The MAGA/GOP House goes to Normandy

Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial (Wikipedia)

They’ve got so much things to say right now. When the rain falls, it doesn’t fall on one man’s house top.

— “So Much Things to Say,” Bob Marley

Bill Kristol and Benjamin Parker at

The Bulwark

wrote this excellent piece last week in reaction to House Majority Leader Steve Scalise’s announcement that the House would not be in session on June 6, 2024. Why? Because members will be going to the Normandy coast to commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day and the liberation of Europe. They will be honoring the sacrifices and tremendous achievements of an army of liberation, comprised of 13 nations that destroyed fascism and Nazi Germany. I feel compelled to share a similar perspective.

Among the delegation will be scores of MAGA/GOP members, who have served a cause that incited an insurrection, bloodied the peaceful transition of power and promises to wage a campaign of political retribution, revenge, vengeance and imprisonment against its opposition in the name of Donald Trump. They have abetted his intimations towards violence, and been apologists or amplifiers for his most malignant comments that dehumanize, stigmatize, target and scapegoat the most powerless and vulnerable. Together, they will comprise a veritable Atlantic Wall of lying, torturous quibbling and endless justifications for what they all once held in contempt and revulsion.

They are an unworthy group of men and women, whose presence in places where courage, honor, sacrifice, loyalty, resilience, toughness, compassion and integrity were all bundled together in an exposition of the finest qualities of the American society, is tragic. Perhaps the occasion — and their collective manifest unworthiness to pay respects on behalf of all of us to all of the men who stormed the beaches and the whole nation that equipped, armed and sustained them — will trigger some introspection about the most elemental concepts of duty and patriotism.

Above the beach in Colleville-sur-Mer, which history remembers by its code name “Omaha,” sits a small slice of American territory in the French countryside. General Colin Powell once explained how it came to be that the United States of America has little slices of territory around the world in dozens of countries:

Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return.

There are 9,387 graves in the American cemetery. Forty-five pairs of brothers are buried there, along with one father and his son. There are 151 Stars of David amid the marble Latin crosses, of which three mark the name of the fallen in gold, marking the resting place of a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor.  One of those recipients was the son of a president of the United States, who was the oldest man and only general to come ashore during the first wave. He was also the only father who had a son land in the first wave.

Every single grave is aligned in perfect, symmetrical rows set against a perfectly manicured backdrop overlooking the Atlantic Ocean in a westerly direction back towards the United States. Each gravestone — every one of them — faces back towards America. When the MAGA Congress comes to be in the presence of that fallen American army at permanent rest, in formation, looking back towards America from the bluff of a foreign land, where they fell so freedom might survive against slavery and death, it should trigger some deep reflection. Hopefully it will.

The members of Congress who are strangling the ability of Ukraine to defend itself against fascist Russia, and parroting the lies of a Russian dictator as his useful idiots, want a piece of America’s fallen heroes’ legacy and achievements because they are cheap, hollow and ignorant about what it is that they actually did. What they did was save the world and give our parents and grandparents an opportunity to redeem it,
rebuild it, remake it, and pass it down to us in peace and prosperity so that we could build a better world for our children.

Today, their master, Donald Trump, to whom they are voluntarily shackled with the unbreakable chains of cowardice, expediency and cynicism, begins his criminal trial for business records fraud in New York City. The tawdry spectacle of his hush money/porn star trial will play out on a split screen, where the world moves towards a most dangerous hour.

The enemies of freedom have observed the United States for the last nine years, and have concluded that we are weak and corrupt. They have determined that our alliances are shallow and hollow. This is the time of testing, and though our grandparents measured up, the people who are going to honor them have not. What they have wrought is a new era of danger during which all of the sacrifices from those who saved the world will have been in vain, unless another generation can save it again. The storm is coming. Can you see it?

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