — honestly, if they blare, “To Serve Russia,” that nation’s military anthem, from loudspeakers in Washington Saturday, you might be shocked. But would you really be surprised?
He also has Marines, 700 of whom he sent, along with the California National Guard to Los Angeles this week, over the objections of LA Mayor Karen Bass and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
An academic perfectly summed up what’s happening.
“He is declaring utterly bogus emergencies for the sake of trying to expand his power to undermine the Constitution and destroy civil liberties,” Ilya Somin, a law school professor, told the New York Times.
Mayor Brandon Johnson, striking a tone I cannot recall a Chicago mayor ever taking in the face of looming unrest, called upon the city to “rise up” and “push back” against the federal government undermining our rights.
“This is a necessary fight,” he said at his press conference. “I am counting on all of Chicago to resist in this moment because, whatever particular vulnerable group is being targeted today, another group will be next.”
It can’t be said often enough: if there is no due process, if there is no legal procedure, then the random kidnapping of people who are supposedly here illegally can shift to those protesting these actions and anyone else. No one is safe.
It says everything that these mass ICE arrests are targeting only Democrat-run cities — as if undocumented workers aren’t slaving away in Louisiana. This is about power, not policy.
Protests are expected to take place all over the country Saturday, aptly dubbed, “No Kings Day.” Chicago’s will run from 12 noon to 2 p.m. at Daley Plaza, though there will be others around the area: in Des Plaines, Mount Prospect, Oak Park, Arlington Heights, Schaumburg, Palatine, Evanston, Highland Park, Elgin, Naperville and Lisle.
This is not the first time people have poured into the streets to decry federal overreach. But if Trump is allowed to portray all protest as sedition — he called the Los Angeles protesters “insurrectionists,” which is some world-class gaslighting, given how he gave a tongue bath, then pardoned, the actual insurrectionists of Jan. 6, 2021— it might be among the last. The Constitution guarantees our right to assemble and freely air our grievances. The existence of scattered lawbreakers doesn’t change that, just as someone stealing change out of the coffee machine doesn’t permit the government to shut down the library.
We need to say, in a clear, loud, steady voice: “You can’t have our rights — we’re using them.”
