Republicans are working hard to turn Donald Trump’s demand for a military parade into some kind of event to honor the troops, but anyone who’s being honest knows that it’s all about Donald Trump. Trump wants a chance to look at what he considers his—not the nation’s—military hardware and might and feel personally powerful. He wants to feel like the military is honoring him by literally performing for him, marching past him in formation. And he’s willing to spend a lot of money to make it happen.
According to the Trumpian way of thinking, not wanting to have the U.S. mimic military dictatorships by showing off its hardware means you’re guilty of Not Honoring Our Troops, but let’s talk about some better ways to honor not the military as a broad concept but the actual people serving in it and its veterans:
● Fully fund veterans’ care, not by privatizing it but by expanding the Veterans Health Administration's strengths:
Myriad studies have found that treatment of veterans with diabetes, heart disease, and mental-health problems like PTSD is superior to private-sector care precisely because this VHA model of team-based integrated care stands in stark contrast to the fragmented, episodic nature of much patient care elsewhere. One RAND study on mental-health care documented that 70 percent of VHA mental-health providers understand military culture, while only 8 percent in the private sector had any familiarity with the kinds of specific military-related issues that effect veterans. A recent study on cancer care published in the Annals of Internal Medicine reported that older male veterans received care in the VHA that was often better than that in the private sector, because the VHA “is much better coordinated than in most other settings.”
● Pay service members enough that they don't have to rely on food stamps or food pantries, as tens of thousands of them do. And maybe don't cut food stamps, or consider that Republican “people need to work” talking points are flawed when active duty service members are relying on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
● Do something about the fact that “39,471 veterans are homeless on any given night” and “About 1.4 million other veterans, meanwhile, are considered at risk of homelessness due to poverty, lack of support networks, and dismal living conditions in overcrowded or substandard housing.”
● Or how about this suggestion from a Republican member of Congress?
There’s a start, but there are so many more ways to honor service members than by having them march around Washington, D.C., so Donald Trump can feel like his button is bigger than Kim Jong Un’s.
