US Military never really trained for these types of dog and pony shows

Didn't North Korean military slap US military with their dick on their faces for years? Isn't that the reason a North Korea exists at all?

if by "defend our nation" he means "destabilizing foreign nations" then yeah, he is correct.

Lol they're pro military just to make Trump's joint celebration with the military look bad

No one will ever match North Korea's marching game.

Eeehh, so yes, after basic i did not march anywhere really. And you do need to brush up on it to keep in the swing of things…. But honestly, you know your unit is going to march in a parade months in advance, and for better or worse are going to represent the armed forces, you schedule mandatory training time.

Is it wasteful? Arguably under normal circumstances, definitely under this circumstance.

So i can only conclude that either they did not care, or do care a lot, or someone who was supposed to plan this fucked up and they just grabbed people.

I despised drill and ceremony. Standing in the heat and humidity, waiting to move and watching soldiers drop because of heat stroke. Never lock your damn knees.

"Defend our nation" by starting wars to keep rich people rich?

I’ve been trying to explain to people for many years that China’s military is mostly just for show, but it isn’t the US if we’re not demonizing China for no reason.

It's very important for soldiers to focus on doing "important work to defend our nation" (murdering brown kids) and that they're "productive at their jobs" (bombing hospitals)

to defend the interests of our nations elites.

This is just not accurate.

Here's an example proving it incorrect:

https://youtu.be/aeFltEjzR2Y?t=1212

That's just a unit. Not a ceremonial one.

When has the US military defended the nation? I got the impression that they're mostly used for invading foreign countries for financial gain, cf Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Yugoslavia, Sudan, Panama, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Cuba, Guatemala, Korea.

This is a false dichotomy, as though you can either be productive or learn to march. Obviously you could do both.

I am surprised at how many people do not get it. In military you cannot not comply with the orders, especially whan there is clearly nothing criminal with it. The guys doing sloppy marching is pretty much the only agency they have and the only way to protest and boycot that ridiculous parade.

From what I'm hearing from coordinators and people inside its not that they can't march. It's that nobody wanted to. They had to be there. So they phoned it in. Malicious compliance.

Like the squeaky tanks. That was a choice made in the motor pool. They could have greased them up and tested to make sure they were smooth. But they made a different call.

These soldiers spend their days doing important work to defend our nation.

The U.S. military has done nothing to defend their "nation" for over 100 years. They ONLY defend the corporate oligarchs' ability to steal resources and use slave labor in third world countries.

I think the way they marched says more about trump than it does their ability to march. I very much doubt they forgot how to do it.

The way the marines, in particular, marched… no. That was sloppy and looked intentional.

They deliberately half-assed the parade because they don't like the way Trump treats them. Trump calls them "suckers and losers." He cuts their benefits Why would you show any loyalty (or enthusiasm) to someone who treats you like that?

More Trump quotes: "You fucking generals. Why can't you be more like Hitler's generals?" 2017

On the burial of US Army private Vanessa Guillén: "It doesn't cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican!" December 4, 2020. Trump has denied having made the remark.

"We're not going to support that loser's funeral." August, 2018. Trump has denied having made this remark.

re: John McCain, who was captured and tortured for five years: "He's a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren't captured, okay? I hate to tell you." July 18, 2015.

"But, you know, during the Vietnam War, I got very lucky. I had a very high lottery number." November 9, 1995.

On the 1,800 US Marines who died at Belleau Wood in France during World War I "Suckers." November 11, 2018. Trump denies having made this remark.

On US soldiers in World War I "Who were the good guys in this war?" November 11, 2018. Trump denies having asked this question.

"I don't get it. What was in it for them?" November 11, 2018. Trump denies having made this remark.

On disabled veterans "Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that, the wounded." September 30, 2019.

"Look, I don't want any wounded guys in the parade. This doesn't look good for me." Summer 2017.

The band played "Fortunate Son". They all knew exactly what they were doing.

If shit ever does hit the fan full send (I very much doubt it) he doesn't have the army.

Whole existence of the military is questionable (not only in the US, but everywhere else) together with the governments, borders, permissions, involuntarily taxation ("legal" theft).

People (not stupid NPCs) can live and peacefully coexist without that crap.

They didn't want to attract the worm.

I was only in marching band. 25 years later, I promise I could still do it with zero practice. This was on purpose.

I think it was probably in protest. However they can, I guess.

The entire thing screamed humiliation display more than anything else. And the anything else was like a half assed shitty commercial for military equipment. They had actual soldiers playing dress up for no fucking reason while wasting a fuck ton of money the VA could’ve used. Just despicable all around.

If I could march in a brass band after very limited practice, these guys can. They just didn’t want to.

Yeah! They need to do important stuff!

Like point guns at me while I'm going to the grocery store!

Story time, boys and girls.

When I joined the Army and went to basic training, one of the first things they did was show us how to stand at attention, at-ease, right face, left face, and about face. Then they turned the training unit and marched off.

And then stopped and screamed at us for marching like Nazis.

Turns out, you don't see US soldiers marching like that because it's stupid as hell, and you can't do it for twenty miles with a rucksack. The US military for all their many, many faults, is real good at war, and marching like a toy soldier doesn't help you do war.

So we learned how to march like Americans, which is much more casual. The only thing you've gotta do is make sure you match the stride length of the soldier in front of you, but even that is more of a suggestion than a hard rule. We got good, though, because we were assholes.

We would ease out behind someone who was walking somewhere and roughly the same height, and step slightly faster than the person in front of us, until we were close behind them. Then you perform a little skip at the last second to get back to the same stride and close the last few inches. The end result is that your chest is hovering about an inch from their back, your nose is an inch from the back of their head, and your hands are swinging right behind theirs. While walking at full speed.

You haven't had a jump scare until you've marched two blocks, turned your head, and glimpsed someone's face an inch from your own.

At least Trump seemed not to enjoy any of it, so hopefully we can put this whole stupid episode behind us, and move on to the next stupid episode.

They can dEfEnD oUr NaTiOn against brown peasants, but can't march in step because they apparent forget how to do so after basic training? Shit, it's been over 20 years since my military service and I'm 100% sure I could still manage to march in step

We're there soldiers in WW2 cosplay? I'd be so embarrassed.

Russians be like "they can't march, maybe they can't even clean a toilet bowl with their fork or fuck and tortue a child, we totally win"

They defend our nation? How, and in what ways? Bonus points if you can describe it in : current era facts, non-hegemonic, and without using the word “preemptive strike”, and with action on our soil.

My volunteer fire department was able to march in sync in parades despite having enjoyed a few adult beverages beforehand. What the Army did had to be deliberate.

So, the tweet isn't entirely true; my experience in the army was that we very much did irregularly do marches together, even after basic training. Every few months or so the battallion or brigade leadership would get an idea about a 'fun run' or whatever, and the start of those is always a march together. It inevitably switched to running together, but there was definitely a quick refresher on walking in step together on a regular basis.

What the tweeter missed is that there's tricks that every leadership command knows to do if they want a formation to look good.

If you wanted to put a military parade on that actually looked good you'd do a couple things prior to running it. You'd tell your various units to have a competition for who does it best, and you'd put up a basic-ass award for the winners and runners up. This ensures that any ladder climbers go out and find all the people who are actually good at this to put together a small super squad of people who actually know what they're doing. You then have them compete, and you pick the units that did the best to lead your parade.

We actually did this in basic training; my drill sgts had a little demonstration where they put the people good at keeping time together and the people bad it together. It was damn impressive how much of a difference just doing that made. One or two bad marchers can ruin a whole formation with their lack of timing.

None of this was done; at best they practiced for pt for a couple weeks before the event, but even that is iffy. They likely didn't bother to filter the parade members who can't march out, and that'd be good enough to turn this into a herd instead of a formation.

This doesn't rule out malicious compliance at all though; again, one or two bad marchees doing their best (or worst) job can completely throw off the timing of everybody behind and next to them. Same way as counting wrongly out loud can throw off someone trying to count up to 50.

On a fucking Saturday too. They wanted to be with their loved one probably.

gotta stroke shitler's ego.

Decades of Hollywood Military propaganda ruined in one single day.

probably one of the first things every soldier world wide learns is marching. Malicious compliance it is.

If my kids were Army and were participating at an event, i would go watch. It sucks that it could have been a nice, reasonable celebration of the Army's 250 years of service but instead it was hijacked by a dipshit charlatan and turned into something that no one wanted. I feel sad for the families of the participants.

Actually, they do train for this. So nice try. They hate Trump.

It's like in Catch-22 when Lieutenant Scheisskopf thinks that it's in vogue to march with your arms barely moving, and no one knows any better.

If they dislike Trump so much, they had like, you know, all their tanks there and stuff, they should have just removed him from office.

I'm sure they felt very proud being brought on and ordered to march on display like trained monkeys.

If they're all really so unhappy to do this, I'm not saying they should do a coup... but I'm not not saying that, either.

I thought it was in unison but it certainly didn't have the giant goose stepping.

Shit excuse. It takes more effort not to march in unison.

It's also something that is taught in UK army, since the collapsing bridge incident.

defend our nation

From what?

Military is absurd. Ceremonial is the least destructive thing they can do I think.

You mean they spend zero time on showmanship training and thus twirling rifles serves a practical and essential combat purpose?

Trump just needs to up his dictator game and threaten everyone involved, especially the leadership, with jail time or dishonorable discharge if they don’t shape up and goose-step properly.

Murica is just a puppet that rump has his arm up its ass

Intentional