One of the ships I was posted had to have the entire crew practice marching before a parade for freedom of the city. But we had come off of deployment not long ago.

Go to a concert and you might hear people clapping along to a song. All they have to do is meet their hands at the proper time, at speed. Some people are a half second off, and they don’t have to maintain distance, stave off boredom, or consider their stride. Humans kinda suck without practice

I find the parade itself more than idiotic. It's anti-American and counter to our very principles.

Fuck how they marched. You can have your comments but holy shit it pisses me off that you're focusing on how they marched instead of on the abject evil forcing them to do it in the first place.

My assumption was to try and make the troops look more menacing as a message to places like LA, really hoping for an NK dear leader style ass kissing but just got to hear the squeaking of a Sherman instead.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Last time they did a parade was back in '91 after the first Gulf War, they wore a combat uniform then as well but also wearing their LBE

But that was just after the ending of actual major combat operation, so it wasn't entirely out of place to wear the desert uniforms that were worn for that particular theater of operation

I'm not sure why they chose combat uniforms for Trump's parade, maybe Trump requested them or it was a bargaining olive branch to the troops from the brass to try to keep participation high since dress uniforms are much less comfortable to wear in parades and require more effort on the part of the soldiers to prep

I know we always did our best to avoid those kinds of events that required them

You need some kind of cue to keep in step. If you can see the other guys feet, that helps, but often tinted you can't. The sound of yourself matching helps, but without some occasional cadence, or other governing factor, the speed of the match tends to change in a collective sort of way. My BMT platoon would get faster as we marched, unless the DI shouted at us occasionally.

It's certainly possible and even likely that there were people marching who just didn't give a fuck or were purposefully marching like shit, but as somebody who's served and marched plenty, you'd be surprised how quickly things get messy. It's easy, sure, but it can get out of hand quickly.

If one person goes out of step, especially with no cadence cues, those behind follow the one who's fucking up either consciously or subconsciously. Then the one who's leading the out of step march shuffles to get back in sync, forcing everybody behind them to have scramble to shuffle back into step. It's a domino effect.

Like I said, I won't say it's not possible that you're right, but if you were to watch any marching group you'd see people out of step in almost every case. Regardless of if they wanted to sabotage Trump's parade in this case, most of the people I served with wouldn't want to intentionally make their unit look like a bag of hammers - which sloppy marching does.

I think a lot of people are over analyzing this but like I said, it's still possible that what you believe is true.