How to Know Your President Is an Aspiring Dictator in This One Easy Step!

If your president is throwing himself a forty five million dollar military parade for his seventy ninth birthday, you are no longer living in a normal country. You are living in a reality show version of one, with tanks. This is not how stable democracies operate. Presidents get a sheet cake and a few polite smiles from staff. They do not order the army to perform birthday pageantry.

The timing is not subtle. Two weeks ago he sent ICE agents into Los Angeles to tear families apart, knowing full well this would spark mass protests. Now the same president is staging a military spectacle that just happens to coincide with those protests reaching their peak. The goal is not to celebrate a birthday. It is to remind the country who controls the weapons.

Leaders who order parades for themselves belong to a specific club. Kim Jong Un does it. Vladimir Putin does it. Xi Jinping does it. Saddam Hussein did it. None of them are known for their light touch with dissent.

Military parades are not about military strength. They are about personal insecurity in full costume. When a leader throws a parade for the country, it is called patriotism. When a leader throws a parade for himself, it is called the beginning of the end.

You can spot the pattern. Kim Jong Un throws parades in North Korea that go on for hours while soldiers goose step past missiles that may or may not work. Vladimir Putin stages military parades in Russia with long lines of tanks and rows of saluting generals while political opponents are either jailed or poisoned. Xi Jinping holds massive parades in China where every moment is choreographed to glorify his personal role as head of the armed forces. Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey has increasingly used military spectacles to boost his personal image. Saddam Hussein in Iraq made parades a public loyalty test. Muammar Gaddafi in Libya did the same, often wearing sunglasses bigger than the budget for the entire parade.

The message is always the same. The army belongs to me. The country belongs to me. You belong to me. The tanks are not there to honor the public. They are there to remind the public who is in charge.

America does not throw military parades for the president. We have parades for Thanksgiving and parades for Fourth of July and parades where men in pirate hats throw beads at drunk tourists. We do not put tanks on the street so the president can wave like a beauty queen at the apocalypse.

That is by design. The military does not swear loyalty to the president. It swears loyalty to the Constitution. This is not a small distinction. It is the entire reason we have avoided looking like a dictatorship for two hundred years. Even when Trump first floated this idea in twenty eighteen, the Pentagon politely told him to take a hike. Generals do not like being used as stage props for men who owe more in legal fees than most countries owe in debt.

In America, the military is supposed to be invisible in daily life. Tanks belong on training grounds, not birthday parties. Soldiers belong in barracks, not marching past the president’s party guests. The second that changes, the country changes with it.

You do not order mass raids in a major American city right before your giant military parade unless you want to stir the pot. You want the protests. You want the footage of the chaos. You want the public nervous. Then you give them the tanks. This is the classic move. Create the crisis, then pose as the only one who can fix it. Trump wants Americans to see the protests, then see the military spectacle, then connect the two. Look at the streets. Now look at the soldiers. Now guess who can keep you safe.

The ICE raids were not about immigration. They were about optics. They were about building the excuse to roll out military hardware with a straight face. This is not a coincidence. It is the first chapter in the story that ends with tanks doing more than marching.

The purpose is not subtle. First, condition the public. Make it normal to see tanks and troops rolling past the president. Make it feel routine to have the military show up for his personal events. If you can get Americans to cheer while the army salutes one man, you can get them to cheer for a lot more.

Second, test loyalty. Force the generals to appear. Make the soldiers march. Get everyone on camera. This is not a parade. It is a televised loyalty check. Anyone who refuses to show up gets marked. Anyone who plays along is already halfway to following orders when the next move comes.

Third, intimidate. The protests in Los Angeles are not over. More will come. The parade is a message to every activist watching. March if you want. Shout if you want. Just remember who controls the hardware.

Fourth, rewrite the image. Trump is not an aging man dodging subpoenas and legal disasters. He is a commander surrounded by military might. The cameras will show tanks, not courtrooms. That is the point.

Martial law is the kind of thing Americans think only happens in movies. Helicopters over cities. Soldiers patrolling streets. Curfews announced with bullhorns. In reality, it almost never happens here. And that is the point.

In American history, full martial law has been used rarely and reluctantly. Hawaii saw it during World War Two after the Pearl Harbor attack. A few cities used it during extreme disasters. The National Guard has been called in for riots and hurricanes. But the military taking over American streets as a permanent presence has never been normal. And no president has ever used it as a campaign strategy.

That is what makes this parade so dangerous. You do not have to formally declare martial law to get the same result. You can use the Insurrection Act. You can flood a city with federal agents. You can deploy the National Guard in friendly states. You can create a reality where soldiers are everywhere and civilians learn to stay quiet.

You do not need to declare martial law to get the effect of martial law. You create the scene. You build the tension. You parade the hardware. You let the public know who is ready to take the streets.

And the scariest part. Once people get used to the tanks, they stop questioning why they are there. The parade is the first test. If the public cheers this show, the next step is easier. A few more protests. A few more headlines about chaos. One televised order. The tanks stay. The soldiers stay. The democracy fades. Watch the parade closely. It is not entertainment. It is the setup .

History is very clear. When leaders throw military parades for themselves, they are not planning to give up power. They are planning to expand it. The tanks are not rolling to celebrate freedom. They are rolling to remind you who commands the force if freedom gets in the way.

If you are clapping for this parade, you have already lost. You are standing on the curb smiling at your own funeral. This is not a show of strength. It is a test to see how weak the public has become.

You think the tanks are rolling because the president likes a good parade. No. The tanks are rolling because the president wants to see how many people will cheer as democracy is flattened right in front of them. The more you normalize this, the more you invite what comes next. Once you accept the military as the president’s personal stage prop, you will not stop it from becoming his personal police force.

This is not about loving the troops. It is about loving the man who controls them. The president is not here to celebrate a birthday. He is here to see who salutes him personally and who salutes with one finger.

Ask yourself. In what country does the military march to honor the man in charge. North Korea. Russia. China. Turkey. Iraq. Libya. If you think America will be the first one where that ends well, you are more naive than the people who bought Trump NFTs.