Several days ago these two sergeants, SGT Allen L. Stigler and SGT Roshain E. Brooks, were killed in the line of duty in northern Iraq.
Gone too soon. pic.twitter.com/hcIV8wxQ8q
— All American ? (@82ndABNDiv) August 14, 2017
On Saturday this lovely fellow showed up to the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville wearing an 82nd Airborne ball cap:
Would *LOVE* to know the name of Mr. 82nd Airborne Division here rendering Hitler's Nazi salute. The 82nd jumped into Normandy on D-Day. pic.twitter.com/oObJNgXzEI
— Brandon Friedman (@BFriedmanDC) August 13, 2017
The 82nd Airborne’s Public Affairs Office decided to jump in with both feet and make it very clear who are part of the All American Division, like SGTs Stigler and Brooks, and unlike the guy in the picture above giving the NAZI salute with the wrong arm.
Our WWII Airborne forefathers jumped into Europe to defeat Nazism. We know who we are. We know our legacy.
— All American ? (@82ndABNDiv) August 14, 2017
Who knows? THIS is what an All American Paratrooper looks like. Rock Merritt jumped into Normandy on D Day, Njiemgen, fought in Bulge pic.twitter.com/vaps5fU0jb
— All American ? (@82ndABNDiv) August 14, 2017
Anyone can purchase that hat. Valor is earned. pic.twitter.com/qk6rQHBwui
— All American ? (@82ndABNDiv) August 14, 2017
The 82nd Airborne Division is 100 years old this week:
What does a century of service mean to America's Guard of Honor? Find out in the AA Legacy Podcast. Available now. https://t.co/F4ez3R7UWB pic.twitter.com/VYYPDpjnJU
— All American ? (@82ndABNDiv) August 15, 2017
All the way!
And open thread.
trollhattan
Dishonor, it’s the new bleccch.
Feebog
As I noted in an earlier thread, if any of these morons ever found themselves in a real shooting situation they would shit themselves and run screaming for their Mama.
john carter
Sorry for the length!
Ghosts of the Past
I don’t know how many of you have fathers or grandfathers who fought the Nazis in World War II. My father volunteered to fight the Nazis as did my three uncles. One uncle survived Buchenwald. Another died in Germany. My father and one other uncle were fortunate and made it out alive. All have passed on since, as I suspect most have.
If I could ask them what they thought about these so-called Neo Nazi Americans or for that fact our so-called president who for whatever demented, perverse reason believe and support what the Nazis stood for and did to the world before and during that war, I’m sure I know how they would respond. And for them to idolize the most tyrannical dictator and his ravings in modern history shows a total failure of parenting, education and common sense. It’s always about “them”, and “me me me.” I wonder how many of them are really facing hard times or are actually ones who have directly suffered because of the government that allows their protests?
These ingrates should be thankful their fathers and grandfathers beat the Nazis these Alt-Righters so revere if for no other reason than they “currently” have at least some freedom to complain about government policies. I’m sure none can imagine what life was like in Germany under Hitler. I’m also sure most would have shut up and tried to exist or spent their lives in one of Hitler’s “Hotels.”
I wonder how many of these Neo Nazi’s fathers or grandfathers fought against the evil bastard their sons and daughters now worship and what they would think of their offspring? Sadly most can’t think beyond a few weeks into the future otherwise they might realize what goes around comes around. And to be sure, the identities and faces of a vast number of them have been recorded and their actions will be remembered. They can only hope the people they are so willing to try to “remove” will have short, compassioned memories once political power shifts again, maybe in 2018. They might even be allowed to enjoy the hospitality of those detention camps Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Fox alluded to. I would certainly not complain for my tax dollars to be used to provide for their security then from vengeful “Lefties” or even spend money to deport them to a country where they fit in with ideologies of the locals. You see, I could be one of those compassionate Americans in 2018.
One last comment. Since these Neo Nazis seem intent on resurrecting the ideals of the Third Reich and feigning friendship to our so-called president’s Russian buddy Putin, maybe someone should remind them the Russians don’t necessarily feel the same about National Socialism as these Alt-Righters think they do. If I remember correctly, the Russians treated the Nazis rather poorly at the end and after World War II. But who reads and believes all that fake history?
different-church-lady
It’s hard to see in that photo, but it’s actually a hat for the 82nd Hair-Brained Division.
Dread
The past few days has taught me that Cleek’s Law is in full effect.
Trump Supporter 1: “Hey, what are liberals hating today?”
Trump Supporter 2:”Fucking Nazis, man.”
Trump Supporter 1:”Well, okay, then. Seig Heil!”
Trump Supporter 2: “That’ll teach those snowflakes.”
dmsilev
@different-church-lady: 82nd Chairborne Division.
Lurking Canadian
Good for them. Mr. Merritt must be outraged by this shit. Every surviving member of the 82nd who jumped into Normandy and Holland must be outraged by this shit.
It took real courage for the currently serving members of the 82nd to take such a clear stand.
schrodingers_cat
Now for something completely different, Happy Birthday, India
Lyrebird
Other interesting media support for the counter-protesters: Some of the women in the Yazidi armed forces (?) made a video honoring Heather Heyer.
Adam L Silverman
@john carter: Nothing to apologize for in terms of length of comment.
Adam L Silverman
@schrodingers_cat: Will there be cake?
Omnes Omnibus
I would love to see if that guy’s DD-214 shows an MOS that contains 05P. Just saying.
ETA: Rock Merritt is the shit or so his shadow box says.
Lyrebird
@Lurking Canadian: Can’t imagine it felt great to have the commander in c spend way more time noting the goodness of Nazi-phile goons than the goodness of the two servicemen killed in the line of duty. RIP young men. RIP Heather Heyer.
Adam L Silverman
@Lyrebird: Excellent.
Mnemosyne
Plausible deniability, or just too much practice in his own mirror?
Another Scott
Some of the comments in that thread are fun, like this one about the good Sheriff. rofl.
Unfortunately, it’s not impossible that he actually was in the 82nd. E.g.:
The military reflects the people in it, and the people in it are Americans of all stripes – good and bad…
:-(
Cheers,
Scott.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: I’d love to see if that guy even has a DD 214.
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: Dumb as a stump.
schrodingers_cat
@Adam L Silverman: gulab jamun
Lyrebird
@john carter:
Well it sounds like a few of them have fathers or grandfathers that fought to keep Serbians established as supreme over others, but one of the marchers has now been disowned by his family, unless/until he renounces Nazism.
All of this just supports your point.
Kirk Douglas, born Issur Danielovitch, had a pretty good HuffPost column during the election run up… he heard those dog whistles loud and clear and was sad to recognize them…
Adam L Silverman
@Another Scott: Clarke’s special. My favorite is the IDF pin he ordered off eBay that he stuck on his uniform. Like anyone in the IDF even knows who he is or cares that he has an IDF pin on his uniform.
Suzanne
@john carter:
My grandfather, who I talk about a lot since he raised me after my dad took off, was in the Army during the war, but wasn’t sent overseas, because he was a trainer. His brother, my grunkle, was a sailor during the war, and he served on one of the big ships in the Pacific Theater. Both of them were pretty conservative, and both of them would have been sickened by this shit. While neither of them fought Nazis directly, and they both had the racist attitudes typical of their time, they were both horrified to their bones by Nazism and the KKK.
My grandfather just HATED Donald Trump, back in the 80s, when he was just tabloid trash.
Omnes Omnibus
@john carter: My grandfather and 3 of his 4 brothers served during WWII (the youngest served in Korea). Two were in the army in Europe, one was in the army and guarded the tomb of the unknown soldier, and the last was a marine in the Pacific.
Adam L Silverman
Paris Dennard, Man of 600 Ties, decided to make an ass of himself in public again:
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/08/theyre-freaking-chanting-jews-will-not-replace-us-cooper-corners-guest-for-downplaying-neo-nazi-rally/
Kind of reminds me of this spoof photo:
Adam L Silverman
@schrodingers_cat: I’ll allow it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Yep. FTR: I have the five jumps from the school but never did my “cherry jump” in an airborne unit.
NotMax
We now have an example of alt-left.
MisterForkbeard
Ha, it’s exactly what I said earlier today: The NYT has an article up about how the administration staff knew Trump had said all of these things about the alt-right and equated the left to nazis in private. They were just astonished and stunned he said it in public:
Yep! Trump’s staff (including the Jewish ones, who are namechecked in the article) all knew about this ahead of time. They continue to work for him. They’re just shocked and appalled that they’re now connected to this publicly. Evil cowards, every one of them.
Adam L Silverman
@john carter: My grand uncle was Army Air Corps. Had his plane shot out from around him during WW II over Europe. Survived. Went on to be mayor of Meriden, CT.
My grandfather was mobilized for the logistics program domestically to move foodstuffs and other goods around the US to get them to the coasts where they could be shipped out for the troops in both theaters. Because he’d been in both the cattle and railroad business. There was an official term for this program, but even my military history colleagues can never remember it. His two closest friends served in the Marine Corps in the Pacific.
Omnes Omnibus
@NotMax: Well played.
randy khan
@john carter:
My dad was in the Pacific, not Europe, but I’m confident that his reaction would be the same as pretty much anyone who fought the Nazis. They all knew the evil they fought.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: We don’t hold it against you.
Adam L Silverman
@MisterForkbeard: Power, and access to it, is seductive.
Felonius Monk
It is the Neo-Nazi salute as described here.
And you might be surprised by this:
(Source)
randy khan
@MisterForkbeard:
They’re idiots if they thought that he wouldn’t repeat things he said in private in a public venue. He’s not Richard Nixon, who knew better.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Coming from a (presumably) leg civilian, I am not sure that I am perturbed.
Mnemosyne
@MisterForkbeard:
They haz a sad because their plausible deniability has been shot to hell, and it’s only Tuesday.
@john carter:
A question I would love to ask my Trump-voting cousin is, “How would you feel if you turned on CNN and saw one of your sons carrying a torch and chanting Jews will not replace us?”
But for some mysterious reason, she stopped posting about politics a month or so after the election. ?
Frankensteinbeck
@MisterForkbeard:
Then they were fools. Opening his pie hole and spewing out all of America’s hateful racist bullshit and refusing to exert the slightest bit of self-control was his most openly acknowledged selling point. He ‘tells it like it is’ and ‘says what other people are afraid to say’. Why the Hell did they think he would be afraid to say the things they didn’t want him to say?
MisterForkbeard
@Adam L Silverman: @Mnemosyne: @Frankensteinbeck: They’re cowardly, weak people. I put my own job in jeopardy once by reporting a department head that said racist things about the Filipinos that we work with. It could have destroyed my job at the company, if things had come down the other way.
These people, especially the ex-military, who are supposed to be honorable men – they’re cowards. They know better. At some point (and I’m not sure if we’re there yet) the excuse that they’re trying to limit the damage doesn’t fly anymore. They’re accessories.
Adam L Silverman
@Felonius Monk: Watch the video, that’s not what the guys in Charlottesville were doing.
grandpa john
@john carter: If any of you here haven’t been to Stone Kettle Station lately you should go over and read Jim’s latest essay .It is about much of what is being said here but it is in his distinctive style and is well worth reading,. Nobody here should be surprised at any of what is happening. hell it is exactly what many here predicted
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: I am a civilian that deployed as an augmentee with tankers, so draw your own conclusions. I have provided support to the 4th BCT/101 ABN, 101 ABN, and 18th ABN Corps if that makes you feel better.
Suzanne
@Frankensteinbeck: You’re being logical. sTrumpets aren’t logical. They were able to contort themselves into thinking that they could vote for a bad man even though they are good people, in their own minds. There’s nothing rational about this, but it is a powerful delusion all the same. But after this week, it is undeniable that they are if not capital-R racist, they are Racist-adjacent.
NotMax
@Felonious Monk
The original Bellamy salute was palms up, but that fell into disuse in favor of the palms down version.
Not suprising to those conversant with history. Oft linked to photo of U.S. schoolchildren in 1941.
Peale
@Adam L Silverman: they were never virgins. Their pants were for the most part below their calves when Trump walked in the door.
Felonius Monk
@Suzanne:
He’s still tabloid trash. Unfortunately, some people don’t yet realize the fact.
Mnemosyne
Also, one of my coworkers and I were able to have a good vent after work today. She is still appalled that she has relatives by marriage who are Hasids and voted for Trump anyway, because he hates Muslims.
She’d love to call and ask them how they feel about Trump now, but she’s pretty sure they won’t pick up the phone. Funny, that.
NotMax
@Mnemosyne
Hasidim.
Unless autocorrect changed the word hayseeds.
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
Look at the people who claim that they hated Trump’s racism and misogyny, but they voted for him because he would ban abortion. They said that nothing else mattered to them but that, and now they’re getting that choice shoved in their faces again and again.
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: Hasids is also standard usage.
Felonius Monk
@Adam L Silverman:
Do those slugs in that Charlottesville photo look like they could follow simple instructions for a salute?
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Ah, lad, it is the jumping that makes the difference. In a peacetime army, which I joined, there were few ways to test yourself and prove you had balls, jump school did that. When I joined, I had two goals: graduating OCS and graduating Airborne School. Whatever masculinity proving issues I had were satisfied by that. Add in fencing, skiing, and rugby.
Yes, I was a short, skinny, and academic kid for a long time. I hit my 5’10” at age 20.
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman
Not where I grew up. Saying that would get one’s ears boxed.
Villago Delenda Est
I think Omnes and Adam have captured my thoughts on chairborne twit in the photo. So that’s that.
Lots of photos of the Normandy Invasion on Twitter with captions such as “Alt-Left violence against peaceful white supremacists.”
Adam L Silverman
@Felonius Monk: That is a different issue.
Shalimar
@MisterForkbeard: I was trying to imagine the conversations around Trump over this and it occurred to me: can you really believe that people like Trump, Bannon, Miller, Gorka, Sanders and the rest don’t use racial slurs constantly when they’re talking with each other? I think most people would be shocked if they heard tapes of all these assholes’ conversations.
mai naem mobile
Anybody else wonder if Dolt 45 went off the rails today because something big is coming down regarding the Russian investigation? To me it seemed like he was genuinely just mentally ill off the rails not some distraction but,hey ,who knows with this moron…
Suzanne
@mai naem mobile: You are not the only one concerned about that.
NotMax
@mai naem mobile
Will hazard a guess that part of it was his being aware of and trying to lash back at the vociferous demonstrations outside the building.
Mnemosyne
@mai naem mobile:
No, I think he was just pissed that he wasn’t allowed to blame the left for the violence on Saturday and he went off. He’s a narcissist — by definition, he’s somebody who constantly goes too far because he refuses to recognize that other people have boundaries and feelings.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: I wasn’t trying to make light of your experience. I understand the dynamics at the time.
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
Not up on the MOS codes. What is that MOS?
Should I guess before you’ll tell me?
Adam L Silverman
@mai naem mobile: It was because he was forced to make the statement yesterday. He didn’t want to do. Didn’t like doing it. And he lashed out today as a result.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ruckus: 05P is added to the MOS of anyone who completed parachute training. Mine was 13A05P. Parachute qualified Field Artillery officer.
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
Who do you think talked him into speaking yesterday? And how long do you think they will last?
NorthLeft12
@Lurking Canadian: I’ll second your emotion. I am not a big fan of the military, but this is a real class move by the 82ND here. To make exactly clear what they believe in and what they stand for is what I would like to hear more of. I saw the Marines also comment about the doofus who is the leader of American Vanguard, and to be clear about what real Marines stand for.
Ya know, maybe there is a positive to the white supremacists parading about…..at least people are being challenged to show which side they are really on.
Frankensteinbeck
@Ruckus:
Kelly. That is pretty much Kelly’s job now, and reports suggest Trump is afraid of him. As for how long he’ll last, I don’t know. As today demonstrates, there is nothing Trump hates more (and he’s a man brimming with hates) than being told to restrain himself.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: I ain’t fought with people with axes and shit. But then, I’ve yet to go to Scotland.
NotMaxn
@Ruckus
Would be wild if it turned out he was goaded by his downstairs neighbor Manafort.
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
Just looked at my DD214 and it has no listing for MOS. It does show my rating. Which in navy parlance is the same thing, your job. A lot of things were changing about the time I got out though, we still used a service number but that was changed to SSN just about the time I was discharged as I understand it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ruckus: No biggie.
Adam L Silverman
@Ruckus: My guess is that Kelly prevailed on him to make a more specific statement yesterday. From the look of Kelly’s facial expression and body posture during today’s adventure he was clearly unprepared for and not expecting what happened today. Whether this is because he was naive or because he’s only been in the White House and with the President on a daily basis for two weeks is anyone’s guess. As I’ve written several times: Trump doesn’t like to be constrained and handled. And, as a result, he won’t be – he basically finds a way to throw a tantrum, which is what today was. Kelly’s job is to handle and constrain him. Since the President is not going to change I expect that Kelly’s tenure will be short.
Ruckus
@Frankensteinbeck:
@NotMaxn:
I’m going with Frankensteinbeck on this one. Seeing as how drumpf is a bully and generals have seen plenty of those, I’d bet any general worth a shit (and I’m not sure that Kelly actually is and is possibly a bully himself) would know how to regulate drumpf to some degree. That may be his downfall as Kelly doesn’t seem like the type to just up and quit, and Kelly only has the power he can convince drumph he has.
Omnes Omnibus
We may have got a bit off track. Just saying.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: Everyone’s favorite party game: axe, axe who’s got the axe?
Yutsano
@Suzanne:
A delusion they sell themselves on to sleep at night.
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman
A tradition for game night in the Lester Maddox household.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Yutsano: I always think of Katharine Hepburn’s line in Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner: Racists are sometimes hateful, usually stupid and always, always wrong. People don’t want to think of themselves as hateful, wrong and especially not stupid, so they need to believe themselves when they say “I don’t have a racist bone in my body, but…”
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
I like that you capitalize the office. I can’t bring myself to even use the asshole’s name nor capitalize the original German.
I expect most anyone who isn’t a total cocksucker to never last long in any job in the WH, unless separated by a few levels. And of course most of the upper level jobs are either empty or would be better off if they were. Think about any company run like the current WH. Do you have any idea how that company would make any money legally? I don’t see it.
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: And the headline in the next day in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution was always: “Among the Injured Were…”
MisterForkbeard
@Shalimar: I think we can be reasonably sure this has happened at least once. :(
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
Show me a thread that doesn’t around here.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ruckus: Ummm….
Adam L Silverman
@Ruckus: When you refer to the person in the office that’s how you do it. So that’s what I do.
Mike in NC
During the 2016 campaign I saw way too many Letters to the Editor by WW2 vets who endorsed draft dodger idiot and asshole Trump simply because he was white and promised to return the country to the 1940s. Despicable.
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
To put it back on a bit, I could buy one of those hats at the VA. And the closest I ever got to being airborne was working out on the end of the yardarm on the ship I was stationed on, 75 feet in the air, on a 5in aluminum spar that had been in salt air for 12 yrs, 20+ feet out from the mast, safety line consisting of a rope tied (by me!) around my waist to said spar.
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
I understand. But I just can’t bring myself to do so. I think that legitimizes the office holder and this one has no legitimacy. OK legally he was elected. I was considered an adult when Nixon took office. I don’t consider him to be anywhere near as bad as drumpf. Same for Ford or GWB. And I did, not that long ago consider GWB to be easily in the running for worst president or at least in the top 5 as it’s difficult to compare times and events exactly. But now? This one blows everyone else out of the water. He’s the worst 5 all by himself.
Adam L Silverman
@Ruckus: Pick your favorite:
http://www.priorservice.com/82aidiwwcap.html
http://www.priorservice.com/82airdivviet.html
http://www.priorservice.com/82airdiv.html
http://www.priorservice.com/82ailowprcap.html
http://www.priorservice.com/82nd-airborne-embroidered-cap.html
http://www.priorservice.com/82nd-airborne-aa-cap.html
http://www.priorservice.com/82nd-airborne-gridiron-cap.html
Bookeater (formerly JosieJ)
@john carter:
I had a cousin who served in the Navy in WWII. Like many black servicemen/veterans, he was treated like a second class citizen by the same country he’d fought to protect. If he were alive today, I’m sure he’d have a few choice words for our racist scumbag-in-chief.
TriassicSands
@Adam L Silverman:
I doubt is was either naivete or newness on the job. I think it is more likely a product of Trump’s apparently infinite capacity to always be worse today than he was yesterday. Kelly, like most human beings, expects people to learn simple lessons and apply them in their daily life. Trump’s origninal response to the Charlottesville fascist tea party was clearly inadequate and that message was transmitted to Trump by countless different sources, many of which were people in his own party. Virtually everyone else would have received the message and even if they didn’t like it, they would have incorporated it into their own behavior in the future. But not Trump. It’s difficult for most relatively normal human beings to understand what it is like to be 100% certain that you are vastly superior to everyone else and that your opinion is the only valid one. Eventually, and that time may have been on Tuesday, Kelly will realize that expecting Trump to behave in any way like a normal human being — no matter how obvious it is that to do so is the best way forward — is always going to result in surprise or disappointment (or disgust).
There is no “peak Trump” or what is probably a more appropriate expression — “trough Trump.” He has no ability to learn, but no matter how bad he is today, he will be worse in the future. And it will never stop unless he’s removed from office and preferably relocated to a cell.
Adam L Silverman
@Ruckus: I understand.
Mnemosyne
@TriassicSands:
You didn’t use the n-word but this, too, is one of the hallmarks of the toxic narcissist. They only “learn” behaviors that are expedient for that moment, and immediately regress at the first opportunity. Many, many people have had the experience of having a conservation with a narcissist where it seems like they understood and agreed with your points, only to go do exactly what they wanted to do all along. Any “improvement” is temporary and manipulative.
TriassicSands
@Shalimar:
As were many people when they heard their president, Richard Milhous Nixon on tape using coarse and racist language.
Tenar Arha
@mai naem mobile: There was an rumor/leak that he was subpoenaed by Mueller on Monday. But I can only find it on Twitter w/o a newspaper story or even cable news as confirmation in my first couple of attempts to google something.
TriassicSands
@Shalimar:
But in the case of Trump, the shock, if that’s possible anymore, would probably be the stupidity.
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
There are kiosks at the VA clinics and a full on store at the hospital that sell caps, shirts, other paraphernalia with all of the different possibilities. Anyone can purchase them. About 1/2 of the vets wear hats or vests like that.
So this doofus could be a vet from the 82nd.
I’m sure that some of the people that I see at one of the 2 clinics or the hospital that I go to voted for drumpf. Just the law of averages tells me that. Talking to some of them confirms it.
Adam L Silverman
@Ruckus: The United States of America: Everything is for Sale.
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
And someone, somewhere will buy anything. No one knows why.
Obdurodon
What would have happened if that guy had flung out a Nazi salute while actually in the 82nd? I’m guessing he would have gained a few bruises in the middle of the night. “Fell in the shower” would be the official reason.
James Powell
Seeing those sergeants’ photos reanimates the rage I feel when I consider that Americans are still getting killed in Iraq fifteen fucking years after that dick-less piece of shit Bush decided he wanted to play War President.
WTF
Adam, you jumped out of a perfectly good aircraft not once, but 5 times?
Like my son, I question your judgment. 1st Ranger Battn/75th Regiment. Now a citizen of the Czech Republic and no longer doing that jumping out of planes thing.
WTF
MOS Military occupation specialty.
Matt McIrvin
@john carter: My grandpa fought at the Bulge and helped liberate Dachau. He never talked about that last bit to me.
I got into an argument with some “white nationalist” shithead recently who chastised me for bringing this up because only stupid liberals compared modern white supremacists to Hitler. It seems to be news to a lot of these guys.
Mel
@john carter:
I’m with you. Eight ancestors in the American Revolution; 5 Civil War Union soldiers; Quaker Underground Railroad families; Great Uncle and Grandfather in WWII. The kind of hatred and oppression we are seeing cannot, cannot be allowed to stand.
Grandpa was a Quaker who broke faith (Quakers are pacifists) along with several of his relatives, in order to join the military and serve during WWII. When he was very elderly, he told me that he had felt that the hatred and evil that was being unleashed was so pervasive and so mindless that he felt powerless to fight it except by physically putting himself in the fight. He said that he woke up every morning and saw his wife, his toddler son, his elderly parents, and couldn’t stop thinking of all the families, all the people who were being persecuted and terrorized and killed because of the way they worshipped or where they had been born or the way they cast a political vote.
He decided that if giving his life helped in some small way to save someone else’s family, then he had no choice but to do so. He lost three cousins and an uncle in the war. His father, who he loved dearly, died of a heart attack while my grandfather was fighting, so he never got a chance to say goodbye. My grandmother miscarried their second child, and he didn’t even find out until a month after it happened.
Even though he came home alive, the war did take his life in many ways. He was a kind, gentle man who suffered quietly and intensely from PTSD until his death at age 85. Because of what he had seen and experienced, he and my grandmother felt hesitant to bring any more children into a world where that kind of horror could so easily take place, so their dream of a large family was surrendered. And yet, he always said that he would do it over again if he had to, because our greatest duty is to take care of each other, to love each other and keep each other safe, even if we are strangers or continents apart.
He didn’t give up his faith, his future, his health, his dreams for his family so that these monsters could try to blithely resurrect this horror.