In Margraten

Outside the quiet village of Margraten is the Netherlands American Cemetery and Memorial. Buried there are 8,291 American servicemen who died to liberate that country.

On a late summer day, there is a stillness that befits this solemn space. The graves stretch away, endlessly it seems, and visitors walk slowly and speak in hushed tones. I go to the wall of names and find two there – an officer and an enlisted man – with my name. I have never felt before the soul-shading aura that surrounds this burial ground.

When I was very young, I was taken to Arlington and my youthful memory is of the vast spread of white markers, and their meticulous, strict rows, militarily correct. I had no understanding then.  

One of the greatest honors for a United States serviceman or servicewomen is to be selected to be a guard at the Tomb of the Unknown soldier. I was taken there, too, on that day of youthful memory. The guards there stirred something within me that had lain forgotten until that hot day at Margraten. I was quietly overcome there with a deep and resonating memory that has lasted until this very moment and will color the rest of my life.

The revelation that Donald Trump has called Americans who died in the service of our country “losers” and “suckers” is not surprising – but it is horrifying and devastating nonetheless. The commander in chief has already loudly denied these documented charges, but in the face of more than 20,000 other outright lies, how can we even think about believing his denials?

Donald Trump's hair – yes, his hair – was more important to him than visiting an American cemetery in France to honor our fallen dead there. He lied then that a helicopter couldn't fly in the rainy weather and that the Secret service couldn't drive. Keeping his horrid hair out of the rain was more important. So much for a bunch of dead suckers and losers.

As of this writing, there are more than 180,000 dead Americans from Covid 19. There have been estimates that 145,000 of these deaths could have been prevented if there had been any kind of rational government response. Donald Trump prevented this week after week and month after month as the body count inexorably rose and is still rising as Trump grasps at imaginary straws of vaccines that will magically appear three days before the November third election. These vaccines are the equivalent of Trump's prediction that the virus will “magically” disappear. Will he be the first to be vaccinated? Sure. You bet.

I think that Donald Trump in his dead heart of hearts thinks that these 180,000 dead, too, are “suckers” and “losers” and their deaths are as important to him as the millions of dead service people he has written off. The endless white markers in nearby Arlington are to him no more than props for his supreme lie of placing a bouquet there on Memorial Day.

At Gettysburg, Lincoln memorialized our “honored dead.”

Trump knows nothing of honor.