The United States Army took the Washington center on Saturday. From the morning, a military festival served as an appetizer to the first large military stop since 1991, scheduled for mid -afternoon. Washington is accustomed to celebrating on July 4, the national holiday, with a civic parade in which social organizations, music bands and students participate. However, military parades are not a tradition, because they are perceived as.
Many believe that that is what the United States is becoming the hand of Donald Trump, throughout the country, tens of thousands of Americans went out on Saturday to the street to protest against that drift. The military day, in addition, is celebrated with the country shocked by another state senator and his wife were shot and injured.
The after the end of the First Gulf War, at the time of George Bush Father. Other military stops took place after the end of the first and World War II and the Civil War, in times of national unity and patriotism. This Saturday, however, was the parade of the division.
Theoretically, the idea was to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the United States Army, but the fact of coinciding with Trump’s 79th birthday and that the president already contaminated the initiative. But that was united Trump’s decision to send troops to Los Angeles a few days before to suppress protests against their immigration policy, a perceived measure as the last step of his authoritarian drift.
“Democracy is being attacked before our own eyes: Governor of California, which has opposed the deployment of the National Guard and the Marines in Los Angeles and is fighting it in court.
“We are not living in normal times,” said Neera Tanden, head of the Center for American Progress (CAP), in an act organized by that Washington analysis laboratory. “We are living in a time when designed to use the powers of the State to intimidate opponents, silence the voices of the opposition and promote the objectives and power of the administration itself,” he argued.
“The deployment of the Marines takes place in the context of an administration that, since its inception, has put into the point of communication, the unions, the law firms, universities and non -profit organizations that consider opposition. Many of those organizations are, in fact, fundamental pillars of democracy,” he said. “We are faced with an imperial presidency, which ignores the Constitution and focuses on consolidating power in the hands of a single man.”
In that act, Harvard professor Steven Levitsky, co -author of How democracies die. “I think we have crossed the line towards some form of authoritarianism and we have done it much faster than most of us expected,” he said. “Suddenly, for hundreds of thousands of Americans, for university leaders, for law firms, for politicians on both sides of the spectrum, for civil society groups of all kinds, people have to think twice, even three, before participating in peaceful, legal and normal opposition acts. If people are concerned about government reprisals for opposing it, there is no longer a system Democratic, ”he said.
“Trump’s parade is nothing more than a vulgar demonstration of how weak it is. It is the kind of things that are seen with Kim Jong-un, Putin … dictators around the world that are weak and desperate.
“As the United States ambassador to Russia, I was forced to attend Putin’s military parades,” said Moscow with President Barack Obama. “I never liked. I am worried that my country is now wasting millions of doing the same,” he added.
“Trump’s expensive military parade is not a sample of patriotism, it is an ego sample,” former awarded military pilot and astronaut. “Military parades serve to honor those who have served [al Ejército]not to praise a president who only thinks of himself ”,
“We all like to enjoy a beautiful birthday party,” the Vermont Bernie Sanders senator. “But most of us do not celebrate it with a military parade of 45 million dollars financed by taxpayers.”
Not only among the Democrats there are critical voices. “I would not have done it,” “we were always different from, you know, the images that were seen in the Soviet Union and North Korea. We were proud of not being so.”
Trump warned that he would suppress protests with an aggressive use of force. The White House clarified after it was referring only to violent protests and that it would tolerate the peaceful. Wayne Ivey, Sheriff of Brevard County, in Florida, set his own rules: “If you throw a brick, a incendiary bomb or point with a weapon to one of our agents, we will notify your family where to collect your remains, because we will kill you, we will leave you dead as a corpse. We are not going to play,” he warned in a press conference.
“The idea of suppressing protests against a military parade is authoritarian. It is pure and hard authoritarianism, and society has to oppose,” said Levitsky. In the same event, Heather Cox Richardson, Professor of History of the University of Boston, abounded in the idea: “I terrorizes that there are videos of protesters against her military parade. If we think about the demonstration of strength she is planning and how these types of demonstrations have been in other countries, it is clear that they do not want protesters in the streets,” he said.
The parade, whose beginning was scheduled at 6:30 p.m. In the United States, the military remains outside of politics and enjoy broad citizen support. People spontaneously thank you for your service when they cross with soldiers and agents. It looks as something natural that the military has priority in shipping in the airplanes.
Trump, however, attacking his rivals. There was even the sale of the merchandise with the slogans of the Republican, which has also been seen this Saturday in Washington. The president has sent messages to his followers to raise funds in which he speaks of “my parade.” For many Americans, it is not your parade.
