This year’s July Fourth celebrations in Washington, D.C., will include a ramping-up of authoritarianism, after Donald Trump has gotten his teeny-tiny fingers into it. One of the big problems, among many, that Trump faced last year when he attempted to create a military parade a la all the world’s famous dictators, was its projected costs. So Trump and, possibly, his handlers have come up with the idea of using our country’s Independence Day celebrations as cover for their dress-rehearsal version of a fascistic military parade. It makes sense, since fascists don’t care about democracy or independence, so why not grab some of the already carved-out Independence Day celebration budget? But Trump is nothing if not a con artist, and the only way he knows to make his mark on anything is to blow everything up using the hot garish wind of his sense of taste.
One of the ways to keep costs down is for the president to take pay-to-play offerings, such as $750,000 in fireworks from Phantom Fireworks CEO Bruce Zoldan. But there are other costs that need to be defrayed, and to do that the Trump administration is making sure to take from Peter to pay Paul and then punch Paul in his stomach in order to flush that money down the toilet. The Washington Post reports that in order to make Trump’s small-handed insecurity of a dream come to fruition, the National Park Service will be “diverting” $2.5 million “in entrance and recreation fees primarily intended to improve parks across the country.” Like most governmental agencies that are here to provide improvements to our country’s collective experience, the National Park Service is not known for having excess cash lying around. In fact, the Post writes that the “transfer amounts to nearly 5 percent of the funds that less-profitable parks used last year for upgrades.”
This money is a big deal for the National Park Service, but still a drop in the bucket compared to the full cost of Trump and his wannabe crew of oligarchs freeze out the American public while turning the national July Fourth celebrations into a wealthy donor-appreciation party and fascist-style military spectacle.