Mementos from wars fought by other men.
What a strange time to be honoring those Americans who’ve sacrificed everything — lives, fortunes, sacred honor — on the altar of freedom.
We’ve thanked them for their service by installing as commander-in-chief a creature who has sacrificed nothing. Not his life, which he still lives mostly as he pleases. Certainly not his fortune, about which we know next to nothing. And sacred honor? Puh-leeze. He has none.
Since he has no shame, we must bear it in his stead. Shame on us.
As a child I desperately wanted a uniform. It’s probably the only reason I submitted, briefly and without distinction, to a tour of duty with the Cub Scouts.
What I really craved was a uniform like my dad wore to work on Randolph AFB, that tan U.S. Air Force summer kit. But the old man gave me a stern talking-to about that, explaining that uniforms were something to be earned, not bought.
Harold Joseph O’Grady certainly earned his kit, beginning with flying Gooney Birds out of New Guinea during World War II. So did his brother, Charles Declan O’Grady, tail gunner in a B-29, also in the Pacific Theatre.
Mom’s dad served, too, in WWI, but of him we know next to nothing. Both grandfathers were long dead when we kids came around, and neither of our parents were inclined to discuss their respective early histories in any real detail. It was as though they had never existed apart from each other.
Children of war and depression, they ensured that their offspring would have an easier row to hoe. We didn’t get the best of everything, but lacked for nothing, especially when it came to education, from kindergarten to cap and gown. We didn’t get any little million-dollar loans, but neither I nor my sister had to sweat the college debt that cripples today’s youngsters trying to find their way in the world.
And a good thing it was, too, because neither of us has exactly killed it on the golden-toilet scale used to measure success and failure. Sis has spent her life helping people navigate the murky waters of our social-services system. I, as you know, was a minor cog in the fake-news machine before deciding to hang out my own shingle as an artisanal purveyor of free-range, non-GMO, sustainably sourced, gluten-free, 100 percent organic designer bullshit.
Neither of us followed in our father’s footsteps. But we’ve known men and women who served, from World War II through the apparently endless war in Afghanistan. And the least of these stands head and shoulders above the preening back-alley huckster who purports to command them between pep rallies, nest-feathering, and rounds of golf played from the cart. Stamina!
We owe these people a debt, and we keep reneging on it. In this, at least, we are well represented in the White House.
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