Donald Trump's cosplay presidency
Dressing up and playing pretend.
You’ve probably heard that the Army is planning a big military parade in Washington D.C. to celebrate its 250th birthday, which also juuuuuust happens to be Donald Trump’s 79th birthday. Tanks will rumble down the boulevards of America’s capital city and if that makes you feel a bit squeamish, well, join the club.
This was the part that caught my eye:
There will be marching troops who will be housed in two government buildings, officials say. They will sleep on military cots and bring their own sleeping bags, a topic of much merriment on late-night television.
There will be Paladins, the huge self-propelled howitzers, and nods to vintage style. Army officials want to outfit some troops in uniforms from the wars of long ago, like the one in 1812 or the Spanish-American War.
Trump wants the Army to dress up and play pretend.
He wants to celebrate the Army’s birthday by having soldiers dress up in cosplay like they’re going to a comic book convention.
Let’s back up for a second: The War of 1812? Really? Not exactly a shining moment for American arms. Growing up we were always told that America never lost a war until Vietnam, but that’s not strictly true. In 1812, America launched an invasion of Canada and … we got our asses handed to us.
With only 16 warships, the United States could not directly challenge the Royal Navy, which had 500 ships in service in 1812. Instead, the new nation targeted Canada, hoping to use the conquest of British territory as a bargaining chip to win concessions on the maritime issues. Most Americans assumed that the conquest of Canada would be, in the words of former president Thomas Jefferson, “a mere matter of marching.” The United States enjoyed a huge population advantage over Canada—7.7 million to 500,000—and it was widely believed in America that U.S. troops would be welcomed as liberators1. But events did not play out as Americans expected. Waging war at the end of extended supply lines over the vast distances of the North American wilderness was no easy task. The British and their allies from indigenous nations in North America proved a formidable foe.
Oh, well, that ended well, right?
The British occupied Washington, DC, burning the public buildings there, and successfully occupied a hundred miles of the Maine coast.
You definitely want to celebrate that.
But it makes sense. Donald Trump has always been a cosplay president.
In his first term, he picked cabinet members out of “central casting,” more smitten by how they looked like the kind of powerful guys you’d want as senior advisers to a powerful president than in how they’d actually do on the job. That’s why Rex Tillerson, an silver-haired oilman with scant diplomatic experience, became secretary of state. James “Mad Dog” Mattis became the defense secretary based almost entirely on his nickname, which he reportedly loathed. Trump didn’t know what he was doing, so he picked folks who fit the part.
Similarly, his second-term cabinet is filled with Fox News retreads like Pete Hegseth because Trump — by all accounts — was more interested in finding folks who would look good and perform well on TV than he was in … governing.
Hegseth isn’t a real defense secretary. He just plays one on the shows that Trump watches.
Similarly, Trump mostly seems less interested in the nitty gritty of being an American president than he is in the pomp and circumstance of it all.
Which is why we’re getting an Army parade.
It’s not a big leap to go from Trump’s image-obsessed personnel choices to a decision to outfit actual soldiers in old-timey costumes to dance for the president’s amusement, is it?
Maybe it makes sense, then, that that chief symbol of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement is … a red hat. The president doesn’t know how to actually create greatness — and his tearing down the sources of American economic, educational and cultural soft power suggest that the end of what greatness we had is soon at an end — but he does know branding.
He is reducing “greatness” to a piece of clothing that he can stick on his head. A costume to suggest greatness, instead of actually enacting it. The people who dress up as superheroes at comic book conventions aren’t really superheros, are they?
It’s the cosplay presidency.
Etc.
* Currently reading Kaveh Akbar’s “Martyr!” a novel about a death-obsessed young Iranian man. It’s inventive and entertaining so far.
* Saw 2005’s “Pride and Prejudice” Sunday night with a packed house at Liberty Hall cinema in Lawrence,Kansas. I’ve seen the movie on DVD before, but enjoying it a crowd — the audible squeals when Darcy flexes his hand, the cooing and sighing and joyous laughter at other moments throughout — reminded me, again, how awesome the cinema experience is. “Pride and Prejudice” is a fine movie. The experience of watching it communally made it so, so much better.
SOUND FAMILIAR?????
Nailed it!