Of all the other controversies Trump has inflicted upon our country and the world, it is my belief that his recent disrespect of our veterans was near his greatest insult on American values. Was it the Secret Service or was it simply a bad hair day? Was he terrified that he might melt in the rain? Aisne-Marne cemetery in France is a place of quiet reflection to honor of fallen heroes who in many cases died a most horrible death at the hands of an enemy we faced again just a couple decades later. He says (qualified) the he did not want a motorcade to disrupt Parisian traffic. Look at the thousands of crosses placed on that French soil. Do you suppose their lives were disrupted?
Many forget that WWI was a direct causality of WWII. It is easy to tie the dead and maimed of these two wars into a single massacre. Yet Trump saw no reason to honor dead in France,
It was bad enough that this President had little regard for our WWI dead; he followed that up on Veterans Day by not placing a wreath at the feet of our honored unknowns. It is known as the "Tomb of the Unknown Soldier", one from WWI and one from WWII. There is a Vietnam unknown that will forever remain vacant in honor of those honored dead. Do you think Trump even knows that? If this is not a disgrace then no such thing as a disgrace exists.
Why have we allowed our country to stoop so low that we allow the VA to fail to pay our treasured vets the money we owe to them? How can we allow tax breaks to the richest in America who likely never shed a drop of blood in defense of the United States? We certainly know our bone-spur, draft-dodging, chief executive did not. How can we allow or veterans to sleep on the street, eat at soup kitchens, and be reputed as an underclass in today's America. That is all happening as they are supposedly revered. Revered? Most combat vets are proud to claim it. I don't see many offering them a hand down to help pull them up.
Are there slacker vets--sure there are. There are plenty of them. There are slackers in all social/economic strata. Most of these vets never saw a day of real combat in their life. They are easy to identify, they go on and on about their combat exposure. Most vets know the difference, yet seldom show they know.
It is not only because of the treatment of our veterans that I am embarrassed. We were once a country to be envied. We were a moral leader in all the world for a while, but it seems that in the past few years we have been the leader in a race to the bottom. I am not sure when this began because I think that I was likely not watching. No surprise, I never believed this reverse of direction could happen. But like all things that come on slowly, it is unclear until you wake up one day and the likes of Trump is a leader of the (free?) world.
The bad guys who are visibly bad have always been there and their followers know why they follow. I am not really sure how to explain the good guys that suddenly are in their dark place filled with rage and hate. Isn't it interesting how difficult it is to recruit people for a good cause, and easy to recruit others to the bad. Maybe that is our current place in evolution. Perhaps they were always filled with rage and hate, but hid it below a more opaque veneer. I think this rage and hate, racism and bigotry, may have existed all along. There have been those throughout history who allow the general public to drop those veneers to reveal themselves. You know who they are, you know who you are, and Trump knows who he is.
Back to our veterans. It is my sincere hope that in a bit over two years someone will toss the playpen out of the oval office and place a person less self-centered into the presidency. One who will guide his or her actions less by tantrums and more enlightened by logic. We must make this our priority. If not "They (we) that sow the wind, shall reap the whirlwind". We will suffer our actions. Worse; we will suffer the actions of a few, chosen by a few, and tolerated by many. This de-evolution could result in the destruction on mankind.
Our war dead have already suffered our actions and to turn our backs on them, or to ignore our future actions leads only to more suffering for another self-centered ego-maniac caring only for himself.
When I look to the future I clearly see a world that is possibly disarray. We need to change the world now or suffer the thought police. Otherwise--The Whirlwind.
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