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The Vaporware Presidency by Jonathan V. Last at November 14, 2018
Step 1: Propose something ridiculous. Step 2: Cause chaos but don't deliver it. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Did you enjoy President Trump’s military parade?
Last winter Trump announced that he was going to stage a military parade in which our glorious armed forces would march down the boulevards of the nation’s capital proudly displaying their firepower and awesome weapons of war. Then we all spent several days bickering about whether or not it was proper for America to throw a military parade. (After all, it’s a totally normal thing that democratic republics do.) The parade was scheduled for November 10.
Maybe people were taking Trump seriously instead of literally, or diagonally instead of orthogonally, but whatever the case, the walk-backs started soon after the ruckus died down. First, the Pentagon announced that the parade couldn’t include tanks, because they would destroy the streets. Instead, Trump’s parade would be heavy on wheeled vehicles and aircraft, they said.
Then it was revealed that the parade would cost $12 million. Or, as Axios put it dryly, “just $2 million less than what the now-cancelled military exercises with South Korea would have cost, which Trump has described as ‘tremendously expensive’.”
But of course, that was just the initial estimate. Eventually the budget ballooned out to $92 million. In August, Trump announced that he was “cancelling” the parade. He then tried to use this pretend cancellation of a make-believe parade that never had any chance of actually marching to attack local Democrats. And in the same breath he suggested that the real parade will really, truly, take place next year.
Note: There is more, much more! The Vaporware Presidency
Step 1: Propose something ridiculous. Step 2: Cause chaos but don't deliver it. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Did you enjoy President Trump’s military parade?
Last winter Trump announced that he was going to stage a military parade in which our glorious armed forces would march down the boulevards of the nation’s capital proudly displaying their firepower and awesome weapons of war. Then we all spent several days bickering about whether or not it was proper for America to throw a military parade. (After all, it’s a totally normal thing that democratic republics do.) The parade was scheduled for November 10.
Maybe people were taking Trump seriously instead of literally, or diagonally instead of orthogonally, but whatever the case, the walk-backs started soon after the ruckus died down. First, the Pentagon announced that the parade couldn’t include tanks, because they would destroy the streets. Instead, Trump’s parade would be heavy on wheeled vehicles and aircraft, they said.
Then it was revealed that the parade would cost $12 million. Or, as Axios put it dryly, “just $2 million less than what the now-cancelled military exercises with South Korea would have cost, which Trump has described as ‘tremendously expensive’.”
But of course, that was just the initial estimate. Eventually the budget ballooned out to $92 million. In August, Trump announced that he was “cancelling” the parade. He then tried to use this pretend cancellation of a make-believe parade that never had any chance of actually marching to attack local Democrats. And in the same breath he suggested that the real parade will really, truly, take place next year.
Note: There is more, much more! The Vaporware Presidency
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