Today Americans honor those who died in military service to the United States. My family was lucky enough that those who served in World War II all came home; my great-uncles Jimmy (Vincenzo), Butch (Dominic), Frank, and Phil. My second cousin, Nicholas S Pucci, died in the Battle of Pusan in the Korean War.
Heather Cox wrote an especially moving piece about this day and honoring those who have fallen, and I share it below. As for myself, I can’t get past the continuing popularity of a man who openly mocked those who died in service to this country. He insults the living and the dead at every turn, and he would not stand in the rain at the Normandy cemetery to honor the thousands of war dead who rest there, because in his limited vocabulary, “they were losers.”
He is currently the front runner of the Republican party contenders. A lot of people will vote for him, and I don’t think they should ever be allowed to forget what and who they are voting for: spitting on the graves of those who died for this country, and particularly those who died fighting fascism.
I’m going for a bike ride. I’ll think about the cousin I never met, and the family he left behind. Here is Heather Cox writing more eloquently than I can about such loss: