Trump’s fascination with military parades shows off many of his worst qualities: his bluster; his authoritarian impulses; his childishness; his egotism; his lack of understanding of our country’s values and political roots; and his mindless love of spectacle. He’s approaching this as if he were a young boy playing with plastic tanks and army men in his sandbox.
There are two things about it that are really frightening. First, he obviously has no objection to emulating Xi, Kim, and Putin; and second, he has no awareness of what war is all about. For him, as I put it in a previous post, a war is a bomb, a parade, and a statue, not destruction, death, and misery.
There’s an interesting article on Vox.com today about what a war in Korea would really be like. It focuses largely on the damage Kim could do with chemical weapons. It’s sobering, and well worth your time.