The Showbiz Salute
There is no point in commenting on Donald Trump’s big parade, beyond the obvious.
It would be churlish to criticize a parade, if there is a good reason to get all those boys out there marching. After all, there will be lots of money to pay for the event thanks to the president’s financial attack on the poor.
And yes, it is the 250th anniversary of the US Army. But also of the Navy and the Marines, who will just have to make do with, well, not sharing the president’s birthday.
What I’d like to focus on here is the small matter of the salute. You may have noticed that from time to time, Mr. Trump saluted one group or another as they marched by. What about the people he didn’t salute? Was his arm tired? Does he have favourites? Who knows.
But here’s the thing. Salutes actually mean something. They are a formal part of military relationships.
If you are not in uniform, YOU DO NOT SALUTE. You can take off your hat or nod your head. Some sort of a heartfelt gesture.
And then it went all wrong. Show business replaced these signals of formal respect with Errol Flynn type flourishes. The problem began with the actor Ronald Reagan, who took to saluting people as if he were in a B movie war film. Perhaps he thought he was. Perhaps he thought the presidency was a B movie. He saluted delegates at political conventions, other leaders, the incoming President George Bush. He made saluting a presidential thing.
By the way, General Eisenhower — who knew he was President — did not go about saluting people once he was out of uniform. He didn’t feel the need to imitate an actor. He had commanded hundreds of thousands of men in battle.
Soldiers were confused, even disturbed, by Reagan’s trivializations of their formal relationships — which were/are tied to their willingness to risk their lives for their country. The formality of military life — of which salutes are part — means honour and dignity are intimately linked to the possibility of violent death.
But hey, from Reagan to Trump, the standards of show business seem to have become ever more important. And much more fun.
They remind me of tacky dictators I used to meet on missions designed to convince generals and autocrats to restrain themselves.