Intentional

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

They didn't want to attract the worm.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Decades of Hollywood Military propaganda ruined in one single day.

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

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

“A serious problem in planning against American doctrine is that the Americans do not read their manuals, nor do they feel any obligation to follow their doctrine.”
– Soviet observation during the Cold War