This morning tanks and fighter jets are rolling into Washington as the president turns our nation’s annual Fourth of July celebration into a show of military strength cum campaign rally. 

A leader sending his hilariously unqualified children out on official state business and hosting strongman military parades on the streets of the capital are not things that happen in healthy democracies. It’s what happens in autocracies. It’s the stuff of would-be cults of personality. It’s the stuff of banana republics. 

That that’s where we are right now — and that no one in a position of power or influence seems interested in calling it out or doing a single thing to stop it — pretty much says all that needs to be said about the state of America.