For the people.

It has immense propaganda value. Look at North Korea and Russia. They regularly parade their military to look powerful.

For them, they literally carry a big stick in the hopes that no one will challenge them.

Trump is doing it so that he can show the world how powerful he is. Not by military might but by forcing the government to do the parade.

This value alone is worth 10 times the cost for Trump. Remember that it’s about his ego. And also remember that Trump isn’t paying a damn cent. We are. He’s thumbing his nose at us.

That value is worth 100 times the cost.

While it’s true that tribalism is essentially a human, if not evolutionary trait, we could have made it damn near harder for fascists from gaining power. To start, stripping them from any political office (local or federal) and then banning them or any soldier that fought for the Confederacy.

States that seceded basically should have been converted to non-voting territories unless they agreed whole cloth to codify abolition into the Constitution, reparations to the North and to their slaves.