There’s been a mini-flap about former President Donald Trump’s recently reprehensible conduct at Arlington National Cemetery.
First of all, what the hell did you expect?
Marc Dion
Secondly, when is Trump gonna stop with that cheesy “thumbs up” hand sign? No one does that anymore. It makes him look old and out of touch. I grew up with the thumbs up, but if I feel the urge to do it, I stop myself. Yeah. My white beard says I’m old, but I don’t have to reinforce my age with visual aids. I also don’t wear wide suspenders and a belt.
I think politicians and candidates should stop going to cemeteries unless they have a family member buried there and they go alone and they don’t tell anyone they’re going, and if they see a photographer or reporter, they get back in the car right away.
I haven’t been to my father’s grave since the day we buried him. Same with my mother. They’re not there, and they never have been. My father was a World War II combat veteran, and I’m sure some group adorns his grave with a flag on a stick every year on one holiday or another, and my father would have laughed out loud. He had an unpleasant war.
All the pollical cemetery visit produces is a head count to be used by one side against the other. If Rep. Fligl shows up, but Rep. Flogl doesn’t, this means that Rep. Fligl loves America and supports the troops, while Rep. Flogl is a communist who hates the military and loves terrorists.
And of course, none of it means anything.
Nothing is easier than to stand among the dead and tell them how much they mean to you.
If you got your belly blown out through your back at Khe Sanh, did you really do it in the hope that someday, decades later, you’d get a little bugle music and the county commissioner would rest his wingtips right next to your grave?
And I’m no virgin when it comes to the cemetery visit. In my just about 40 years as a reporter, I attended just about every kind of coffin-and-dirt -based ceremony ever devised by anyone who was trying to get elected to anything. And I took notes, and I heard the rifles fire, and I said The Hail Mary under my breath because that’s how I was raised.
There are sincere people at these events, most of them veterans or relatives of the dead, and we ought to leave it to those two groups. If you hold political office and you fit into one of those two groups, you can go to the ceremony. Otherwise, they stop you at the gate.
Because the Vietnam War was so popular and easy to get out of, numerous politicians who dodged the draft have been attending these things for a long time. I would have been a hell of a lot more comfortable if they’d sent a reporter with a military record, but they sent me, and I went, which is how so many people ended up in veterans cemeteries. The veterans who are buried in regular cemeteries have a better deal. Being buried in a veterans cemetery is like being in the military forever, and many of the dead did not have that intention.
As a voter, I don’t hire politicians to weep over the noble dead they never met. I hire them to tax fairly and spend wisely. I hire them to fix bridges. I hire them to build schools. I hire them to keep my neighborhood safe. I hire them to do thousands of important, boring things that have to be done.
Stay away from the dead, Mr. President. They don’t need you anymore. It’s too late.
To find out more about Marc Dion, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Dion’s latest book, a collection of his best columns, is called “Mean Old Liberal.” It is available in paperback from Amazon.com and for Nook, Kindle, and iBooks.
