Here in the Poconos, the trees still whisper. A mourning dove calls across the hollow. No sirens. No speeches. Just wind, and memory, and the soft rhythm of a place that hasn’t forgotten how to listen.
But down in Washington, something’s stirring. Not the tanks—not yet. But something armored. Something polished. Something rehearsed.
They say it’s a tribute. A celebration. Troops arriving on the president’s birthday—June 14, 2025. They say it’s for the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army. A round number. A noble cause.
But history doesn’t care about round numbers. It cares about patterns.
On that day, more than 6,000 soldiers, flanked by tanks, aircraft, and military vehicles, will march through the capital. One day of spectacle. But it doesn’t need to last four days to make its point. The message lands in an instant.
And the detail that lingers? Many of these troops will be barracked inside federal buildings—some recently hollowed out by firings under the DOGE Act, that quiet bureaucratic broom that swept out the watchdogs. Oversight made obsolete. Security redefined.
They’ll be stationed at the very heart of federal power, inside halls where accountability once had a desk. And now, filled not with pens and process, but uniforms and posture.
You can tell me it’s tradition. You can tell me it’s theater. But I’ve learned to watch the choreography.
Let’s talk about that classic political thriller, Seven Days in May.
I remember seeing the film as a kid, at the old Sack Theater in Boston. I was too young to follow every line of dialogue, but I understood enough to leave rattled. The mention of troops being deployed to DC. The shadows. The medals. The sense that the real battle wasn’t overseas—it was upstairs.
It’s 1964. President Jordan Lyman signs a disarmament treaty with the Soviets—an act of peace in a country built on Cold War paranoia. General James Mattoon Scott, revered and photogenic, sees this not as diplomacy, but betrayal. He begins planning a coup.
But he doesn’t march in guns blazing. No. He recruits quietly. Establishes secret communications. Runs covert drills under the guise of readiness. All in the name of "patriotism."
Colonel Jiggs Casey, Scott’s loyal subordinate, starts connecting dots—odd orders, unusual deployments, whispers behind doors. And over the course of seven days, he uncovers the plot.
What unfolds is not a thriller of explosions, but of exposure. A man trying to save democracy not with a weapon, but with evidence. And the final scenes? Not triumph, but warning. That even the most lawful nation can teeter, quietly, if the wrong men wear the right medals.
That was fiction. But now it’s echo.
This June 14th, the parade will march. Flags will wave. Broadcasters will narrate. They’ll call it a salute, a pageant, a proud reminder of America’s military might.
But you and I—we know to watch the background. Not the color guard, but the context.
Why now? Why this president? Why this moment, this anniversary, with this many troops, in these particular buildings, at this particular crossroads in the nation’s political life?
Proximity matters. So does performance.
And in a country that once drew hard lines between civilian government and military muscle, this isn’t just optics. It’s opera. A show of power wrapped in the illusion of patriotism.
Because no, I don’t think a coup is coming. I think, in some ways, we’re already mid-script.
Not with a bang, but with a birthday. With speeches. With softened language. With buildings emptied of oversight and filled with uniforms.
They’ve even chosen the date carefully. June 14. Not just the Armed Forces' anniversary—but the president’s birthday. A convergence of history and ego. Of nation and man. And if that doesn’t make you pause, you’re not listening to the rhythm.
Seven Days in May gave us a map of how power shifts when fear dresses up like duty. This isn’t about paranoia. It’s about pattern recognition.
Day one: they called it ceremonial.
Day two: they started clearing offices.
Day three: they changed the rules.
Day four: they brought in the troops.
Now we wait for the parade.
And while they march, while the band plays and the cameras roll, some of us will still be watching the edges of the frame.
Because if history teaches us anything, it’s that the most dangerous coups aren’t the ones you can see.
They’re the ones you’re told to celebrate.
They’ll say it’s a parade. But what we’re really seeing is a mirror.
June 14 is coming, and with it, a procession not just of soldiers but of symbols—more than 6,000 troops, tanks and aircraft rolling through the city, cameras pointed up, not in. It’s a one-day affair. Tight. Tidy. Highly produced. The kind of spectacle that leaves no room for questions—only applause.
They call it a salute. A celebration of history. A nod to the armed forces. But you and I—we know to ask: Whose history? Whose power?
The context matters. These troops will be quartered in government buildings—buildings that have been quietly emptied of oversight through the DOGE Act, a bureaucratic purge disguised as reform. Once filled with watchdogs and whistleblowers, they now stand ready for ceremony. Ready for occupation, if you listen closely enough.
It’s theater, yes—but the kind Arthur Miller warned us about. The Crucible wasn’t just about witches. It was about mass performance. About how fear needs no proof when the crowd already knows its lines.
And in Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury saw a future where spectacle replaced substance. Firemen no longer put out fires—they started them. The goal wasn’t censorship. It was numbness. “We need not to be let alone,” Montag says. “We need to be really bothered once in a while.”
This moment should bother us. But the feed scrolls on.
Or take The Manchurian Candidate—another Cold War parable. A brainwashed war hero turned political assassin. A mother orchestrating democracy’s undoing with maternal pride and fascist flair. Sound far-fetched? Look at today’s pundits. Look at how language is weaponized. “Security.” “Loyalty.” “Faith.” Words don’t mean—they signal now.
Even Orwell didn’t quite predict the voluntary surrender of attention we see today. We don’t need Big Brother watching—we’ve become willing participants, trading critical thought for curated feeds.
And Baldwin, always Baldwin. He wrote that to be a Negro in America was to be “relatively conscious” and in rage “almost all the time.” I think today, the rage has morphed. It’s not always loud. Sometimes it’s weary. Sometimes it’s watching a military parade on the president’s birthday and asking, “Do you see this? Or are we all just pretending not to?”
Even jazz knew this feeling. Listen to Fables of Faubus by Charles Mingus. That wasn’t just swing—it was satire. A protest in polyrhythm. A refusal to let power dress itself in dignity. Or Alabama by John Coltrane—a song built from ashes. A call not to arms, but to witness.
Because this isn’t about hot takes. It’s about memory.
You want to understand what happens when spectacle becomes governance? Go back to Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare. “You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things.” The Roman crowd, swayed by Brutus one moment and Antony the next, never stood a chance. They didn’t want truth. They wanted performance.
We keep telling ourselves: It can’t happen here.
But what if “it” isn’t a singular moment?
What if “it” is the parade itself?
The normalization. The cheering. The silence.
The parade will end.
It always does. The flags will be folded. The brass will go quiet. The soldiers will return to their barracks, and the media will pan to the next story. But you and I—we’ll still be here. In the stillness. In the afterglow. In the silence where the questions live.
And that’s where resistance begins. Not always in the street. Not always with fists. But in the discipline of attention.
Because what we’re facing isn’t just political. It’s existential. It’s the slow erasure of memory in real time. The parade is supposed to make you forget what was lost to make it possible.
But some of us still remember.
We remember the journalists who refused to echo. The artists who refused to flatter. The teachers who told the full story. The musicians who played off-key when the truth demanded it.
We remember that change doesn’t always come in revolution. Sometimes it comes in revision. In the story told better. Truer. Louder. Again.
That’s the work now.
To teach our kids that a birthday parade is not just a birthday parade.
To write the essay that breaks the algorithm’s rhythm.
To make art that doesn’t just soothe—but shakes.
To build coalitions that don’t just protest—but protect.
Because Baldwin never said hope was easy. He said it was our duty to look reality in the face and still insist on dignity. On humanity. On life.
And so we do.
So let them march. Let the cameras roll. Let the crowd cheer.
Here in the Poconos, far from the parades and podiums, the rhythm still hums. The memory still burns. And the story—my story—keeps unfolding.
When the music stops, we’ll still be here.
Telling stories.
Marking time.
Listening for what the drums already know.
The parade will end.
But the rhythm stays.