Kenneth
I've spoken and written about my late father-in-law, Kenneth—Kenny to everyone who knew him.
He was a poor white country boy from Kentucky. He had few prospects, but a hankering for adventure. He was born in the middle of the Depression, so he was too young to be drafted for World War II. But when he turned 17, he joined the Air Force.
His service took him all over the world. He visited places and met people he wouldn't have otherwise.
He ended his twenty years of service in Vietnam. He was one of the lucky ones, coming through his service unscathed, and seeing what the world had to offer.
He returned home, got a good-paying union job, and raised a family. He spoke of his service with reverence. Not only because he had the honor to serve his country; but because his service saved him from a far different future. The great and the good wouldn't have considered him a worldly man; but he had seen more of the world than most Americans, and didn't recoil from it.
When Donald Trump calls those who serve in the military "losers" and "suckers", he is striking at the core of what it is to be an evolved human being. I'm sure in private he says the same about the health-care workers who came out of retirement to serve on the COVID frontlines, many of whom paid for their decision with their lives. They didn't get rich off of it, just like those in the military don't. For a creature like Trump, serving with no expectation of reward makes you a mark. It makes you a sap. He is the most materialist of presidents we've ever had. He sees no higher calling other than himself. There's no higher purpose to serve other than fulfilling his own desires. Not even needs: Mere desires. I want this, and if doing that won't help me achieve it, I won't do it.
My late father-in-law would be incomprehensible to him. Kenny was a man who grew. As his children grew, and became their own people, and made their own decisions, he grew along with them. A white Kentucky boy passed away into the care of the God in whom he believed surrounded by his Black granddaughter, his black great-granddaughter, and his Black step-granddaughters. He was a man of immovable faith who sat beside the bed of his non-religious brother and comforted him as he preceded him in death. The greatest thing he could do in a day was to help someone, or make someone laugh who was feeling down. He always thought of others before himself. His heart was full of love for everyone, even those who may not have merited it.
This is the kind of man—and countless men and women like him—whom Donald Trump cannot understand. He cannot fathom them. They may as well be alien lifeforms to him. Trump is a man without a soul, a human being without a conscience. He was raised that way, and has raised his entire family that way. He attracts people like him, who see service only as a way to acquire wealth and power, not as a good in its own right. His followers bray about their faith; but faith without works is dead. They think that because they incant magic words they have saved themselves from the fire, when all their actions prove that their incantations are empty and meaningless. They are like the hypocrites who pray loudly in the synagogue, then go home and practice all sorts of perversions against the good. The God-fearing "Christians" declare that God sent Trump. God also sent Hitler.
This is the man whom they count on to preserve their diminishing privilege. It's not about freedom, or heritage. It's about fear. They mirror Trump in their smallness, their anxiety, their knowledge, deep down, that they're nothing but frauds, and are probably not going to end up after death where they loudly proclaim they will. They will excuse this, as they excuse everything, because in the end they have no beliefs. They care only about themselves. Their world is a withered wood, bereft of birdsong and light. I can imagine them, as otherwise I couldn't write this. But they are beyond my comprehension. Nothing human is alien to me, but understanding still escapes me.
Kenny was buried with full military honors last October. The honor guard was of men and women, of various ethnicities, all obeying a calling higher than themselves. These are the people Donald Trump betrays every moment he is in office. Honor those who serve, and who have passed. Expel the creature.