By Tom Burke
About twice a year I re-watch the TV mini-series “Band of Brothers,” the Steven Spielberg/ Tom Hanks’ World War II epic about the 101st Airborne’s Easy Company, which served in every American battle in Western Europe from Normandy through the capture of Hitler’s “Eagle’s Nest” retreat in Bavaria.
I don’t watch because I like war or violence (the video carnage in games such as Mortal Combat repulses me). I watch because it gives me hope for the future.
For me this almost-documentary does more than simply tell a true story based on WW II historian Steven Ambrose’s book. For me it delivers a lesson in determination, grit, endurance, comradeship, sacrifice and the absolute need to never, ever surrender.
Because right now, despite the “Blue Wave” (7.5 million more votes for Democrats than for Trump’s lackeys) I am tired of the constant battle against no-nothingism, what-aboutism, and Trumpism; weary of the incessant, blatant, deliberate lying by the president and how his supporters seem not to care about his lies to them; depressed about another two years of White House chaos; worried about Trump’s continued abuse of power and disregard for the Constitution; afraid of his trade war with China; fearful of his failure with “Little Rocket Man;” bored by his incessant bleat of “No collusion;” and shaken to the core by the xenophobic, racist, misanthropic, white supremacist division he has encouraged, cheered on and promoted to deliberately split the fabric of American society.
The spirit of the men of Easy Company, and what they did, is what keeps me fighting, as do similar stories about all who fought to defend our liberty in Italy, the Pacific, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and a score of other places in the last hundred years.
If Easy Company could jump into Nazi-occupied France in June of 1944; if they could not just persevere, but win in the frozen hell of Bastogne; if they could fight their way across Holland and Germany, how can I stop resisting Trump and all he represents?
As a young midshipman at the Merchant Marine Academy we always marched on Veterans Day. We honored all who sacrificed for our country, especially the cadets who died in WWII while still attending the Academy. (Kings Point was the only service academy to send students into actual combat.)
Our marching wasn’t tough. And compared to, say, what the Marines and doughboys endured in the trenches of The Great War — the mud, rats, mustard gas, artillery, barbed wire, unburied corpses, cold, heat and death ever-present —what’s the hardship of a little walk or some rain?
Well, apparently, French rain must be pretty tough, because our president spent a day indoors all nice and warm and cozy with Diet Cokes and Big Macs, instead of getting a bit damp paying homage to the 2,000-plus Marines who died in Belleau Woods; and a heavy mist was enough to occasion his whine about getting damp at another cemetery.
Donald Trump is an abomination, and his deceit, racism, policies and behavior must be fought against without respite.
But it is wearying.
There’s a scene in the movie where Easy Company comes under German artillery. Tree bursts are raining deadly shrapnel from above, ground bursts literally vaporized men taking cover in foxholes. Men were being killed and wounded and there was absolutely nothing, not a damn thing, they could do to make it stop. They had to endure.
After the shelling they crawled out of their foxholes, tended to their wounded, the dead, and the dying, and persevered. It was the darkest hour in their war.
They were surrounded — with little ammo, no warm clothes, no warm boots, little food, scant medical aid, and no end in sight — but they were buoyed by the 101st’s Gen. Anthony McAuliffe’s reply to the Germans’ call for their surrender. McAuliff’s answer was a single word, “Nuts.”
Well, nuts to you Donald John Trump.
Nuts to your lies that the media is the enemy of the people.
Nuts to your lies about the immigrant caravan.
Nuts to using our Army for a political stunt.
Nuts to your lies about sleeping with porn stars and paying them for silence.
Nuts to your lies about being a self-made success. (“Gee Daddy, thanks for the millions you gave me. Just think, I took $100 million and turned it into a fortune.”)
Nuts to “No collusion.”
Nuts to “Witchhunt.”
Nuts to baseless charges of voter fraud in Florida and Georgia.
“Nuts to Mathew Whitaker.
Nuts to the border wall.
Nuts to stupid tariffs.
Nuts to demeaning, insulting, targeted attacks on black female reporters.
Nuts to his (and his family’s) decades of tax fraud.
Nuts to his tweet-storms.
And nuts to Trump in 2020.
Yes, Mr. President, nuts, to you.
Tom Burke’s email address is t.burke.column@gmail.com.
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