DEFEAT FASCISM

 Confessions of Left-Wing Radical: Couldn’t “treacheryize” much yesterday. Had a stump removed in the yard to keep the neighborhood looking nice.

Truth be told, I spent my extra time in introspection. Namely, I searched for an answer to the question, “How did I become the sort of person that the President of the United States of America hates.?” (Yes, he said so in public. In my “demented” way, I consider it one of the honors of my life.)

Why?

My playmates and I grew up under the auspices of the men who waded ashore at Tarawa, Anzio, and Normandy and the women who received the dreaded telegrams from those places. Tears of sorrow and happiness rolled down the cheeks of people cheering the heroes of that “good war.”

Their places became filled by younger uncles who survived the Frozen Chosin and the widows and fatherless children thereof.

So we grew up basking in the glow of American heroes. Every comic book, magazine, movie house, and radio show (later television) sang their praises. When our time came, our minds saw only the beckoning of glory.

Ours was, though, as the immortal John Prine put it, “a dirty little war.”

But we served. I, myself, left the service with shipmates who had stood by me, and me them, from the TET Offensive to storms at sea.

Problem was, many of those shipmates couldn’t have entered the ground floor of a movie theater with me in my hometown.

But America improved, grew, assimilated, and flourished. Then came the night—I think America’s greatest—when our country elected a person of color as its president.

We expected an outpouring of love. Instead, we suffered the most volcanic explosion of hatred and bitterness since April 12, 1861. The explosion covered our shores with a sulfuric layer of filth, lies, and outrage that smothered our progress like the clouds of iridium that killed the dinosaurs.

From the stench grew the cult led by the president who hates me. Rather than succumb to reciprocal hate, let me just say that I love the country I served, and despise everything that he, his supporters, and his financiers stand for.

Today, I don’t feel much like apologizing.