After attending the “No Kings” protest at Lincoln Park in Portland (I carried an American flag on a short pole, which doubled as my cane), I watched the NBC Nightly News coverage of the military parade in Washington, D.C., expecting to see precise marching by thousands of soldiers in full-dress uniforms, with a gleeful President Trump presiding. Instead, I saw a few hundred soldiers in fatigues, marching in a way that could charitably be described as “mostly in step,” and watched while Trump read unenthusiastically from a speech he clearly had not written himself.
So while Trump got his birthday wish, the reality must have been a disappointment for him, which cheered me up considerably. We may be on the road to dictatorship, but we are still, I’m happy to say, a long way from the lock-step unity seen in North Korean, Chinese and Russian military parades.
Happy birthday to the diverse, inclusive U.S. Army!
Matthew Rawdon
Cumberland
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