Take Increased Devotion<\/p>\n
There are, or should be, actions and symbols in America that are beyond the crassness of politics. The sacrifice of those who died in battle, the loss felt by their loved ones, the suffering of captivity and of injury: all are too important to make part of the common rhetoric. Yes, politicians have \u201cwaved the bloody shirt\u201d (thus the phrase), but they have usually done so in a way which maintained the honor of those lost. Until this recent campaign cycle, when we met Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
It started when then-candidate Trump decided that he \u201cdidn\u2019t like\u201d pilots who got captured, he wanted his heroes to be those who didn\u2019t get captured. He was specifically talking about Senator John McCain, who spent many years as a captive of the North Vietnamese.\u00a0\u00a0 McCain, his aircraft shot down, captured, tortured; offered early release (a gesture by the enemy to his father the commander of the US Pacific fleet.) He refused, waiting his turn to be released as the prisoners slowly began their flights home. He is the DEFINITION of a hero.<\/p>\n
But Trump, a man who gained five draft deferments to avoid Vietnam, the last for heel spurs; needed to somehow put McCain down in order to raise his own candidacy. It wasn\u2019t about Trump\u2019s service or lack of it, it was about lack of respect for those who did serve. He attacked McCain\u2019s heroism, and he got away with it.<\/p>\n
Thus emboldened, Trump went farther. When Khzir Khan, the father of Army Captain Humayun Khan killed in Iraq, dared to criticize Trump in a speech at the Democratic convention, Trump attacked both Khan and his family. Up until then, \u201cgold star\u201d families had been sacred, their loss and grief insuring their protection: no longer.<\/p>\n
As President, Trump now has the obligation of representing our nation to those families. Over the past couple of weeks, he has failed to publically acknowledge the loss of four Green Berets in the African nation of Niger. He tried to claim that he did more than President Obama, and that he would eventually make the calls, dragging General Kelly\u2019s personal loss (his son was killed in Afghanistan) into the discussion. When he finally did call, the families received cold comfort from Trump\u2019s phrase, \u201che knew what he signed up for.\u201d They know.<\/p>\n
Or is it more likely that the White House staff didn\u2019t want the President to talk about Niger (pronounced Nee-jeer) because they were afraid he would mispronounce it, making the obvious error that every seventh grader in geography giggled about. He\u2019s already proven that he\u2019s not familiar with Africa; ask the leaders of \u201cNaam-bia\u201d (that\u2019s Na-mi-bia.)<\/p>\n
And he now goes after McCain again, even as the Senator faces a malignant brain tumor. McCain, receiving the Liberty Medal, \u201cdared\u201d to criticize the brand of nationalism that Trump represents. \u201cAt some point I\u2019ll fight back, and it won\u2019t be pretty,\u201d threatened the President. McCain responded that he only reacts to the President\u2019s actions not words, and besides, he had faced far tougher opponents in his life<\/p>\n
Trump is a President who has wrapped himself in the American Flag. He demands that the protests of NFL players against police discrimination stop. They are \u201ctaking a knee\u201d during the National Anthem, and, according to him, they are dishonoring American veterans in doing so. Trump claims that the Flag and the Anthem represent those that defend America who fought and died for those symbols.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to imagine a man who could be more disrespectful to veterans than the President. But past that, he is co-opting the flag for his own political uses. Much as the Confederate Battle Flag, once representing the armies of the South, was taken over and used by the purveyors of fear and racism; so President Trump is trying to define the Stars and Stripes for his own uses. To him the Flag doesn\u2019t represent freedom of speech, it doesn\u2019t represent equality in America. He has taken it for his own nationalistic cause.<\/p>\n
The \u201ccause\u201d Trump refers to, is the narrow, nationalist, exclusive ideal of the United States proclaimed by Steve Bannon and the alt-right. It is difficult to imagine that this is the same \u201ccause\u201d that Abraham Lincoln referred to in the Gettysburg Address:<\/p>\n