Oh christ.

Trump wants a military parade.

President Trump’s vision of soldiers marching and tanks rolling down the boulevards of Washington is moving closer to reality in the Pentagon and White House, where officials say they have begun to plan a grand military parade later this year showcasing the might of America’s armed forces.

Just like China! And Russia! And Nazi Germany!

Shows of military strength are not typical in the United States — and they don’t come cheap. The cost of shipping Abrams tanks and high-tech hardware to Washington could run in the millions, and military officials said it was unclear how they would pay for it.

And why would we do it? What for? It’s well known that we have a massive military, so what could the point possibly be? Just because Little Trumpy likes a spectacle and what baby wants baby gets?

[T]he official said Trump is determined to have a parade. “The president wants to do something that highlights the service and sacrifice of the military and have a unifying moment for the country,” the official said.

I can think of other, better, more meaningful, less militaristic ways of doing the first, and the second is just insulting coming from him. If he really wants a unifying moment he could stop being such a pig.

He wants one because he saw one for Bastille Day when he was in Paris last summer, and he’s jealous.

“It was one of the greatest parades I’ve ever seen,” Trump told reporters. “It was two hours on the button, and it was military might, and I think a tremendous thing for France and for the spirit of France.”

Couldn’t they just have a circus for him instead? Or he could go to the Winter Olympics? Or the opera? Does it really have to be about the guns and tanks and planes and bombs?

If he wanted all that he could have enlisted back in the day, bone spurs and all.

Even before he was sworn in as president, Trump was dreaming of America’s war machine on display for the country and the world in front of the White House or Capitol.

“We’re going to show the people as we build up our military,” Trump said in an interview with The Washington Post before his inauguration. “. . . That military may come marching down Pennsylvania Avenue. That military may be flying over New York City and Washington, D.C., for parades. I mean, we’re going to be showing our military.”

Of course he was. He’s that stupid and childish and empty. “Ima be president, Ima have lotsa sojers marching in front of me alla time!”

With a few exceptions — such as President George H.W. Bush’s 1991 parade down Constitution Avenue celebrating victory in the Persian Gulf War — presidents have avoided displays of military hardware that are more associated in the American mind with the Soviet Union’s Red Square celebrations or, more recently, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s efforts to show off his Taepodong missiles.

“I don’t think there’s a lack of love and respect for our armed forces in the United States,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University. “What are they going to do, stand there while Donald Trump waves at them? It smacks of something you see in a totalitarian country — unless there’s a genuine, earnest reason to be doing it.”

Trumpy’s excitement about the big toys does not count as that genuine reason.

The White House official said a parade would have nothing to do with Trump’s feuds with Kim, but would be designed as a broad show of strength to send a warning to all of America’s adversaries.

Yeeeeeeeah those two things are pretty much the same.

One of George W. Bush’s biggest blunders as president came in 2003 when he landed on an aircraft carrier bearing a “Mission Accomplished” banner to claim victory in the Iraq War.

Former aides say Bush would have loved a big parade, but they recognized a problem: The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan never ended. Such subtleties — the U.S. is now dropping bombs in seven countries — don’t seem to have factored into Trump’s calculations.

Trumpy doesn’t do subtleties. He wouldn’t recognize one if it bit him.