Member-only story
Playing With Sacrifice
Trump’s military debasement.
Look closely and one sees the sinister side of Trump’s politicization and debasement of the military. By mocking sacrifice, real and endured, Trump reduces service to country to nihilism and disdain.
Nobody likes to fight. Nobody wants to die. But a few will sacrifice risking their lives in service so others can live. The military swears to uphold the Constitution, as do the Capitol Police, as do elected officials. It’s all of the same cloth: sacrifice, a glue of democracy holding freedoms intact.
And there is no foreseeable reward, except pride and respect. So why debase these human attributes? Who is asking?
Shortly after he was elected President and took the Oath of Office, Donald Trump was invited to France. Trump was in Paris on Bastille Day, July 16 and with Prime Minister Macron, stood on the viewing stand and watched the procession down the Champs Elysees honoring veterans and soldiers, municipal workers, and public servants. For Trump, it was a parade, and he admired the pomp and circumstance, the color, the horses of the Republican Guard, the flags. But for the French and those who attend, the procession is a somber gesture of victory over oppression, wrapped around the notion of service to country and to nation. When France was occupied by Germany between 1940–1944, attending daily…
