This image I am using today is one I have used before for Memorial Day, because we have separate days for celebrating and remembering the lives of those who have served: the living and the dead. Veteran's day this year has coincided with the remembrance of the end of WW1, and this has also become connected with the drama of our current Commander in Chief, because he could not be arsed to memorialize our dead in Europe from WW1 or our dead who lay buried in Arlington. This tells me a lot about how Trump sees our veterans, through the lens of how he treats the passed.
Our servicemembers are volunteers currently, and have chosen a period of their lives for which death or grave injury is a possibility, to serve the country that they love. Our servicemembers, our vets, have sometimes been new citizens, or people who served in the hope of becoming citizens. But they served with honor, because they did so for this nation.
Is Trump enough of a nationalist to know that people who never lived so long under our flag, nonetheless served for these colors, and bled for them? And should be recognized as every bit as American as my pale vintage WASPy humanity?
Could he fathom their sacrifice, having in his own life sacrificed so little?
We need to talk about his abdication from addressing our servicefolks, how he would not visit those who currently serve, and boldly assigns a posting for 5000 or more souls to a kind of Hadrian's invisible wall to mark a pale place between our border and the impoverished, distressed, and tired, poor, wretched refuse, yearning to be free, that even think to lawfully try for asylum here.
I wish, my dead, delivered, and live, and thriving, my unsacrificed heroes of our so many wars, our veterans, that we had better representation for you, and us.
I will not ever forget this man's disregard of you.
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