This being the anniversary of the creation of the Purple Heart, Vulgarmort is tweeting about his awarding of the Purple Heart to First Sergeant Alvaro Barrientos, who lost part of his right leg fighting in Afghanistan:
Being someone who enjoys the use of language, I am pissed as hell at Trump's offer of 'congratulations' to Sgt Barrientos. Thank the man for his service, talk about his valor, his sacrifice, reassure him that he will be taken care of by the government and people he sacrificed so much for... but congratulations? The man was maimed for life, that's no cause for congratulations.
The problem with Donald Trump is that he has never experienced privation, never chosen a path of service, never sacrificed a blessed thing for the good of his fellow human beings. He has no concept of sacrifice, so he can glibly congratulate an individual on the loss of a leg. He is the sort of individual who can unthinkingly say that he always wanted a Purple Heart:
He got it 'the easy way', when a decent human being would have respectfully refused such stolen valor. Speaking of stolen valor, here is Trump criticizing Senator Richard Blumenthal for prevaricating about his military career, despite the flippant attitude that Trump has displayed regarding his own conduct during that era.
The last word on Trump's statements regarding the Purple Heart was Tammy Duckworth's statement: "this is how one usually looks when you are awarded the Purple Heart. Nothing easy about it."
Yeah, congratulations seems... boneheaded in this context. Of course, very little of what the President says ever comes across like the words of someone who has given much thoughtt to what he's saying or the topics he's talking about.
ReplyDeleteFor some reason, that doesn't seem to bother a sizable portion of our country.
Yep. He sees a medal, an award, a prize - he wants one. But I ain't buying the whole 'stolen valor' line of crap. You were either in combat or you weren't. Nobody can 'steal' that from you. The only badge that matters is the CIB - if you have one, you have your 'valor' (and the memories and the horror and perhaps even the PTSD) and if you don't have one you can't 'steal' it from somebody else...
ReplyDeleteRight, "Stolen valor," doesn't begin to explain what Donald Trump is doing and has done. "Fraud," is more like it.
ReplyDeleteYours crankily,
The New York Crank