Trump’s Birthday Parade is an Unintended Celebration of Pride
Honoring the homosexual who taught the Americans how to be an army.
As we anticipate through gritted teeth the June 14th military parade for birthday boy Donald Trump, we can choose to focus on everything that’s wrong with the event. We can make comparisons to Russia and North Korea and China and explain why Americans don’t do military parades—why these spectacles are for weak, authoritarian countries projecting power inward at their own citizens. We can empathize with the soldiers who hate Trump but who have been ordered to put on a show for the Traitor in Chief. Or we can dwell on the hypocrisy of claiming to “end waste, fraud, and abuse” while squandering millions on visual Viagra for Don-Don’s special day. But there’s a brighter side to this fiasco—one you might say is filled with rainbows.
Fortunately, historical coincidence and Beltway bullshit provide both PR spin for Trump and a reason for us to view the parade not as a Dear Leader jubilee, but as another celebration in this month of Pride. Because in yoking Trump’s birthday to the premise that the parade will primarily celebrate the U.S. Army’s 250th birthday—first commissioned by the Continental Congress on June 14, 1775—the administration will inadvertently honor the man who taught the ragtag assembly of American farmers and merchants how to be an army. And don’t nobody tell Pete Hegseth, but that man was probably gay.
Friedrich Wilhelm August Heinrich Ferdinand Baron von Steuben rose through the ranks of the Prussian Army, serving as aide de camp to Frederick the Great, and made a career of studying the art of war. Seeking an opportunity to earn a living from his martial skills, Steuben traveled to America in 1778, where he was introduced to the Continental Congress and eventually to George Washington. As the National Park Service describes on its site, Steuben was sent to Valley Forge to train and design drills for men who “lacked everything but spirit.”
The Continental Army was hardly an army—it needed discipline, training, and supplies—hence the guerrilla tactics employed to frustrate the British into losing in a quagmire rather than fighting too many traditional battles. But where the Americans held their own in key battles leading to victory at Yorktown, Steuben’s training was essential, and in 1779, Congress adopted his "Regulation for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States.” Known as the “Blue Book,” Steuben’s instructions served as the Army training manual until 1814, which coincides with the American defeat in the War of 1812, after which Congress revisited its initial reluctance to establish a professional military.
The question of Baron von Steuben’s sexuality is not entirely beyond doubt, but many historians state unequivocally that he was gay and that this was an “open secret” during the Revolution. Erin Blakemore, writing for Hstory.com, cites William E. Benemann, author of Male-Male Intimacy in Early America as one authority, and she writes:
Von Steuben didn’t just throw sexually charged parties: He also formed intense relationships with other men. He became close to William North and Benjamin Walker, aides-de-camp who seem to have been involved in their own romantic relationship, and lived with them for two years in camp.
Overall, there appears to be more evidence that Steuben, who died a bachelor in New York’s Mohawk Valley in 1794, was in fact gay. Thus, while meatheads like Hegseth and cowards like Trump allege that gay people can’t be effectively “lethal” in war, this Saturday’s parade—especially because it is June—will silently but unavoidably honor the homosexual who first taught the Americans how to be an army. So, get out your rainbow swag and watch with Pride as the ghost of Baron von Steuben leads the column of soldiers past a viewing stand of ignorant, weak men who have no idea what or whom they are truly celebrating.