In 1991 President George HW Bush takes the salute of Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf and his generals at the Victory Parade in Washington, DC, celebrating the end of the First Iraq War. (Photo: National Archives/Dan Valdez)
June 10, 2025 by David Silverberg
This coming Saturday, June 14, is a day that may either go down as glorious in American history—or live in infamy. The sun may rise over a democracy and set over a dictatorship.
On that day President Donald Trump is scheduled to review a massive military parade in the nation’s capital celebrating his 79th birthday—and the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States Army. Enormous numbers of military vehicles, personnel and lethal weaponry are being shipped into the District of Columbia, ostensibly for the parade.
“No Kings!” counter demonstrations are scheduled throughout the country and in Washington, DC.
“No Kings” demonstrations planned around the country for Saturday, June 14. (For a fully interactive map see Axios)
In Southwest Florida the organization FREE (Freedom, Rights, Equality, Enforcement) Indivisible SWFL has called for a demonstration at the Collier County Court Courthouse at 3315 Tamiami Trail East.
California conflict
As this is written the state of California is in an increasingly bitter battle with President Donald Trump and the federal government.
While there has been shooting so far it has remained non-lethal. However, Trump has ordered 700 active duty Marines to California, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) is suing the federal government for nationalizing and deploying 2,000 state National Guardsmen—and, potentially, 2,000 more—without his permission.
The situation is changing hourly and passions are rising fueled by extreme rhetoric on Trump’s part, with X postings that threaten violence (“If they spit, we will hit”) denigrate and insult Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, and threats to have Newsom arrested.
The militarization of Washington
Amidst the heated atmosphere and the sense of crisis, an enormous amount of military hardware is pouring into Washington, ostensibly for the parade.
Military equipment heading into Washington, DC, as photographed by various observers and shared on social media. (Images: Multiple sources)
In May the US Army announced the specific numbers for the weaponry entering the US capital. These include 28 70-ton M1 Abrams tanks, 28 Bradley Fighting Vehicles, 28 Stryker combat vehicles and Paladin artillery systems, totaling 150 vehicles in all. Some 6,700 soldiers, sailors and aviators will be part of the event, which is expected to be attended by as many as 200,000 spectators. Legacy vehicles like World War II-era Sherman tanks and jeeps will participate. US military personnel in period costumes will accompany 34 horses, two mules and a dog. Steel plates are being laid in the streets to accommodate the weight of the vehicles.
Overhead, current aircraft as well as World War II-era aircraft will fly by along with helicopters of different eras. To accommodate this, flights into Washington Reagan Airport have been suspended.
The event is expected to cost between $45 million and $92 million.
There’s no clear date for when all this hardware will return to base, if at all.
Analysis: To what purpose?
In any other time, under any previous president, in a time of unity and consensus, the American people could believe the stated purposes for this deployment of weaponry and personnel: to celebrate the 250th anniversary of a respected and honored institution like the United States Army.
But in a time of crisis, division and especially with an authoritarian, twice-impeached president who is a convicted felon, who incited a previous violent assault on the legislative branch of government and tried to overturn an election, who lies incessantly and has refused to commit to upholding the US Constitution as his oath of office requires, such assurances cannot be taken at face value.
All those military vehicles in Washington and their firepower can easily be turned to purposes other than parading. (And one vehicle carried a graffito saying “Hang Fauci & Bill Gates,” according to The Washington Post.)
Between the Los Angeles protests and deployments, the extreme rhetoric by the president and the sense of crisis that he is deliberately stoking, the moment is strongly reminiscent of Feb. 27, 1933 when a fire broke out in the German Reichstag building. Adolf Hitler, who had taken office as German chancellor precisely four weeks earlier, and his Nazi party blamed the fire on Communists. In that atmosphere of crisis German President Paul von Hindenburg issued an emergency decree suspending civil liberties. A few weeks later, the Reichstag was convinced to pass an “Enabling Act” that suspended checks and balances and gave Hitler dictatorial power for four years. In fact, it was the end of German democracy and the start of the Nazi dictatorship and Hitler’s unrestricted rule.
Between Trump’s rhetoric, the vocal protests, and the anti-democratic provisions of the “Big Beautiful Bill,” the current moment bears discomforting similarities to the past and to every other dictator who has seized power amidst a manufactured crisis.
In Southwest Florida
The logo of the June 14th “No Kings” demonstration in Naples, Fla. (Art: FREE Indivisible)
There isn’t much that people on the ground in a place like Southwest Florida can do to directly intervene in events in Washington or Los Angeles.
If there is an attempt at a coup d’etat the American people can only rely on the military personnel who serve and protect them to refuse any illegal orders and uphold their oaths of enlistment to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
However, the “No Kings” demonstrations across the country can at least show that the vast majority of Americans are not complicit in any assaults on their democracy and democratic institutions. They can make known that they object to authoritarian actions by this president and his enablers.
In Naples, Fla., these demonstrations have shown that there is a large population of supporters of democracy throughout a region otherwise known for its extreme support of Donald Trump and the Make America Great Again movement. With each demonstration it becomes clear that the population of concerned and outspoken citizens is large and growing.
It’s a dangerous time and it’s not going to get any more peaceful any time soon. At the very least people can raise their voices and refuse to be complicit—especially on this day.
On a personal note:
The most menacing time that I ever saw armed troops in the streets of Washington, DC, was on the afternoon of Sept. 11, 2001.
The terrorist attacks had occurred that morning.
At the time I was managing editor of The Hill, a weekly newspaper covering Congress and had stayed at my post in a building near the White House, working to get out the next day’s newspaper, which was likely to be the most important one we ever published.
By the late afternoon I had done all I could to finish the newspaper and I left the offices to drive down to our printing plant in Springfield, Va., where the paper would be printed and our staff was gathering. My car was parked in the garage of the Ronald Reagan Building.
The city had been ordered evacuated. Armed police stood at the intersections of streets surrounding the White House, whose perimeter had been expanded several blocks outward and restricted with yellow police tape. The only people on the streets—and there were very few of them—were wearing credentials showing that they were either government staffers, members of the press or were serving in some official capacity.
As I stood on the corner of 14th Street and F Street waiting to cross the road, a convoy of Humvees full of armed and camouflaged soldiers wearing red berets came driving down 14th Street. Even though they didn’t have to, they stopped at a traffic light and were bathed in the warm, golden glow of the lowering sun.
I’d traveled a great deal around the world as a defense reporter and seen militarized capitals. That had never been the case in Washington, DC, which was proud to be an open, free and civil city.
American military parades in the capital had largely been eschewed except for extremely rare occasions like the Iraq War Victory Parade in 1991. On ceremonial occasions like Inauguration Days the military was represented by symbolic contingents of soldiers and never by masses of heavy equipment.
Indeed, when it was suggested to general and later president Dwight Eisenhower that the United States hold military parades like the Soviet Union did in Red Square he is reported by historian Michael Beschloss to have responded: “Absolutely not. We are the pre-eminent power on Earth. For us to try and imitate what the Soviets are doing in Red Square would make us look weak.”
Standing on that street corner on 9/11 and seeing that convoy of soldiers bearing arms in the nation’s capital brought home to me in a way like nothing else that things had changed in America and likely permanently. Of all the sadnesses I felt that day, this was a sadness like nothing else I experienced.
But at least those soldiers were deploying to protect and defend America and Americans.
Let’s all hope that the military parade in Washington, DC on June 14 celebrates the birth of the US Army and salves the ego of the President of the United States—and does nothing more than that.
Liberty lives in light
© 2025 by David Silverberg