What June 14 will mean for America, as the National Mall becomes Red Square
Desecration, disgrace and despondency will weigh on us, but also trigger a national survival instinct. Not since Antiochus brought a pig to Jerusalem has sacred ground been so brazenly violated.
- Lamentations 1:171
June 14, Flag Day, which also happens to be Donald Trump’s birthday (though I want to see his birth certificate), will be a day that we will not soon forget. One way or another, it could well mark a historical turning point.
The planned military parade through the streets of Washington DC was originally designed to depart from the Pentagon and go across the Potomac. Saner (relatively) heads seem to have prevailed, and now it looks like the route will be a straight line along Constitution Avenue from the Lincoln Memorial to the National Mall2, ending at the Ellipse opposite the White House and Washington Monument - the exact same spot from where Trump send domestic terrorists, some of them armed, to the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The route is short, which might spare Washington’s streets too much damage from heavy armaments (though the Army itself estimates that the damage to those streets could run about $16 million).3 But along the way, those tanks will be passing some of our greatest national landmarks, our holiest of holy places (current parade route below in, appropriately, gold).
The route begins with the Lincoln Memorial itself, and passes the Vietnam Memorial Wall, the MLK Memorial on the other side of the Reflecting Pool, the World War Two Memorial, and the Korean War Memorial. It will end right in front of the African American Museum and across the Mall from the Holocaust Museum. It will also pass within view of the Watergate, and the Kennedy Center, which has already been desecrated, spiritually contaminated like the Holy Temple in Jerusalem was in 168 BCE, when Antiochus Epiphanes brought in a pig to replace the daily sacrifice. 4
That most unkosher and deliberate of provocations by the Hellenistic autocrat, called the “Abomination of Desolation” by Jesus in the New Testament5 (the name taken from a verse from the book of Daniel), sparked the Maccabean Revolt. Jews and swine have never gotten along very well, and it really pushes our buttons when you bring a ham sandwich into the sacred center of our culture. That’s what has happened then, and it’s what’s happened to America since January 20 - most symbolically in the Kennedy Center, which Trump has pillaged. The Center has been spiritually desecrated. The place is now too sad even for many from the cast of Les Misérables, several of whom are boycotting performances. And say goodbye to Yo Yo Ma. If you want to see the definition of “laughter through tears” played out in real time, watch the recent Mark Twain Award presentation to Conan O’Brien, now streaming on Netflix. Below is an excerpt of his excellent acceptance speech, courageous, given the location.
January 6, 2021 was a kick in the face of democracy. The fact that this autocratic march will spit on all these symbols of America’s most painful moments - and then end right where that most treasonous of rallies took place - will both be an insult to those heroes and an inspiration for us to master this current moment.
Despite the pride we have in our Army’s 250 years, we know that they have been co-opted by this. They are doing this march at metaphorical gunpoint. It is not our military’s proudest hour. The Pentagon is now in the hands of a charlatan. The military has been vanquished from within, much like the Justice Dept. and Congress. What Rommel could not do to our fighting forces in Africa, an American president has done to them back home - as demonstrated by his recent invitation to humiliate the cadets - and himself - at West Point. We can only pray that when Trump inevitably calls on the troops to shoot Americans, they will place country over cult.
The parade will be a moment of great shame for all of America, not just our beloved military. Thank God that at least the tanks will not be rolling past Arlington Cemetery (we hope - otherwise, suddenly, everyone buried there would volunteer to take a turn as the Unknown Soldier). The military has never been put in such a position of shame.
The flag too has been co-opted. Our most sacred symbol has been stolen from us. This is worse than burning a flag, or wearing it as a patch on one’s butt. On Flag Day, the day designated to celebrate the Stars and Stripes that proudly waved while bombs burst in air over Baltimore Harbor - that flag will be an unwilling prop for an expected 6,600 soldiers, at least 150 vehicles, 50 helicopters, seven bands and several thousand civilians march through the streets, deliberately mimicking military parades of Red Square and other autocratic capitals.6 The Stars and Stripes will be Putinized.
The troops will be dressed as Americans but acting like Someone Else. Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are among nations who routinely stage grand parades featuring military personnel and hardware such as missile systems, goose-stepping troops, tanks and other armored vehicles.7 We really could do without the goose-steps, but this administration has already given us so many sieg-heil salutes that nothing that happens on June 14 will surprise us.8 I must emphasize that this parade, like Trump’s appearance at West Point, is, for the military, substantively equivalent to what Trump did to the big law firms and media conglomerates and what he’s trying to do to the universities.
The only difference is that CBS-Paramount has no tanks.
Harvard apparently does. It also has something more lethal: alumni.
If we shift our clocks to F.T. (Fascist Time), a military parade right now is just about right on schedule, squeezing it in right between the bogus declaration of a state of emergency, the illegal street arrests and the imprisonments without trial.9
Hitler began circumventing legal rights to detain his enemies after the Reichstag Fire. Like Trump, he declared a state of emergency, which gave him nearly unchecked power. Hitler’s emergency decree happened in March. Trump’s was on Day One - and then again, and again and again. Per Axios, Trump “has declared more national emergencies — more creatively and more aggressively — than any president in modern American history.” Not even Hitler did that.
And yes, I’m going there. That’s because Trump and his allies continually go there. Godwin’s Law no longer applies, and I’m going to keep knocking you over the head with 1930s history and Nazi Germany comparisons until everyone understands that. We now are four months into the Trump Reich, enough time to compare timelines. And, shock, shock - they align well.
Exhibit A is the military parade.
Hitler took power on Jan. 30, 1933.
Shortly after Hitler took power, Stormtroopers marched through Brandenburg Gate, on April 8, 1933. The idea was to project power and unity, while driving opponents underground. The photo below is from the US Holocaust Museum.
Look at that photo!
You can say all you want about June 14’s parade being just an “innocent celebration of Americana.” If only!10 Or, as Natasha Lyonne would say in Poker Face, “Bullshit!” All I can say is, wait until you see those tanks. Do you see tanks in this photo? Even Hitler didn’t try to squeeze tanks through the Brandenburg Gate. Trump wants tanks, which perhaps fittingly, will rip up Constitution Ave. In one of the greatest examples of unintended symbolism in American history, Trump’s tanks will literally trample upon the Constitution.
“Preserve and protect?”
Bullshit.
Granted, Trump is waiting an extra month beyond Hitler to stage his first show of military force, but hey, if his mom had delivered prematurely, I’m sure the parade would have happened already.
The timing aligns - it’s almost as if someone was working off a 1930’s template.
Oh, and Dachau, the first concentration camp, opened at about the same time as the first parade (March 2211). Hitler didn’t have the luxury of sending his illegally abducted victims to a gulag in a foreign country - at least not until he conquered Poland - but Trump has already done that. With more mega-prisons to come.
And the censorship of books began very early on. Take a look at this article from a Nazi publication. It almost reads like something coming out of Florida today.12 This article was published February of 1933, just a few weeks after Hitler became chancellor. Note the assistance of the Catholic Church.
It’s absolutely terrifying - in large part because it is happening here. See this story from today’s Washington Post: “It’s called the Library of Congress, but Trump claims it’s his.”13 Here’s an excerpt (more in the notes):
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt had decried the prior library leadership, referring to books that were not appropriate for children, even though the library does not lend books to children. Individuals cannot borrow directly from the Library of Congress. (Italics are mine)
“There were quite concerning things that she had done at the Library of Congress in the pursuit of DEI and putting inappropriate books in the library for children,’’ she said in a press briefing, referring to librarian Carla Hayden and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
The Nazi book burnings began in earnest in May 1933. They were centered at universities.
William C. Kirby, a professor of business administration and China studies at Harvard, put it this way in an op-ed published today:
The impact of the new National Socialist regime that came to power in January 1933 became clear on May 10 of that year, when the members of the German Student Union — among them many students from the University of Berlin — piled and burned books from public libraries on the streets of Berlin’s Opernplatz, the square opposite the university’s main building. A crowd of 70,000, including students, professors, and members of the SA and SS — the stormtroopers for the National Socialist Party — watched as thousands of volumes were torched.
The Nazi regime quickly purged universities of non-Aryan students and faculty and political dissidents. Leading scholars left Berlin in large numbers in a historic academic migration to the United States, Britain, and elsewhere. Universities lost any capacity for self-government. The University of Berlin abandoned its own traditions of teaching and research. Scholarship serving truth for truth’s sake was jettisoned for scholarship in service of the “Volk.’’ (Boston Globe)
This is a stark reminder that academia must not give in to this anti-intellectual pressure. Folks, it’s happening now!
Three weeks ago in Ohio, a man burned 100 library books from the Beachwood Public Library. As reported by Cleveland.com., the books, mainly about subjects such as Jewish history, African American history, and LGBTQ+ education, were burned in a series of social media posts.
So let’s check the template:
Book censorship - check
Prison camps - check.
Denial of rights - check.
State of emergency declared - check - many times.
Military parade in the capital - NEXT WEEK.
This all happened in Hitler’s first half-year in power. There are differences in execution, and our system is hopefully more resilient, in part because, as Timothy Snyder recently stated in an excellent CBC interview14, we know how the 1930s turned out. But that’s only if we constantly remind ourselves of that history, and ask ourselves how close to the boiling point do we want this frog to get?
The only question I have about the parade is whether there will be a special salute when troops pass the president on the 14th, as he watches from the January 6 Ellipse. Probably yes, but nothing too stiff, if you know what I mean. I am also wondering whether any non-Army regulars will be part of this parade. If a few uniformed Proud Boys are seen, even just off the parade route and observing, that will tell us something.
Trump has often talked about his private army. This might be their moment for them to emerge from backstage.
And why oh why do we need a military parade?
Most Americans certainly don’t.
Seeing so much military might on display might excite those who love to play with their G.I. Joes ‘til the dawn’s early light. But most Americans don’t need to wave their guns so brazenly to prove their manhood. "We know from human behavior that if you're insecure you can lash out or be showy. If, as Americans, we were truly confident in our armed forces we wouldn't need to display our military might," said Lyle Goldstein a former professor at the U.S. Naval War College, to the USA Today.
It’s not a celebration of American might that Trump is looking for, but rather a demonstration of the world’s submission to the will of the autocrat - and that begins with the submission of Americans themselves.
Seeing this parade will not be akin to the one staged after the Gulf War in 1991, a triumph for international partnership and American leadership in the world. Nor will it be comparable to French parades on Bastille Day - which Trump has envied - because they in fact celebrate a liberation from autocracy, not submission to it.
What’s happening on June 14 brings to mind the iconic photo of the weeping Frenchman, crying as the flags of his fallen nation were marched through the streets of Marseilles in 1940.
This immortal photo is a symbol of despair as his countrymen capitulated to the bully - and then the French turned on one another15.
That’s how many Americans will feel.
BUT…
We won’t.
That’s because we won’t be watching the parade. So many millions will not be glued to their TVs that day but will be marching themselves, all across the country, in hundreds of NoKings protests. The only way we can mitigate the damage of this heartbreaking autocratic assault on our beautiful capital city is to stage a show of force that dwarfs it, something they never saw in Berlin or Rome or Moscow during their fascist takeovers. Something that calls to mind the protests in Prague in 1968, or Berlin in 1989 or Poland a few years before that. Or Tiananmen Square (with hopefully better results). And it will won’t be focused on D.C. but will cover the whole country. Before the first tank passes a bowing, shamed Lincoln in the late afternoon, hundreds of these protests will already be saturating the media - even the reluctant, recalcitrant legacy media.
Oh, and did I mention that Hitler also coopted the media in the weeks just after he assumed power? Click on the footnote to find out how.16 Add that to the template. Check.
We need to protest like the fascist coup has already been completed. Because in some ways it has.
Trump has routinely defaced our most hallowed ground and sacred symbols. He used a marine’s grave at Arlington Cemetery as the backdrop for a campaign ad. He demolished indigenous burial sites along the border to make way for his wall. He autographed an American flag on the anniversary of 9/11, a violation of US Flag Code. And now, in one fell swoop, he’s desecrating both object and place: the flag on Flag Day and our capital city, where Lincoln sits, Martin Luther King stands and over 58,000 names of Vietnam’s war dead glisten in the noonday sun.
This is the most tasteless and inappropriate presidential birthday wish since Marilyn Monroe serenaded JFK. As we thank those who gave everything in the ultimate example of selflessness, on boulevards commemorating national traumas that still pain us, this Emperor of Ego sings a song of himself.
To fully understand what it means to have tanks rolling through the streets of the most sacred places in American civil religion - crushing the pavement beneath their tread, you need to go back to the biblical Book of Lamentations. In that case, it was the external enemy that destroyed the serenity of the city. This year, it will be the enemy from within attempting to enchain the masses in an unpardonable conquest.
Make no mistake. This is an attempt at conquest. This is an attempt to intimidate an entire nation with a military that responds honorably to the commands of their commander.
What Donald Trump wants the American people to see is the American Military marching lockstep at his command.
Read Lamentations 2:24 and imagine standing in front of the (Wailing) Vietnam Wall, the African American Museum, the Lincoln Memorial, the Holocaust Museum…. as the tanks roll by.
Clapping back then was a sign of derision, not approval. Lamentations depicts Jerusalem as disgraced and lonely. The most beautiful city in the world is now a specter of shame. As verse 1:17 (see the top of this post) declares, Jerusalem is now a “thing unclean.” Our shinig jewel has been defiled.
Washington D.C., our glorious capital, simple and stately, now sits solitary, with its sickeningly gaudy, gilded Oval Office and pigs desecrating our cultural holy places.
We beat Antiochus Epiphanes once before - we’ll beat him again, and cleanse and purify our defiled holy places, good as new.
Through it all, and through his own tears, Lincoln reminds us:
“Let us then turn this government back into the channel in which the framers of the Constitution originally placed it.”
And the day will soon come when tanks will trample upon the boulevards of our Constitution no more.
Rashi’s commentary: Zion spread her arms. As in, “and he will stretch out his hand in its midst,” like a person who moves his hands back and forth [showing] his pain with them. Another explanation: פֵּרְשָׂ×” צִ×™ּוֹן is an expression of breaking, as in, “no one breaks פּוֹרֵשׂ bread for them,” [and as in,] “they will not break [bread] for them in their bereavement to comfort them for the dead.” So did Menachem classify it. And in the language of the Mishnah, “the broken piece of bread פְּרוּסָ×” is intact.” It means [that Zion was] like a person in pain who clasps his hands and breaks them [from agony].
The current route, as disclosed by the US Army:
The Army is expecting to spend anywhere from $25 million to $45 million to celebrate its 250th anniversary and Donald Trump’s almost-80th birthday. I wonder if that price tag includes cake and candles.
Antiochus did a lot more than just bring swine to the altar, and not just at the main Temple. Here’s the detailed description of the contemporary Jewish / Roman historian Josephus:
The sieg-heil tracker counts at least six Nazi salutes by Trump-related supporters thus far. There have been many more not yet tracked.
See this from the US Holocaust Museum. March 1933, following the Reichstag Fire decree of a state of emergency:
The Talmudic Hebrew/ Aramaic word for “if only” is “Halavai” and it fits this context much better than a simple “if only.” "Halevai" also translates to “I wish," or "may it be so." It's essentially a way of expressing a desire or regret for something that didn't occur or cannot occur. The most poignant usage in the Talmud occurs in Berachot 28b. Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai is on his deathbed. His students ask him to bless them. He responds: May it be His will that the fear of heaven should be upon you like the fear of flesh and blood. The students are not impressed. Only that much? they ask. Surely a respectable blessing would be for the fear of heaven to far surpass their fear of human beings? Vlavai that it was that much, answers the rabbi. For know that when a person sins, he says let no man see me. Would that we cared as much about what God thinks as about what other people think, is Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkais blessing to his students.
Dachau
FDR quote poster from Boston Public Library
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt had decried the prior library leadership, referring to books that were not appropriate for children, even though the library does not lend books to children. Individuals cannot borrow directly from the Library of Congress.
“There were quite concerning things that she had done at the Library of Congress in the pursuit of DEI and putting inappropriate books in the library for children,’’ she said in a press briefing, referring to librarian Carla Hayden and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
Trump fired Hayden and US Copyright Office director Shira Perlmutter earlier this month as part of a shake-up at the world’s largest library, and sought to name two Justice Department officials to take their place.
The White House declined to respond to questions about the legal claim that the Library of Congress falls under the executive branch and other questions about the separation of powers.
CBC interview of Timothy Snyder:
See the obituary for Marcel Ophuls, the creator of documentary that exposed the capitulation of the French to their Nazi overlords, The Sorrow and the Pity. Ophuls just passed away last week.
Hitler and the press:
So strong! Wonderful reminder and history lesson that we canNOT forget.
I am marching in Philadelphia on June 14!
Thank you from Canada, Rabbi! We too hold our Constitution dear and are drawing the Hitler comparisons as well!