Hi, there, Dear Reader. It’s late Saturday morning in my corner of Florida as I start this post, and – no surprise – it’s going to be another hot late summer day here. Currently, the temperature here is 83˚F (29˚C) under mostly sunny skies. With a slight breeze blowing from the east at 2 MPH and humidity at a sticky 83%, the “feels-like” temperature is 92˚F (34˚C). Today’s forecast calls for mostly cloudy skies and high humidity with a high of 92˚F (34˚C). No precipitation is expected in our area, and a local flood warning in a nearby part of the county expired over three hours ago.
As I sit here in my air-conditioned writer’s study, I am bamboozled by the cognitive dissonance shown by Trump supporters on social media every single day after Donald Trump does or says something controversial and the media reports on it. (Which is, unfortunately, an everyday occurrence!) I mean, seriously, the Make America Great Again crowd is a cult; its members figuratively close ranks and – like Pavlov’s dogs – reflexively chant “fake news” at any new revelation of their man’s crass self-centeredness.
Take, for instance, the brouhaha over a report published a couple of days ago by the respected publication The Atlantic in which Donald Trump’s disdain for the American military was put on display for all to see.
In Jeffrey Goldberg’s September 3, 2020 article Trump: Americans Who Died in Wars are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’ , we see a side of the current President that he does not want his followers to see:
In his lead to the article, Goldberg writes:
When President Donald Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018, he blamed rain for the last-minute decision, saying that “the helicopter couldn’t fly” and that the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him there. Neither claim was true.
Trump rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day. In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed.
I believe Goldberg’s story, which is based on anonymous accounts from individuals who know former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general who was present when Trump called the fallen World War I Marines “suckers.”
And, as the article points out, this is not the first time that Trump’s disdain for the military – especially those men and women in our armed forces who fall into enemy hands and become prisoners of war (POWs) or are from unpopular minorities – has come to light.
Per The Atlantic:
Trump’s understanding of concepts such as patriotism, service, and sacrifice has interested me since he expressed contempt for the war record of the late Senator John McCain, who spent more than five years as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese. “He’s not a war hero,” Trump said in 2015 while running for the Republican nomination for president. “I like people who weren’t captured.”
There was no precedent in American politics for the expression of this sort of contempt, but the performatively patriotic Trump did no damage to his candidacy by attacking McCain in this manner. Nor did he set his campaign back by attacking the parents of Humayun Khan, an Army captain who was killed in Iraq in 2004.
Trump’s comments about the late Senator McCain – namesake son and grandson of two Navy admirals and himself a Vietnam War veteran- are on record, as is the attack on Capt. Humayun Khan’s parents during the 2016 Presidential campaign.
Yet, his cult-like followers refuse to accept facts, calling The Atlantic’s report – what else? – “fake news.”
I will never believe Trump would say this they are trying every way to bring him down I am sure the military has his back.
“D.T.” – Trump supporter, on The Hill’s Facebook page
Here are some comments that I saw on Facebook on a related story posted on The Hill’s social media page:
“D.T.” started a comment thread with this bon mot:
I will never believe Trump would say this they are trying every way to bring him down I am sure the military has his back.
“M.M” chimes in and adds: D.T. thank you. This publication thinks the readers are idiots. If you hate Trump this low hanging fruit
“F.D” says: I agree with you. Trump loves our military. He’s had so many people that was with him that he didn’t say anything like that.
And regarding Trump’s insults aimed at John McCain, “A.H.” writes: who cares if McCain was a loser . He also did some very sneaky things . I am not impressed with john mccain
My personal opinion about Trump’s denials – he swears he loves the military and that he never, ever said this – can be summed up thusly:
Trump can deny this report as much as he wants. So far, the official line from the White House is, “Fake News,” but I – sadly – stopped believing anything the Trump Administration says the minute that it claimed that the Inaugural crowds at the Mall on January 20, 2017 were larger than President Obama’s in 2009.
I also don’t care if his supporters believe Trump. It’s their right to do so, even though I believe they are saps who have been conned by a grifter and liar.
What I do believe is The Atlantic‘s account of how Trump does not understand the notion of sacrifice and service, especially when it comes to the men and women who volunteer for our armed forces. He and his dad, Fred Trump, never served in the military, and Trump did everything possible to avoid the draft during the Vietnam War.
A Certain Point of View, Too 
I’m friends with a couple where the husband served 26 years in the U.S. Navy. The wife gets stressed easily, so she tends to avoid political discussions because they wear her out, and the husband is a jovial, teddy bear type who rarely sounds like he’s anything other than cheerful and laughing, and he almost never “stirs the pot”, so to speak.
So last night, when they both posted on their own Facebook timelines a collage of several pictures of his days in uniform, along with the caption, “Mr. President, I am not a loser or a sucker”, I knew that they had put some thought into what the consequences might be.
They didn’t have to wait for long.
Within a few hours, there were a crap-ton of comments. About a third were the standard “thank you for your service”. About another third were along the lines of, “you’re a far better man than that disrespectful draft-dodger who claims to be a president”. And the remaining third were a bunch of idiots who claimed that Trump was the best thing that ever happened to this country, that he LOVES the military, and that he never said any of those things about our men and women in uniform, it’s all a liberal conspiracy. (And of course, arguments ensued.)
My friends have not responded to ANY of the comments. Yet. I think they’re just kind of sitting back and watching the fray.
I cannot even imagine how frustrating it must be for them to read such drivel from people who are supposed to be people who care about them. But I know them pretty well, and I know that none of the comments they’ve received came as any sort of a surprise. And I’m sure that they are not surprised that many of the comments in support of the so-called “president” came from veterans that served alongside my friend, sometimes for months at a time in close quarters at sea.
I haven’t asked them yet about what moved them both to post the collage (I’ll wait until the furor dies down), but I suspect that the article in The Atlantic was merely a straw that broke a camel’s back that had long been under strain, and that they felt like the time has finally come to draw that line in the sand.
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I often wonder what kind of a mentality one has to have to be so besotted by any politician to claim such nonsense as “Trump is the GREATEST President EVER” and “Trump is the President who has done the most for our military.” Especially when there is lots of evidence to the contrary. Seriously, folks like that have a weird world view, with no basis in reality.
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Never underestimate the overwhelming force of racism and white grievance.
The part that really, REALLY bugs me is that my friends have that insanity coming at them FROM THEIR FRIENDS. In the past week, the wife had posted something else (in the form of a meme, of course) that really got my attention, because, again, she actively avoids talking about politics because it’s so, so stressful for her:
“Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote. Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty. Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, liberals created Medicare. Liberals passed the Clean Air Act, and the Clean Water Act. What did conservatives do? They opposed every one of those programs. Every one. So when you try to hurl the word ‘liberal’ at my feet, as if it were dirty, something to run away from, something I should be ashamed of, it won’t work, because I will pick up that label and wear it as a badge of honor.”
The very first comment she received on that one was from some crazy Trumper that was celebrating his 2nd Amendment rights, decrying Democrats and their “communism” (which he also referred to as “the party of slavery”), and then went on a two-paragraph-long rant about “the gay agenda”.
This couple has a teen-aged transgender child. And yes, it’s openly acknowledged on Facebook that one of their kids is transgender. It’s been common knowledge for about three years now.
When their child jumped in and said that as a grown man (in his 50’s, no less), it was none of that commenter’s business what’s in their pants, and his comment – “you’re either a man or you’re a woman, depending on what equipment you were born with” – is inaccurate and NOT appreciated.
It got ugly after that, because that guy did not stop the rant against their child. They (the child) defended themselves remarkably well, given their age (yes, I still struggle with the pronouns), and thankfully, several of us jumped in to take that guy down a peg or two.
He was not the only one to go on a conservative rant that morning, but thankfully, none of the others directly came after their child. The whole episode was pretty sickening.
I’ve often asked my friend why she tolerates such behavior from people who are supposed to be her friends, and the thing is, military families become very close-knit with each other. It’s the nature of the beast. Cutting one off is similar to cutting off a member of your family (something with which I know that you are familiar). The bonds of service means that you can count on each other during the worst of times. I fear that these are times – and these are people who have been too brainwashed by these times – that will, in the end, break those bonds, and consequently, will break this country. Decency should matter, but for those people, it just doesn’t. And the rest of us can only bear so much before the instinct of self-preservation kicks in.
Damn, that was long! Sorry about that! I guess I’ve just had a lot on my mind this week!
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No need to apologize. My WordPress casa is your WordPress casa.
It’s disconcerting, to say the least, to see how disunited the “United States of America” is now. I think this one of the side effects of a combination of events that include the end of the Cold War, conservatives’ thirst to get revenge for Nixon’s ouster in ’74 (Fox News Channel’s creation is linked to that), and of course, the September 11 attacks. Add the election of Barack Obama in 2008, and ka-boom! The GOP goes from being the Party of Lincoln (which it stopped being in the 1870s) to the Party of Don the Con.
Thank you for commenting! I really appreciate the feedback.
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