Picture someone you love who died serving this nation, even someone you’ve never met.
Imagine them wherever they breathed their last on this planet:
Jumping into churning, frozen foreign seas amid a howling storm of artillery fire.
The insect-blanketed jungle floor shivered in the grimy trenches in the eerie blackness.
Jumping in the confusion of explosions from a plane engulfed in flames.
Crouch in the blazing sun in the crosshairs of a sniper 500 meters away.
Slowly withering away from malnutrition in solitude and solitude.
Try to place yourself with one of the thousands of eldest sons, sisters, husbands, fathers, wives, best friends and beloved uncles who, with courage and selflessness, cannot place themselves in the path of bullets, bombs, torture and brutality because of America.
Now, imagine telling those brave servicemen and women just before they gave their lives for this nation that it would one day be handed over to a treasonous criminal with abhorrent disregard for the laws of this country; A man lacks a single noble emotion or patriotic thought.
Imagine the breaking news to those beautiful souls facing certain death that, five or twenty or sixty or a hundred years from now, America will be run by a billionaire rebel who will mock their bravery, mock their sacrifice, and put those who followed them in harm’s way, by allowing a disreputable TV personality to take over.
I wonder if they would have reconsidered their course, if they had declared themselves conscientious objectors in his impending war against the Constitution, if they had abandoned the road that led their lives to an untimely and violent end.
Given their indomitable courage, I don’t imagine they would, but anyone standing here today living through this historical farce, I sure as hell wouldn’t have blamed them. We have allowed our forefathers to suffocate our freedoms by exploiting the fascism they sought to defeat.
Putting our current service members needlessly in danger in Iran, being used as disposable pawns in a reckless and illegal war of distraction by a morally bankrupt parasite, should be enough to make any patriotic American sick to their stomach. As we witness our children carelessly thrown into half a dozen conflicts around the world designed to pad the portfolios of billionaires and devour oil-rich real estate, we should mourn our shared failure as American citizens.
By allowing our military to be at the whim of this treacherous criminal, we have failed our veterans; Ruining their service and ruining their sacrifice. Donald Trump’s treasonous presidency, his unwarranted occupation of the Oval Office, and his utterly despicable presence in America’s highest seat of power are a slap in the face to those we honor on Memorial Day, so that we can endure.
His kleptocratic administration, populated by grifters and foreign assets, acts as a giant middle finger to the millions who have lost years and careers and futures and limbs trying to save a republic that is now teetering on the edge of the abyss.
And whether it’s Memorial Day or Veterans Day or Independence Day or any day we wake up to such a petty, cowardly, petty disrespect of a man leading this nation, we should be outraged at the insult to those who truly love and adore America. We should collectively mourn the mockery of their sacrifice and stand against it publicly and loudly as a way of honoring them properly.
With our voices and circles of influence and financial resources and votes, we should be at the forefront of our lives to continue their brave, selfless work to protect this beautiful but beleaguered nation.
Knowing the most they can do for us, we can do the least for them.
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