Memorial Days worldwide are collective recognitions of selfless sacrifice for country. We Americans have always been fortunate enough to indulge the assumption our fallen protected democratic principles that are synonymous and effortlessly interchangeable with the concept of our nation-state. The men and women who died in uniform sacrificed themselves in service, not just to the United States, but also to the democracy that defines it, one doesn’t exist without the other.
And even when we belched hypocrisy back home, denying minority soldiers the equality they risked everything to protect, the US brand was its government’s determination to peacefully transfer power to its duly elected successor, which made improvement – progress – possible. We could always get better because the lessons we learned from our mistakes could become referendums we enforced at the ballot box. We were at least committed to that, with a trusted system we could count on. Nobody doubted this, particularly after a Black man was elected President, not once, but twice. Now they do, and should, because so do we.
Trump’s disastrous transactional approach to both our European and Asian allies was particularly disgusting for what he seldom if ever mentioned. Although its primary component was a constant harping about the US being taken to the cleaners by moochers intent only on avoiding their fair share of the weight, Trump was obsessed with monetary outlays and had little concern for the first part of the “blood and treasure” equation. It always started and finished with how much they weren’t paying, or how much more he had forced them to cough up. It’s hard to recall any instance of Trump expressing even a modicum of concern for actual lives being lost in fulfillment of the obligations he always brought back to the financial bottom line.
Of course, that was hardly surprising since it was reliably reported he had scoffed at Americans who died for the alliance as “suckers.” Seditionists aren’t known for their devotion to those who defend what they seek to destroy, and that’s all Trump’s GOP is about these days. Memorial Day weekend is an appropriate time to consider what things will look like if they succeed. How the essence of our national being, what we project to the world and vow we fight to preserve, will suffer.
In Texas they aren’t even pretending anymore. The “vote integrity” legislation GOP state legislators have come up with behind closed doors over the increasingly desperate objections of Democrats they despise, is a buffet of intimidation and duplicity. Specifically aimed at Houston and vicinity, part of increasingly diverse Harris County, the list of outrages stacks up nicely with some of Jim Crow’s dirtiest tricks. The mark up of Senate Bill 7 was like a book burning, becoming ever more incendiary as a feeding frenzy of MAGA faithful, desperate to have their own contribution to brag about, piled on gratuitous disenfranchisement. From actually making it a felony for sending out an unrequested application to vote by mail to granting partisan poll watchers carte blanche to intimidate whoever they feel like, the package could only be created by those trying to outdo each other for OAN and Newsmax face time.
That Democrats walked out instead of helping to codify the destruction of 50 years worth of progress is only noteworthy because they ever even considered doing otherwise. Voting no on such an overt attack on voting rights would be like a Juan Williams objection on Fox’s The Five, it only adds credibility to what deserves nothing but scorn and disdain. In Texas, like Florida, and Wisconsin, and Arizona, and North Carolina, and every other state meaningful to the national Presidential calculus, Republicans are either finding a sliver of integrity and therefore exiled, wretched cowards and opportunists, or MAGA cultists… there are no other options.
What once was merely the rantings of a clinical megalomaniac has coalesced into a frontal and detailed assault on, not simply voter access and basic minority rights, but the very infrastructure of American democracy. Republicans want nothing less than to rig future elections, not to mention veto power over results that somehow evade their best efforts to manipulate. This is what their base demands because it’s all their Jim Jones obsesses about when he’s not kicking his ball out of the deep rough or railing about the witch hunt set to indict him. Turns out, surviving Trump was only the first round, just a battle in a war his eviction from the White House provided but momentary respite from.
Coming into Decision/2020 the principle worry was what would happen if the results were razor thin. It wasn’t near that close, but Trump created an insurrection anyway, which Republicans are moving ever closer to fully revising as the misguided good intentions of patriots. The fiction Trump conjured – why it wasn’t called the “ridiculous lie” is a mystery – was amplified by Fox/AM no more or less than all of his other falsehoods. That, along with relentless Twitter and Facebook activity, and the shameful cowardice or avid participation of virtually every Republican who mattered was plenty enough to engrave Trump’s mindless atrocity into the party’s mission statement.
Now it’s hard to see a path toward redemption. Does anyone really believe electing, say, Kamala Harris is going to be done without the most profound national trauma? Forget 2024, McCarthy and company are making clear right now that they aren’t taking no for an answer next year when it comes to a GOP House majority, a specter every bit the crisis a MAGA Presidency imposes. Millions of Americans now “have lost faith” in democracy in whatever measure Tucker Carlson prescribes, even as hundreds of bills similar to the Texas abasement flood legislative dockets across the country. Which is to say it’s not about “reform” at all; it’s about fascism. It is happening here… quickly.
Germany’s remembrance of its war dead is a far more anguished national exercise than ours. The emotional trauma of having to reconcile loss with the evil it served should be a stark cautionary tale to citizens of all countries. How horrible to know family and friends perished as part of campaigns to spread authoritarianism instead of self-determination. How awful to know loved ones were history’s villains instead of heroes. That’s a narrative no nation wants to bequeath its children and ancestors. One of our major political parties now pursues robbing us of the piece of mind and moral high ground we sent kids to die for throughout our history. They do it enthusiastically and without apology, pandering to a mob informed only by zealots and hucksters. Our past and future fallen surely deserve better. BC