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Dear Group, Today some have the day off for Veterans Day, a U.S. holiday properly celebrated on November 11th, yesterday, a holiday meant to honor military veterans. November 11 this year is particularly notable as it marks the centennial of the end of the war the original Veterans Day was meant to commemorate. Why November 11th? A bit of history many overlook: Veterans Day was originally known as Armistice Day. To my parents and their families who actually fought in or lived through World War I the name never changed. It remained Armistice Day in recognition of an event still vivid in personal memory. The Armistice that ended World War I was signed on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918. What U.S. school student today even knows what forces led to the senseless carnage of gruesome trench warfare, the first broad use of machine guns and poison gas, and the loss of an estimated sixteen million lives, in short, a horrific war? World War I was hailed at the time by President Wilson as “the war to end all wars.” What irony it was then, when in 1954 President Eisenhower renamed the day “Veterans Day” so as to subsume in that day the honoring of the veterans of two more hideous conflicts that had since occurred, World War II and the Korean conflict. Harken now to the aspirations of our blowhard-in-chief, the man who proposed with great fanfare a military parade in Washington, D.C., on Veterans Day this year, a parade to rival the Bastille Day parade he had seen in France. This aspiration from a man who ducked military service on account of bone spurs, a man who has never known anything remotely reminiscent of the privations of war… Lest you have forgotten Trump’s proposed parade, visit Newsweek from March 10, 2018. Cooler heads evidently prevailed over our narcissistic boy president envisioning metal-treaded tanks grinding up the streets of Washington, D.C. in an appeal to his sense of power. The plans have been greatly scaled back. You can read about them here. Meanwhile, Trump uses the military and our tax dollars as part of his propaganda offensive against immigrants…and against the possibility that brown people might one day become citizens and vote in numbers that would challenge the Republican minority currently supporting him. He sends active duty military to the Mexican border to reinforce and interdict the dwindling and demonized “immigrant caravan” still weeks away. He sends active duty military in numbers double the highest estimates of caravan. HIs message: “Be afraid, be very afraid. Those evil brown people are coming for your wives and children!” With his grandstanding, Trump uses taxpayer dollars to serve his propaganda goal…and makes a mockery out of the military for which he poses as having reverence. This weekend I honored my forefathers who served in the wars in which the United States took part…and I grew ill contemplating that their efforts have somehow led to a president the like of which we see now. Keep to the high ground, Jerry |