Monday was Memorial Day. In my city of Indianapolis, Memorial Day concludes a “big deal” weekend that features the City’s famous 500 Mile Race and numerous attendant festivities. The original meaning of the holiday tends to get buried in the weekend’s hustle and bustle, as thousands of visitors descend on the city to drink, eat and watch the race.
I hope that–in the midst of the festivities–at least some of us stop to remember that Memorial Day is intended to honor those who have lost their lives serving in the U.S. Military.
In The Contrarian, Jennifer Rubin recently issued that reminder. Memorial Day was intended to “memorialize” the sacrifices of the American soldiers who fought to preserve democracy around the globe. Writing from Spain, where she is traveling, she noted that but for America’s military and financial sacrifices, the world we inhabit today would look very different. If not for the young men and women who were ready to lay down their lives for others, Europe today would not be free.
It’s an appropriate time, as Donald Trump and his MAGA know-nothings throw aside American values (e.g., empathy, selflessness, ingenuity, inclusion), to appreciate the sacrifice of all those who have served. In the midst of debates about Medicaid cuts, debt, and tax cuts for billionaires, we should not lose track of honoring our veterans, whom Trump has nonchalantly kicked to the curb…
While he cuts billions from the Veterans Affairs Department and lays off tens of thousands of vets, Trump wants to throw away tens of millions on a cringeworthy military parade on his birthday, which also happens to be the US Army’s 250th birthday and Flag Day. Rather than honor others’ service by keeping our commitments, he preens amid military pomp like every two-bit dictator on the planet.
Trump cares not one wit about those who, unlike him, risked their lives. Quite the opposite: he has made life notably challenging for vets. Thanks to some masterful Washington Post reporting on the trauma he intentionally inflicted on tens of thousands of government workers, we have learned about the inexcusable toll on veterans in particular, who disproportionately serve in the federal government. Sadly, “Phone operators for the Veterans Crisis Line said they’d seen a rise in calls from federal employees and others worried about cuts to the VA.”
Given that Trump considers those who serve to be “losers and suckers,” it’s hardly surprising that concern for veterans is nowhere on his “to do” list. And the damage isn’t limited to the reckless and illegal DOGE cuts. As Rubin notes, almost every part of the horrific MAGA budget will hit vets especially hard. From the federal personnel firings (vets make up 30% of the federal workforce) to the draconian cuts to Medicaid and VA spending, to the layoffs at the Department of Veterans Affairs, to the petty purge of the Pentagon archives that documented diversity in the military, veterans have been disproportionate targets of Trump’s cruelest actions.
That cruelty has prompted the emergence of veterans’ organizations challenging the administration and the MAGA Republicans who are complicit–even enthusiastic–in the Trumpian assault. Vote Vets has proved to be a particularly effective voice for the nation’s veterans, but there are many others.
One wonders how those lawmakers who actually served–Senator Todd Young comes to mind–rationalize their support for the constant assault on veterans’ well-being. During the Memorial Day recess (ending June 2), constituents should ask them.
As Rubin concludes,
Veterans and their families have remained undaunted in military service and in the face of grotesque betrayal by the MAGA ingrates. They deserve better than this president, his cronies, and MAGA flunkies have offered. During their Memorial Day recess, Republican lawmakers who have enabled Trump’s cruelty should take a moment to reflect on what it truly means to put country above self.
Unfortunately, putting country above self is a concept absolutely foreign to MAGA and to the racist madman who occupies–and routinely desecrates–the Oval Office.
Well, Jennifer Rubin may be talking to herself if her target audience is “liberal veterans” in this country. I imagine most veterans are MAGA and voted for Trump. They seem to go hand in hand with what I’ve witnessed. Trump has given them the right to buy silencers for their guns and not be licensed in many states. These are your right to bear arms, folks. 😉
I’ve met a few vets who became pacifists after serving in the military. I listened to several during the early years of the Gulf War when they pointed out that GWB gave tax breaks to the billionaires and large corporations, which they considered offensive. They said that during wartime, all Americans should make sacrifices, and billionaires receiving tax breaks during wartime was unprecedented.
I had never thought of that before. I can certainly understand why they’d be offended, but giving tax breaks to billionaires who control the political class is now the norm, not the exception. Asking Musk, Thiel, and Trump to make sacrifices for the military is comical at face value. They don’t think about sacrifices for anybody.
Although Musk has been forced to sacrifice wealth due to his involvement in DOGE, and as far as I know, he didn’t like it much. LOL
I thought I’d share Dear Leader’s Truth Social post on Memorial Day for those who don’t have access:
“HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY TO ALL, INCLUDING THE SCUM THAT SPENT THE LAST FOUR YEARS TRYING TO DESTROY OUR COUNTRY THROUGH WARPED RADICAL LEFT MINDS, WHO ALLOWED 21,000,000 MILLION PEOPLE TO ILLEGALLY ENTER OUR COUNTRY, MANY OF THEM BEING CRIMINALS AND THE MENTALLY INSANE,THROUGH AN OPEN BORDER THAT ONLY AN INCOMPETENT PRESIDENT WOULD APPROVE, AND THROUGH JUDGES WHO ARE ON A MISSION TO KEEP MURDERERS, DRUG DEALERS, RAPISTS, GANG MEMBERS, AND RELEASED PRISONERS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD, IN OUR COUNTRY SO THEY CAN ROB, MURDER, AND RAPE AGAIN — ALL PROTECTED BY THESE USA HATING JUDGES WHO SUFFER FROM AN IDEOLOGY THAT IS SICK, AND VERY DANGEROUS FOR OUR COUNTRY. HOPEFULLY THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT, AND OTHER GOOD AND COMPASSIONATE JUDGES THROUGHOUT THE LAND, WILL SAVE US FROM THE DECISIONS OF THE MONSTERS WHO WANT OUR COUNTRY TO GO TO HELL. BUT FEAR NOT, WE HAVE MADE GREAT PROGRESS OVER THE LAST 4 MONTHS, AND AMERICA WILL SOON BE SAFE AND GREAT AGAIN! AGAIN, HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY, AND GOD BLESS AMERICA!”
We have always been populations of makers and takers, and the Trump Administration celebrates every day the business of taking. They gorge themselves as fast as possible on the benefits of our work, the value that we create in the world for each other to share. They are not into sharing; they only take to show off their disdain for work. Serving in the military is just another example of that.
Of course, they will leave us poorer. That is simple arithmetic. Their supporters will be among those with less.
Can we live with less? Of course, that too, but what adds rather than detracts from sustainability is to make less and save resources for future generations by not consuming them, so they last longer.
I have asked Todd Young that very question. Of course he did not respond.
Hey Todd,
That truth social post was so eloquent, so compassionate and empathetic, so loving, so filled with concern about those who gave the ultimate sacrifice, how could America not be great again?
Okay, now back to reality! Messing with veterans has always been dangerous. When you’re doing stuff to negatively affect those who suffered, those who have PTSD, amputations, and other issues, it’s like playing Russian roulette. Those are the guys that would gladly pick up a sniper rifle with a silencer and seek vengeance.
Back in the day, when Black soldiers came home from world war I and world war II, they were actually hunted down and murdered because the fear factor was hitting an all-time high for those from the hateful State! Hey, how could they let these guys walk around like everyone else? They were actually targets for the hanging tree! These guys could now fight back better than many of those looking to continue racist assaults. Revisit Tulsa, The hateful state was afraid of that community. Rosewood was another one, I mean they’re actually is quite a long list.
Now, The hateful state is picking with all veterans, and that could be a hazard to the health of many politicians.
I could tell you plenty of stories about how veterans were never really taken care of, at least in a compassionate way, like my great uncles who came back to a country looking to kill them because they volunteered and learned how to kill the enemy. They very well knew who the enemy was in this country. These great uncles Uncle Pete, Uncle Roger, Uncle Bergen, Uncle Al, were on my mother’s side, but it wasn’t just them, on my father’s side, many of those men served, and my father was one of them who was in Korea. My father formed an extremely positive viewpoint concerning soldiers who were dark green instead of light green! He made many friendships that lasted until the day he died.
To say that my family is not a mixture that supposedly represents this country, would be fallacy. They did, and they do. And to my great-grandmother Leslie Dawson who died crying about her last son that was murdered, my great uncle David! All she wanted were her boys to live a good and peaceful life. Those whom she carried inside of her, and were murdered because of mindless prejudice and bigotry! That’s what I think about on memorial Day. And I hate it with every fiber of my being.
These things are and will always be reminders that this country was not built for everyone! Those that were entitled, or are the entitled elite and wealthy white Protestant class, who could care less about those who died so they can continue cleaning the table of every scrap of tribute or support for those veterans. Memorial Day isn’t even worth the effort to form your mouth to say it!
Trump is, of course, insane. His disrespect and fountain of lies toward veterans AND active duty military is part of the program for a psychopath. His idiotic and sordid commencement speech at USMA was indicative of his deteriorating brain.
Thing is, will the damage become so irreparable before he dies, or will somebody or somebodies step up to retrieve our Constitution, the rule of law and rational politics from the slime that now occupies the White House, the majority in both houses of Congress and SCOTUS? If the rational people on this blog had their say that mattered, we’d be in lot better shape than on this greased slide to fascist oblivion.
I just read Heather Cox Richardson. It seems the courts are holding and resistance is swelling. This is a marathon, not a sprint. When more of the MAGA supporters Trump is betraying (farmers, vets, retirees, etc.) turn against him, he will be toast. Can the corrupt segment of SCOTUS hold out against the vast majority of their colleagues in the judiciary? All is up in the air but we the people can influence where it comes down. Renew your efforts at resistance!
How does Todd Young rationalize it?
“I got mine; F*** You.”
Like the TV ads that someone thought are cute showing people acting like self-centered jerks and being asked how they can sleep at night.
Why, they bought a mattress at Mattress Firm, – F*** You
OK, the ad doesn’t have those last two words, just the sentiment.
MAGA selfishness is cool again.
At least draft-dodger Trump doesn’t pretend that he likes the military — other than to be his servants whom he hopes he can set loose to kill his opponents (such as protesters).
Today’s a new day – I am optimistically thinking that Trump will finally outrage a few (tiny few) of his supporters and more of the low information voters and lead to landslide rebukes in ’26 and ’28. Then the work of repairing the damage begins.
May we all live to see that day.
The sense that many veterans may be MAGA and may have voted for Trump, may be explained by the pejoratives “MAGA ingrates” and “MAGA flunkies” thrown out by Americans whose political religion overrides any sense of gratitude they may have had toward veterans who willingly and patriotically deployed to foreign soil to fight on behalf of the very Americans who remained at home and are now deriding them.
Memorial Day is not for the veterans, it’s for the soldiers and sailors who never got to be veterans. At least that’s what many of the veterans I served at the Medical Center said.
Veterans have an understanding of the principle of the common good. They are a coveted cohort for research within the VA for their intramural research program and in the NIH funded studies at the Medical school. When you explain a double blinded study to most people they want to mull it over, talk with their families, but the veterans understand that, maybe they won’t get the study drug, but even if they don’t, the study has a good chance of curing a disease. They just sign up.
John Sorg,
Most of the veterans I know are not the gun toting, trigger happy people you portray. Even the sickest of them, a young man who had worked as a long distance trucker. He had stopped his rig in the middle of an interstate highway in Minnesota and pulled out a Magnum pistol to confront the police. Thankfully someone with the police recognized the signs of PTSD. He talked my friend down and discovered that the gun wasn’t loaded. Suicide by cop isn’t a made up thing. It’s far more likely than taking the lives of others.
I know that we haven’t always been good to veterans of color, especially those coming back to places like Indy, where a veteran told me he’d gone to the benefits office and was told they had no record of him. They turned him down for benefits even though he had a steel plate in his head from his service in Italy. He was in my office fifty years later, still trying to get what was owed him. We took good care of him.
Why not celebrate Memorial Day by amusing yourself? Others died so you can freely do that.
As for vets bringing down the King, only about 6% of Americans are vets…
Gordon,
Pew says veterans still predominantly supported Trump in 2024. It was over 60%, and that despite all the disrespect that Dear Leader tossed at them during Trump 1.0. Like MAGA, you’d think they would have had enough, but MAGA is a cult and will support Dear Leader no matter what evidence you provide them with. If you try to convince them Trump is a slug, they’ll defend him more.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/30/military-veterans-remain-a-republican-group-backing-trump-over-harris-by-wide-margin/
No excuses for the MAGA zombies, but if their main or only source of “news” is Fox Spews, then they are not getting the facts of what is actually going on. They have been fed a continuous diet of lies and disinformation since Rupert Murdoch started it in the 1990s. Think about it, 30+ years of GOP propaganda, thatʻs THREE DECADES. The results are that MAGA mental gymnastics is second-nature to their viewers. Possibly the only way to deprogram MAGA zombies is to disable and delete Fox Spews and their ilk. Instead of a Fairness Doctrine which in this era has become Both Sides-ism, we actually need an “Only The Facts Maʻam Doctrine.”
Peggy is right, they never got to be veterans.
Trump is, indeed, insane, as i’ve been saying all along, but it’s becoming still more obvious, even Mitch McConnell has seen it. Yes, where is sergeant Friday, when we really need him “Only The Facts Maʻam” Doctrine. But there is the rub…Trump, and the MAGA nuts do not believe in empirically established facts.
Sharon Miller
In the Big Ugly Bill, there is a provision that is meant to disable the courts. It takes away the ability of any federal court to hold people in contempt. This bill will strip away the last vestige of power from the courts, leaving Orange Jesus to become king. If this isn’t stripped from the bill before it gets passed, it’s over for the courts and the country.
Peggy,
Kudos for reporting on that….the only other place I have seen it is from Robert Reich. You would think The Times and The Post would put that on page 1 and the DEM leadership would holler it, not this world today.
Thank you Todd for the link to the 9/30/24 Pew Research Center article, by Joseph Copeland, whose first sentence reads, “Military veterans have long tended to affiliate with the Republican Party and support Republican candidates, and that remains the case today.”
It may be that veterans’ longtime allegiance to the Republican party reflects a preference for a party which favors peace, over a party which seeks to expand military conflict. I’ve read that blacks are also increasingly shifting to the Republican party, perhaps for the same reason.
As I wrote, it is all up in the air. If we want to influence where it comes down, we must keep up the good fight. My neighbor, a Viet Nam vet who is a Democrat and stays in close touch with the unit he fought with, is convinced that the ones who supported Trump did so entirely for financial reasons. If he’s right, they will probably stop supporting him when it is no longer profitable to do so. It seems that time is here. Now they just need to realize it.
M. Gessen in the NY Times
“We humans are stability-seeking creatures. Getting accustomed to what used to seem unthinkable can feel like an accomplishment. And when the unthinkable recedes at least a bit — when someone gets released from detention (as the Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi was a few weeks ago) or some particularly egregious proposal is withdrawn or blocked by the courts (as the ban on international students at Harvard has been, at least temporarily) — it’s easy to mistake it for proof that the dark times are ending.
But these comparatively small victories don’t alter the direction of our transformation — they don’t even slow it down measurably — even while they appeal to our deep need to normalize. They create the sense that there is more air to breathe and more room to act than there was yesterday.
And so just when we most need to act — while there is indeed room for action and some momentum to the resistance — we tend to be lulled into complacency by the sense of relief on the one hand and boredom on the other.
Think of the trajectory of the so-called travel ban during Trump’s first term. Its first iteration drew thousands into the streets. The courts blocked it. The second iteration didn’t attract nearly as much attention, and most people didn’t notice when the third iteration of the travel ban, which had hardly changed, went into effect. Now Trump’s administration is drafting a new travel ban that targets more than five times as many countries.”