Trump’s Shameful Desecration of an a Hero and What it Says About our “Great Nation” Status
Earlier this month, Donald Trump lashed out at the late John McCain, again attempting to tarnish the memory of a fallen hero who, independent of his politics, is an undeniable beacon of courage in keeping with the best traditions of the American warrior.
McCain spent his formative years serving his country, graduating from the Naval Academy, qualifying as a combat pilot in high-performance tactical jet aircraft, and surviving torture and imprisonment in a North Vietnamese prison camp. He chose to stay when he could have been paroled. All he had to do was speak ill of his countrymen and he could have gone home. He chose honor over personal comfort.
Donald Trump spent those same years dodging the draft, swaddled in privilege and already making his mark as a notorious swindler and slumlord. Still, all he had to do to avoid criticism for his cowardice was refrain from speaking ill of those who chose to do more. He’s once again proven that what he lacks in honor and commitment, he also lacks in discipline, humility, and basic decency. He’s been bad-mouthing McCain publicly since 2015 … not in opposition to his policies or views, but with brutish personal attacks worthy of a gutter rat. He now makes such attacks from the ultimate pulpit, unwilling to show restraint even when his target is no longer alive to actively oppose him.
You don’t need a doctoral degree in psychoanalysis to understand Trump’s obsession with McCain. There’s nothing complicated going on here. No grand strategy. No hidden hand. Just plain insecurity. Trump is in the stride of proving that a man can possess everything his heart desires and still be empty, vacant, and pathetic. He has control of the world’s biggest stockpile of nuclear weapons, but is still so beset with self-loathing over his tiny hands, limited brain, and inborn pusillanimity that he feels threatened by those he must internally acknowledge are greater men. Even if they are dead, he remains threatened by their legacies, which continue to humiliate him, if only in the chamber beneath the dead animal fur he wears in a vain attempt to mask his baldness.
But this isn’t really remarkable any more. Everyone knows what Trump is and what he represents by now. What is different, and distressing, is the reaction.
Traditionally, there has been nothing more hateful to rank and file Americans — particularly those aligned with the contemporary conservative movement — than the bashing of a war hero. For a draft-dodging yellow-belly to impugn the honor of a decorated war veteran has been the traditional equivalent of playing with matches while standing next to a powder keg. It doesn’t typically end well. I’ve seen lifelong friends — people who fought and bled together, godfathering each others’ children — fall out permanently and caustically over ill words spoken against the American soldier who has put himself in the arena of combat.
But like so many other cardinal sins of American public life, it has dissolved in the acid-polluted sewer which currently passes for American politics. In the Trump era, the so-called guardians of valor on the American right are silent and pliable in the face of dishonor. They ignore Trump’s chicanery, abdicating their duty and quietly legitimizing everything he says.
For those who say what’s happening in America today is politics as usual, I offer this phenomenon as Exhibit A to the contrary. There is nothing normal about the way our traditional values are being set aside for ideological convenience or to avoid dissonance-induced migraines. When values still meant something, they were important enough to justify ideological discomfort and to harmonize dissonance. Trump’s freedom to piss on McCain’s grave without raising the ire of the American veteran means two things: that those championing veteran values have surrendered their voice in public discourse, and that the era of value-driven politics is truly and finally dead. Our values, once cherished, are interned with John McCain, the last patriot with the stones to call Trump the spade he is.
In today’s America, things once repudiated are accepted or even favored, very often by the same people who once repudiated them. We no longer share a common moral basis. Anything goes. This is moral anarchy … every self-gratifying man and woman for themselves. The eventual result is a vacant shell of a society with nothing unifying it. If a man as justifiably venerated as McCain can be disrespected in his grave, then anyone can. When we no longer respect the memories of our dead, we’re not a respectable society. We’re very much the anarchic, squabbling, dirty rabble King George argued we were. That’s not a point of pride.
A society with no common values and no moral basis cannot prosper and will unravel. Laws have at their foundation common morality. They cannot be passed, respected, or enforced predictably if it doesn’t exist. Without the rule of law, we will surrender to the rule of man as an alternative to chaos.
Unless we are willing to stand against the misconduct of the amoral Charlatan we’ve wrongfully empowered, the American idea is doomed. Perhaps it will die slowly, or perhaps convulsively, depending on what externalities befall us. But one thing is sure … when we allow a President to mock men of greater courage, we defile everything they fought for. And with it, ourselves.
Tony Carr is an American writer, manager, veteran, and strategist. He is a former combat pilot and squadron commander with an M.A. from George Washington University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. Tony is the founder of The Colosseum Blog and writes from Manchester, United Kingdom.
