After years of craving and months of preparing, the Big Beautiful Parade on June 14 appears to have been a Big Bad Bust. Expecting 250,000 persons, joyfully lining the streets of Pennsylvania Avenue, only a trickle of MAGA supporters braved the rain and dark clouds. Speculation continues to circulate that fillers and paid spectators were called upon to give an impression of a large crowd. Billed as a celebration of the United States Armed Forces 250th birthday, the most powerful force in the world worthy of our support, it was really a Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un type reality show.

The majority of American’s nearly 65% did not favor a military parade. It sounded different, looked different, and frankly, was different. Not since the Persian Gulf War of 1991 have troops been added to our city streets to celebrate a victory in war. Today, there is no victory that we celebrate. Costing United States taxpayers over $45 million, this gross attempt to transform democracy into an authoritarian autocracy must not become our reality.

We did not elect a strong man with one man rule. We elected a president where the people are the final rule. Only the people who resist and persist in their opposition and their love for freedom can prevent this onslaught against the soul of our nation. This masquerading comes from an old playbook.

President Donald Trump insisted the crowd for his 2017 inauguration “looked like a million and a million and a half people.” Sean Spicer, Trump’s former Press Secretary, even tried to spice it up by declaring, “it had been the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration.” Photos taken during the inauguration tell a much different story. Both accounts were false. The emperor still wears no clothes.

George Benson’s song “This Masquerade” says it all, “No matter how hard I try. To understand the reasons that we carry on this way, we are lost in a masquerade.” Masquerading keeps the focus off the real issues. The real issues in America are National Guards and federal troops illegally planted on the streets of Los Angeles to arrest people of that community. At a cost of over $134 million, 700 Marines, 2,000 national guards, and 2,000 personnel assisted by the 49th Military Police Brigade is indeed overkill. People should obey the law. There should be no violence against people or property.

The Posse Comitatus Act of June 18, 1878, updated in 1956, 1981, and 2021, is explicit about such actions taken by the military to enforce domestic policies section 18 U.S.C. 1385 “Use of Army, Navy, Marine Corp, Air Force, and Space Force as a posse comitatus: Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Acts of Congress, willfully uses only part of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Space Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years or both.” According to the law, somebody should be fined, imprisoned, or both.

 

This masquerade, under the guise of freedom of speech while folks are being disappeared for speaking their conscience and exercising their First Amendment rights is an abomination. It is a direct contradiction to the force of law according to the Constitution. When a United States senator, mayor, state representative, or judges are intimidated and arrested, law firms are attacked for representing certain clients, and institutions of higher learning have billions of dollars pulled from their budgets for research and international student enrollment, this is high political tyranny. In addition, you cannot masquerade a Big Beautiful Bill designed to make Big Bogus Bedlam into a victory for the people.

Alexis de Tocqueville left us a true meme, “No sooner does government attempt to go beyond its political sphere than it exercises insupportable tyranny.” Are we facing a prelude to the implementation of the Insurrection Act of 1807, granting the president the power to nationally deploy the United States military and to federalize the National Guard units of individual states? Why was there no call for the Insurrection Act when the nation’s Capitol was under attack on Jan. 6, 2021? Police officers were bludgeoned, one even committed suicide, halls of Congress defaced with feces and urine spread on the floors and the walls. The Vice President of the United States Mike Pence along with the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi were threatened with hanging. All of the insurrectionists have been pardoned for their crimes by this president.

The No Kings rallies held at the same time as President Trump’s birthday parade brought over five million Americans together from both blue and red states. They peacefully protested, not because of a political D, R, or I, but because of a W. It is called the preamble to the Constitution of the United States. “We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” Some in the Trump administration, themselves immigrants or with family members who were granted entrance to the American dream, have turned it into a nightmare. Stephen Miller, Trump’s number one advisor on immigration and mass deportation, should remember his father Michael D. Miller and mother Miriam Glosser have their roots in the old Russian empire Antopol now Belarus. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose parents Mario Rubio Reina and Oriales Garcia Rubio were Cubans who immigrated to the United States in 1956. Vice President J.D. Vance’s wife Usha Bala Chilukuri, born of immigrant parents Lakshmi and Radhakrishna “Krish” Chilukuri, both Telugu Indian immigrants, migrated to the United States in the 1980s. Even president donald Trump is no stranger to appreciating but also denigrating immigrants as he was married to Ivana Marie Zelnickova from Gottwaldov Czechoslovak. Current wife First Lady Melania Trump was born Melanija Knavs in Novo Mesto Slovenia Yugoslavia. Her parents Victor and Amalija Knavs, both from Yugoslavia, just became United States citizens in 2018. Trump’s paternal grandparents Frederick and Elizabeth Christ, both immigrants from Germany, came to the United States in 1885. His maternal grandparents Malcolm and Mary Anne MacLeod are both from Scotland.

While we celebrate immigrants coming to America, please don’t close the door once you have arrived. The only true Americans are the Native Americans. African Americans earned their citizenship the hard way by overcoming not immigration but bondage for over 244 years plus 100 years of lynching, Jim Crow, and Jim Crow Esquire. As Maya Angelou said, “and still we rise.” This masquerade cannot last forever. We are certain to see its conclusion as we the people vote up, stand up, speak up, march up, and stay up. The cause is much greater than any individual. Let us remember ‘True Power Is Within The People.’ De Tocqueville, great French philosopher and political thinker, in his writings “Democracy in America” speaks to us again, “when the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.” We as Americans must continue to stand in the light. Listen to the voice of Julius Caesar, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.” We choose not to be the underlings.

Rev. Dr. Wendell Anthony is president of the Detroit Branch NAACP