THE COLD CIVIL WAR SIMMERS.

Saturday was Flag Day, as well as the semiquincentennial of the establishment of the Continental, now United States, Army.  It was also Our President's actual 79th birthday.  In the United Kingdom, it was a fine late spring day, which is to say, the perfect sort of day to celebrate the British Monarch's official birthday.  The British ritual includes Trooping the Colour, which is a fancy way of saying "show the regimental standard to the troops."  The event got a bit more attention Stateside when it was Queen Elizabeth II celebrating a birthday.

The Army's parade attracted more of the attention Stateside, despite occurring late in the day, well past the Royals bedtimes.  Ellen Mitchell took stock of the parade for The Hill.

1.  Trump keeps things brief.
2.  Vance, Melania Trump take stage.
3.  Parade traces Army's history, future.
4.  Rain holds off, thousands turn out.
5.  Most GOP lawmakers don't attend.

Put another way, none of the totalitarian trappings (the faux legislators in the stands, the shows of force, the stemwinder speech from the Dear Leader) happened.  That won't stop the Permanent Opposition, but I'm getting ahead of my story.

Politico reported earlier in the week that only seven out of 50 GOP lawmakers the outlet surveyed said they planned to attend. Those who did attend included Trump allies like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas).

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), who served in the Army, was seated on the riser with Trump, as was Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman (representing a battleground state) broke with his party's loudest voices. “This parade is comprised of our sons, daughters, mothers and fathers—the very best of us. Regardless of your politics, it’s appropriate to celebrate the 250 years of sacrifice, dedication and service.”

Reason's J. D. Tuccille offered the libertarian perspective on the event.

As military parades go, the celebration in Washington, D.C. turned out to be an innocuous affair and not the triumph of fascist pageantry its loudest critics feared. Soldiers paraded in period uniforms and old and modern equipment rumbled through the streets (and roared overhead) in sufficient quantity to satisfy most history buffs. Nary a uniformed coup plotter was to be found. But the event was expensive, expending tens of millions of dollars to celebrate the birthday of the Army (and the president) at a time when the federal government's profligate ways already have its finances in dire straits. It was also a somewhat odd spectacle for a republic built on foundations that included suspicion of a strong military.

We'll conclude this post with a pivot toward how the "loudest critics" pivoting from "worthy of Leni Riefenstahl" to "not militaristic enough."  Seriously.

First, though, the "No Kings" demonstration as the Army did not troop its colours for a president's birthday.  Margaret "University Diaries" Soltan and the Garrett Park Gardening and Literary Society participated near the local stroad, Rockville Pike.  Byron York was nearby.

Before going to the parade on Saturday, I had to run an errand in downtown Bethesda, Maryland. There was a “No Kings” protest going along Wisconsin Ave., meaning cars drove through a long gantlet of older, mostly white, sign-waving protesters. There was a big turnout, just like in other cities around the country. Later, after attending the parade to be able to compare, it was clear that the “No Kings” group was far less diverse than the crowd at the parade. In commentary on the right, “No Kings” has been ridiculed as a bunch of angry old people, which was certainly what it appeared to be in Bethesda.

One more thing about “No Kings.” The idea behind the nationwide movement was to create a narrative that Trump’s opposition dwarfs his support, and that opposition is growing as everyday Americans are shocked by Trump’s actions. Organizers will say, just look at the demonstrations across the country — millions of people coming out to protest Trump — and then compare that to his puny parade in Washington. We are the real majority!

It’s a tough case to make after the last election, but they’re working hard at it. Still, the debate misses the point of the Army 250th birthday parade. It was about the Army, the Army’s history, and honoring the Army. And that was a good thing.

The parade was a good thing.  "It wasn’t an authoritarian flex.  It wasn’t a threat to the American people."  In his view, it ran too long.  I don't know.  Regime media, er, Fox News, covered the parade in full, but Emily Compagno is a chatterbox.  But then, that's my complaint about recent coverage of Thanksgiving Day parades as well.

James "Long Emergency" Kunstler also attended a rally, somewhere in that no-man's-land between the Delaware and Hudson and the Rutland, specifically in Salem, New York.  The local news?  The house of Weiner Clinton cemented its alliance with the House of Soros.

“Liberal royalty?” Say, what. . . ? There is such a thing? In the party of No Kings? What’s the deal, then? Just princes and princesses, dukes and duchesses, earls, viscounts, baronets, lairds, marquis, knights and dames, and so on. Yet, no king? Well, if you asked the fortunate wedding guests, they might aver to Hillary Clinton as a sort-of Queen of the party, or maybe just Queen Bee. As for former president Bill, he appears to be undergoing slow-motion mummification, so he currently occupies an ambiguous zone between this world and the next, with no mojo left for kingly duties.

The gathering itself?

Meanwhile, back upstate, cloudy and cool but no rain, some two-hundred wrathful plebeian souls gathered at the one-stoplight-intersection in little Salem, these days mainly a farm community, the old railroad engine repair shop defunct, and many good non-farm jobs with it, the usual story in this corner of the country. The hopped-up crowd was well-supplied with signs and placards, many avouching Down with Oligarchs! — which, oddly, seemed a sort of backhanded reference to billionaires of the very type underwriting the day’s festivities, not to mention the super-rich “liberal royalty” gang gathered for the Soros-Abedin royal wedding.

Those wrathful souls? High in median age.

The moiling mob was overwhelmingly geriatric, perhaps reflecting the backwater demographics of a region with few job opportunities for young folk. A spirit of revival bubbled among them as they reenacted old rituals of the hippie halcyon, the grand old days of the Vietnam War protests, when thousands gathered to levitate the Pentagon. Only now, their sentiments and beliefs exhibit a striking and peculiar inversion of the ancient 1960s credos that drove the beloved Movement.

I know because I was there, on campus, between 1966 and 1971. Back then, the Left opposed the wicked “establishment” and all its nefarious operations, from the war in Vietnam to the FBI’s underhanded suppression of political dissent. These days, strange to relate, the Left stands in staunch defense of the Deep State, big government (and its prodigious corruption), and the politicization of the FBI and CIA.

Their placards lament the withering of “our democracy,” yet they were just fine with “Joe Biden” selecting a 2024 presidential candidate for them — with no customary vote by party delegates, or anything approaching an open democratic process. They shout for the “rule-of-law,” except when it concerns special persons such as the former president’s crackhead, bag-man son. They’re all for the colossal grift around the war in Ukraine. And don’t forget they supported vaccine mandates, the closing and ruination of small businesses (while Walmart and Taco Bell were allowed to thrive), and all the other hypocritical, fraudulent, lethal actions of Covid-19 policy.

It wasn't so much "No Kings" as it was "We want Our King back," whether that was Barack Obama or Tony Fauci or whoever was pulling Dementia Joe's strings.  Matt Vespa has the right advice.  "We still won the election, you losers. Now, go home and when you wake up, Donald J. Trump will still be president."

There were similar events in DeKalb County, apparently without coal-rolling this time.

In London, where a genuine king celebrated an administrative birthday, Kathy "Conservative Woman" Gyngell offered a lament for Britain's army.

If anyone deserves a party, it’s this 79-year-old. Not a view shared by the Guardian (hardly to my surprise). Looking to see whether anyone else in the media was offering the president birthday felicitations, I came across this gem, ‘Tanks, flypasts, missiles: what to expect at Trump’s “dictator chic” military parade’, a ‘paean’ of unadulterated prejudice, smears and sneers:

‘It will be a parade fit for a king – which is precisely why critics worry what message it will send the rest of the world about the future of democracy in America. This is a parade to aggrandise Donald Trump’s ego. No one who knows either Trump or his pattern of behaviour would think for a minute this is anything else.’

Really? I think most people who know him would think the reason for Trump’s decision to ‘up’ the 250th anniversary of the United States Army was not his birthday but exactly what he said: ‘We want to show off a little bit.’ To get out his MAGA message that the US is no longer a pushover. It happened to coincide with his [actual, not administrative — Ed.] birthday. God, you could say, was smiling on the Donald again. He needs to. For straightforward coverage of what looked to be a splendid event, see The Hill.

I wish we were still capable of having more than the uniforms, fancy hats and horses on parade – a real patriotic army with double the manpower, up-to-date tanks and aircraft to show off.  Not the rump that we have that is only fit for ceremonial.  As an ex-Army wag said to me at the time of the Queen’s funeral, ‘You have just seen our Army’. They were all there.

Saturday, the Coldstream Guards had their colours trooped.

As The Sovereign wears the uniform of whichever Regiment’s Colour is being trooped, The King, Colonel in Chief of the Household Division, wore the Uniform of the Coldstream Guards. In addition, and at the request of His Majesty, members of the Royal Family taking part in the parade wore black armbands as a mark of respect following the Air India incident in Ahmedabad this week.

All those men and horses, hoops and garters, lastly through three hogsheads of real fire.  Well, no real fire, but that report has the current dramatis personae of the Majesties and Highnesses and Graces, sans the Sussexes.  Oh, and there were republicans in London.

Along with the crowds of well-wishers and tourists, there was also a protest by anti-monarchists, who chanted and waved Not My King flags.

The event, which saw 1,350 troops taking part in the King's Birthday Parade, had its traditional finale with the Royal Family on the Buckingham Palace balcony watching a flypast.

This year the Red Arrows went green, as they used a more environmentally friendly blend of fuel, including sustainable aviation fuel and a biofuel for the trademark vapour trail.

I warned you things were going to get weird.  Overseas fans of the Grand Duke of Kalorama were organising "No Kings" events in London, or perhaps whoever was in charge of keeping track for the aging hippies and the usual freak show didn't verify carefully enough.

I saved the weirdest weirdness for last.  Despite all those warnings of North Korean totalitarian parades, when what actually happened was kids climbing on the tanks before the parade and the troops allowed to use route step rather than parade march, that gave the critics of the parade cause to slag on the Army for its indiscipline.  And the Russian trolls crawled off the taiga.

A recent comment on the video noted, "The Germans are Super in Marching then the Chinese The Russians and the North Koreans. America is not a Military Country."  But if the United States' armed forces had a parade step, the No Kings types would lose it, wouldn't they?