DONALD TRUMP’S DENIGRATION OF OUR SOLDIERS EXEMPLIFIES THE NEW AMERICAN CONTEMPT FOR SACRIFICE
DONALD TRUMP’S DENIGRATION OF OUR SOLDIERS EXEMPLIFIES THE NEW AMERICAN CONTEMPT FOR SACRIFICE
by
David Gottfried
We have all heard the reports of Donald Trump’s scandalous contempt for our soldiers. We have all heard that he castigated the fallen as losers and suckers. I suppose that when we denounce Trump, we feel better about ourselves and fancy ourselves morally superior.
However, Trump, like an infant who has not learned to keep his derisive comments to himself, says the sort of things many, many people think and feel all the time.
In a word, being noble and courageous has been increasingly out of favor in the past few decades. There was a time when the Kennedy men, with voices that sparkled like silver swords, quoted Lord Tennyson and graced us with the command “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” There was a time when the young flocked to the Peace Corps. There was a time when students battled the Billy Clubs and bullets of the police to protest the War in Vietnam. There was a time when Americans still remembered our valorous fight against Adolf Hitler. There was a time when becoming a rich son of a bitch and a fink was not the alpha and omega of the so-called “American Dream.”
I think I first realized that things had changed when I heard a song, by Elvis Costello, with the Title and Plaintive refrain “What’s so Funny, About Peace love and Understanding.” This song was released on the Precipice of the Ronald Reagan 1980’s, when rental prices and the number of AIDS cases rose like Helium Balloons celebrating the crucifixion of brotherhood and goodness. Soon Walter Cronkite was gone and television broadcasted shows such as “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.” Soon the Halloween orange hue of Donald Trump was radiated across the airwaves like a radioactive isotope.
This vulgarity was not restricted to Donald Trump. New York elected a mayor, Ed Koch, who famously said that if you can’t afford New York, you should just leave. (And that vulgar pol was what once passed for progressive politics) Obviously, soldiers, who are not known for their stellar salaries, are unwelcome in the privileged and prissy precincts where Koch and Giuliani and Trump and other venomous parasites reside.
My Great Neck relatives exuded this toxic contempt when they joked about fighting in Iraq. Their point was clear: They were far too busy luxuriating in America’s riches to do the job done by stupid “shvatzas” and goyim, which of course was fighting in the mid East to further the interests of the Jewish State (Incidentally, their supposedly impeccable political acumen was all wrong: The destruction of Iraqi power led inexorably to the ascendance of Iran, larger, more capable and much more of a threat to Israel.)
(Since many people will doubtlessly complain that my excoriation of my pampered relatives evinces Anti-Semitism, a few additional words about Israel are in order: Israel was created by selfless socialists, many of whom fought with the partisans during World War Two. These founding Zionists sought to negate the legacy of the miserly, mercantile Jew counting his silver and gold. However, Israel is now mesmerized by America just as Ancient Judea was once under Rome’s thumb. Creeping Americana may destroy Israel just as Rome destroyed Judea. As Israelis become more and more sucked up and funneled into the Tornado of hypercapitalism, they may become less inclined to defend the Jewish state. Why be a sucker and a loser fighting for the Negev or Galilee when one can retreat to one’s swimming pool in Scarsdale, New York.)
Of course, people profess, with a vengeance, to be philanthropic and civic-minded and smitten by the military. I am forever hearing talking heads and conventional political riff raff say that we will not leave any child behind, that we will not leave anyone behind and they verily suggest that they will ensure that everyone will be invited to the Hamptons to savor the cool seaside zephyrs during the dog days of August.
However, our propensity to talk about caring for people is directly proportionate to our propensity to spit on anyone who has sung the blues. (I will always remember the words of one of my law school professors on the first day of Freshman orientation, September 8, 1982: 80 percent of NYU law students write on their applications that they yearn to fight for justice and the beleaguered and 80 percent of the school’s graduating class goes to firms that represent large corporations and wealthy individuals.) In other words, the more we adorn ourselves with the accoutrements of sheer narcissism and unjustified wealth, the more we claim to be selfless idealists who care about truth and goodness.
For example, I live in New York City, a citadel of liberalism bluer than the most precious sapphire. Many zip codes of this city will bequeath in excess of 80 and 90 percent of their votes to Democratic candidates. And well over ninety-nine percent of these proud and gallant liberals walk by disfigured and shivering and desperately ill homeless people with nary a care in the world, except perhaps a snide snicker of Schadenfreude, or pleasure at another person’s pain.
In New York City, hardly anyone, except for blacks and Latinos, has anything to do with military service. In the rest of the country, military service is somewhat more common, but not by much. Whereas through most of the Twentieth Century, American men were very much acquainted with war (World War One, World War Two, Korea, Vietnam and many smaller conflagrations around the globe), contemporary American men approach conflict and danger like eight year old boys playing cowboys and Indians. As they watch simulated war footage on the ubiquitous TV and computer screens of our collective intellectual senescence, they exclaim “Cool,” when they see really “neat” explosions, and they laud Rambo and whatever other oober human ape-men our advertisers have surmised we will like and they sit on their sofas and stuff themselves with junk food like little boys on “South Park.”
For them warfare is a game to play while sitting at home on the sofa, and it is something they somberly praise when in public. In mid Twentieth Century America, we had a keener understanding of warfare. Back then, almost all Americans were in the military or had close family members or friends in the military. They realized that war was sometimes necessary, they hated the gore-filled consequences of war and they often hated our leaders and generals who wasted men in poorly plotted strategy and tactics.
These days most Americans don’t know a damn thing about fighting. They do however feel very guilty because they have never done a damn thing to put their shoulder to the collective wheel. And so they compensate for their guilt with heaps of hysterical odes to our fallen servicemen. And I most sincerely believe that like Trump they believe that most of our servicemen are suckers and fools.
THIS WAS THOUGHT PROVOKING AND UNFORTUNATELY VERY TRUE. MOST WOULD BE ASHAMED TO ADMIT IT. THE FACT IS A LARGE % OF THOSE THAT SERVE ARE FROM THE POOREST SOCIAL CLASSES SEEKING OPPORTUNITY. SIMILAR TO THE VOLUNTEERS IN ROMAN ARMY OF THE MID REPUBLIC. THEY WERE ATTRACTED TO THE MINIMAL WAGES BUT MORE IMPORTANT THEY HAD THE PROSPECT OF A SHARE OF OF WAR BOOTY.