Yesterday — Memorial Day — my humble, honourable and heroic father was much on my mind. With the day comes an extra catch in my heart that lasts until sometime after D-Day. It’s my personal ‘season of remembrance.’ This year the catch nudged its way into full on pain. I miss my father daily, but am comforted that he’s not here to witness what is becoming of the nation that sent him ashore in the first boat at Normandy’s deadly Omaha Beach.
I have been aghast at every criminal, cruel, and corrupt action of the current administration. I thought I had reached peak outrage. But nothing — nothing — has hit me more viscerally than that evil pretenders’ pardoning of convicted war criminals. Men who murdered needlessly and cruelly, who tortured other human beings, and when they had taken their lives, desecrated their mortal remains. It is bad enough that as a society, these creatures walk among us. However when they commit such atrocities under cover of the flag so many carried honourably as they gave their “last full measure of devotion” they are an indelible mark of evil on a nation’s soul. What does that say about a citizenry that tolerates presidential absolution of these most heinous crimes?
As an adult, I’ve learned about the dark side of American history that never made it into the history books of my childhood: The genocide of Native Americans, the worst of the Jim Crow era, the brutal assaults on striking coal miners, and the various misguided and destructive foreign policies. But I had hope that America was evolving toward its own vision of itself as a fair and honourable nation guided by conscience and higher ideals. That hope began to fray in November 2016.
How can a society that purports to revere its soldiers and veterans tolerate a Commander in Chief so openly desecrating their service and sacrifice? Let’s march! Let’s wear flag pins and wave Old Glory! Let’s give Vet discounts to those who have served. Pray for them! Salute them! Let’s ask them to rise and be thanked for their service at every entertainment or sporting event. Except now. Now, let’s stand silent for the most egregious disrespect of them imaginable by the five-time draft dodger in the White House.
My father served in the Pacific and in Europe. He went to war to fight one of the cruelest and most barbaric regimes in history. He saw and experienced things he could not talk about for fifty years.
He came home, worked to support his family, was an engaged and active citizen who voted in every election. He was a loyal and active member of his American Legion, helping vets less fortunate than himself. He taught flag etiquette to grade schoolers and shared (very sanitized) and inspiring stories of his Navy days with history classes. There is an aphorism that “patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” He was not that patriot. He was the real deal.
In pardoning a convicted war criminal, the President of the United States has excused the cruelty and barbarism my father fought against. The leader of the nation has shown his comfort with the greatest evils man can perpetrate on one another. In that, he degraded my father’s very existence and desecrated his memory.
It is good that Dad isn't here for this. He would weep, not for himself, but to see the last vestiges of his beloved country’s honour fade away.
