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Showing Original Post only (View all)Why Trump's Arlington Debacle Is So Serious [View all]
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/08/trump-arlington-cemetery/679659/No paywall link
https://web.archive.org/web/20240830154819/https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/08/trump-arlington-cemetery/679659/
The section of Arlington National Cemetery that Donald Trump visited on Monday is both the liveliest and the most achingly sad part of the grand military graveyard, set aside for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Section 60, young widows can be seen using clippers and scissors to groom the grass around their husbands tombstones as lots of children run about.
Karen Meredith knows the saddest acre in America only too well. The California residents son, First Lieutenant Kenneth Ballard, was the fourth generation of her family to serve as an Army officer. He was killed in Najaf, Iraq, in 2004, and laid to rest in Section 60. She puts flowers on his gravesite every Memorial Day. Its not a number, not a headstone, she told me. He was my only child.
The sections of Arlington holding Civil War and World War I dead have a lonely and austere beauty. Not Section 60, where the atmosphere is sanctified but not sombertoo many kids, Meredith recalled from her visits to her sons burial site. We laugh, we pop champagne. I have met men who served under him, and they speak of him with such respect. And to think that this manshe was referring to Trumpcame here and put his thumb up
She fell silent for a moment on the telephone, taking a gulp of air. Im trying not to cry.
For Trump, defiling what is sacred in our civic culture borders on a pastime. Peacefully transferring power to the next president, treating political adversaries with at least rudimentary grace, honoring those soldiers wounded and disfigured in service of our countryTrump long ago walked roughshod over all these norms. Before he tried to overturn a national election, he mocked his opponents in the crudest terms and demeaned dead soldiers as suckers.
*snip*
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"'And to think that this man'--she was referring to Trump--'came here and put his thumb up--'"
PSPS
Aug 2024
#1
Another perspective: If he was aware of anyone elses feelings, he wouldn't be trump.
erronis
Aug 2024
#16
Trump and company were told it was illegal to film @ the grave site but they did it anyway and
Botany
Aug 2024
#15
I hope that the DOJ under Harris will be more pro active about that kind of threat.
BComplex
Aug 2024
#36