The Brooklyn Rail

I was supposed to fly to Vancouver the day of Trump’s military parade in Washington, but after he warned that any protesters in D.C. would “be met with very big force,” leaving for Canada suddenly felt like a dodge. It was only my vacation, after all, but it was his birthday. I have become so used to Trump imposing on my leisure time that what was one more Saturday? And I was eager to see what “No Kings Day” had in store for the nation’s capital. If the demonstrators really were to be “met with very big force,” I thought I should meet it with them—for love of country, I’m tempted to say, though it wasn’t quite that.

All week, heroic Los Angeles, saying “No Pasarán” to ICE, had stimulated the fantasies of urban chaos and race war that so arouse the American Right. The suspicions on terrestrial talk radio were grave. It seemed that all 2,000 or so of the No Kings Day events planned for Saturday would resemble the high days of the 2020 uprisings, police precincts aflame and all those horrible KN-95s. While driving through Delaware I learned that the cell phone of one Angeleno recently taken into custody was found to implicate higher-ups in Hamas, the Maduro government of Venezuela, and even the Kamala Harris operation. Who was funding this disobedience, the Right kept demanding painedly, idiotically.

The nominal organizers of the day’s protest in D.C. were called Refuse Fascism. That morning, Laura Loomer, MAGA’s Rasputin Barbie, had advised Steve Bannon that this was an “Antifa front group” and that a fleet of buses was expected to bring demonstrators into the city from nearby mosques. In fact, Refuse Fascism is a front group—a venerable old designation, in my book—for the Revolutionary Communist Party USA. Led by an 82-year-old Sixties survivor named Bob Avakian, the “Revcoms” are one of the most energetic if quixotic formations in American politics, and they will outlast us all: when the rest of the Left is dust, they will sell their newspapers to the cockroaches.

I can report that the Revcoms led this march with great verve and comradely hospitality, in the spirit of the 1930s Popular Front. The Great Helmsman himself was not present, but Avakian’s encouragements were read aloud in Lafayette Square in sight of the White House. Movingly, I thought, Chairman Bob really believed in us—in the prospect of a left-liberal antifascist coalition—which was more than could be said of Senator Chuck on Capitol Hill.

No, I hardly saw anyone in the crowd who looked like they had just arrived from a mosque or who knew their way around the anarchist CrimethInc. digital zine library. I did see one elegant and tastefully-accoutured older woman who might’ve come straight from brunch at Le Diplomate had it not been for the satin keffiyeh she wore as a stole across her shoulders. The only party line was ecumenical anti-Trumpism, while the tone was insistent, even cloying Americanism, not insurrection. Two Democratic legislators in Minnesota had been shot in their homes overnight, we heard.

By the time the march petered out, the promised “very big force” had not engaged us, so I went to find it on the National Mall. On the other side of the security checkpoint, it wasn’t all county fair; I saw nothing for sale. The scene was curious nonetheless: everywhere, children appeared to be drinking tallboys of Bud Light. Distributed as an alternative to bottled water, these cans actually contained something called Phorm, a new energy drink manufactured by Anheuser-Busch and promoted by Dana White, impresario of the Ultimate Fighting Championship organization. I might have partaken—crossing the Mall on foot is draining on less humid days—but my pulse hardly needed quickening. Actually I needed to sit down.

Respite arrived in the shade of an old-fashioned tent revival on the Mall. David’s Tent, DC bills itself as a “musical prayer ministry to Jesus, led by inspired and passionate Christ followers, on behalf of the United States of America.” A family band performed a dirgelike (or “inspired”) rendition of “How Great Thou Art” beneath the three flags of God's countries: Old Glory, Texas, and the other Lone Star state, Israel. Some congregants raised their hands and swayed. What would Jefferson make of this scene, I wondered? Likely as not he would have decanted himself a heavy pour of madeira, the Phorm of its day.

As for the parade itself, the military maintained a far higher standard of decorum than its civilian administrators; the soldiers made no effort to emulate the goose-stepping choreography of the (North) Korean People’s Army. I was disappointed that no foreign dignitaries had been invited, the way the Soviets would furnish their brothers and sisters from the Third World with box seats and gigantic fur hats for these occasions. Where was that gulag warden FDR might have called “our son of a bitch” in San Salvador, Nayib Bukele? Where was Orbán? Where, for that matter, was Netanyahu? (He was in Greece, it turned out, hiding from Iranian missiles.) We had to settle for the telegenic cast of Season 2: Pete, J.D., Usha, and the rest of the gang.

The last time Washington saw a military parade like this was to mark the end of the Gulf War. Now Israel was bombing Iran. Another Middle East adventure awaited us. Once the Vietnam-era Chinook helicopters appeared overhead, I felt I had seen enough and left the President to play with his action figures. With a few dozen others I shuffled off to the Metro a little ahead of the crowd. That was the ballgame.