Donald Trump wants a bigly huge parade. And money be damned! It’s the thought that counts.

Donald Trump demands a big military parade. You know, the 

kind of shindig Nazis and other dictators generally throw. 

(Gif swiped from Wonkette.)

President Trump wants a parade. Not a little parade. He wants a great, big, gigantic, enormous, humongous parade full of soldiers, and tanks tearing up the pavement with their steel treads, and nuclear missiles bristling, and fixed bayonets, and God-knows-what-else.

Somehow, this doesn’t seem like us.

Russia does great big goose-stepping military parades.

North Korea does great big goose-stepping military parades.

Adolph Hitler’s Third Reich did great big goose-stepping military parades.

The United States of America? Not so much. Even France's Bastille Day parade, which unfortunately set loose the most recently-arrived colony of ants in Donald Trump's pants, doesn't make as big a publicity deal out of its parade as Donald Trump wants.

We used to be the nation that celebrated the little guy, the underdog, the tough-but-determined David up against the world's mean Goliaths. A gazillion uniforms marching down the streets of Washington isn’t American. It’s an un-American nightmare.

But Trump wants his parade. 

The cost? Hard to estimate, although the first “modest” estimates seem to be coming in at around $13,800,000 hard  cash.

There’s no money to fix Puerto Rico, parts of which still don’t have electricity, or other functioning essentials, half a year after a hurricane. But there’s $13,800,000 for a parade.

There’s no money to take care of our veterans, still languishing in veterans’ hospitals in different parts of the country.  Ot trying to get admitted. But there’s $13,800,000 for a parade.

There’s no money to repair our failing roads and bridges and railroads, which these days crash with the certainty of a fleet of  banana republic steam engines approaching one another head on, on the same track. The incompetence and infrastructure failure in nearly every facet of American life is another factor that's making disasters boring. But there’s $13,800,000 for a parade.

There’s no money to pay our impoverished teachers, who take money from their own paltry salaries to buy pencils and paper and textbooks for our kids, because there’s no money in many school budgets for the pencils and paper and textbooks, either. But there’s $13,800,000 for a parade.

The “tax reform” we’ve just suffered will give the Koch brothers and other billionaires billions more of the public’s money, while the school librarian gets a whopping $1.50 a week extra in her pay check. Tax reform is also why there may not be money before very long for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, or just keeping the nation patched together. But there’s $13,800,000 for a parade.

You see, it’s very important to our president that we have a humongously, no actually a humongously humongous — in fact an enormously, hugely, humongously humongous — parade. Why?

“President Trump is incredibly supportive of America’s great service members who risk their lives every day to keep our country safe,” explained Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary. “He has asked the Department of Defense to explore a celebration at which all Americans can show their appreciation.”

Yeah, right, we’ll show our appreciation by making the poor bastards in the military get out of bed extra early on a holiday morning, spit shine their boots, line up hours in formation before the parade, and then be forced to march for eight or ten miles in the July 4th heat for the pleasure of Donald ("Heel Spurs") Trump. 

Who does Sanders think she’s kidding? With appreciation like that, our armed forces don’t need detractors. 

If we really wanted to honor those poor bastards, we’d give them the day off. In fact, maybe even the whole holiday weekend off.  With a wad of bonus beer money so they could go enjoy themselves. Or better yet, we could restore the GI bill of rights. (Fat chance!)(

Alternatively, the nation could express its appreciation to Press Secretary Sanders by demanding that she stay locked in her office 24/7 for a month and not go home to her kids.

Or we could express our appreciation to Donald Trump by locking him in a room with no smart phone, no TV, and only a copy of historian Henry Steele Commager's book, "Midcentury Liberalism and the History of the Present," a cup full of pencils, and six yellow pads. We would further show our appreciation by refusing to let him out until he writes a coherent book report on the book we gave him, out of appreciation.

But never mind that. the President wants a parade.

And make no mistake. He will get his marching battalions, and rolling tanks, and bristling missiles, and brassy marching bands playing John Philip Sousa martial music as certainly as a duck may be somebody’s mother. Even if the nation has to go bankrupt to give Trump what he wants

It kind of makes you see how proud you used to be to be an American. Before Donald Trump turned turned us from the world’s most respected nation into a clown show.