My grandpa, James Akers Mize, lied about his age so that he could enlist in the Army when he was 16 years old. He joined the 84th Infantry Division and fought on the European front, ultimately losing his right leg to a mortar shell during the Battle of the Bulge at the tail end of 1944.
My grandpa received a Purple Heart, of course, and he was proud of it. His Purple Heart and his Army sharpshooter badge were kept on permanent display in a shadowbox in the living room. He had a Purple Heart baseball cap. Up until he quit driving, he had the Purple Heart emblem on his license plate. He was also proud of having served with the 84th Infantry Division, also known as the “Railsplitters.” Back in the ‘70s, “Railsplitter” was his CB radio handle. I was too young for that, but I do remember how excited he was when he found a company selling a wristwatch commemorating the Railsplitters, and after it arrived in the mail, he wore it the rest of his life.
A lot of veterans don’t like to talk about their war experiences, but my grandfather wasn’t one of them. When I was about five years old, we were sitting in the living room watching a WWII documentary on PBS. Some Nazis appeared on screen and he pointed them out to me.
“Those are the men that took my leg,” he said.
That was the first time I can remember him mentioning his service to me, but it certainly wasn’t the last. Of course, I was five, and my grandparents’ TV didn’t get great reception on the old VHF antenna, so for some reason I thought the men he pointed out were pirates. I didn’t ask any questions, though.
There were many valuable lessons my grandpa imparted to me. One was that the only good Nazi is a dead Nazi. I have yet to see any evidence to the contrary.
Another was that you respect troops, you respect veterans, and you respect those who lost their lives in service to America.
For my grandpa, there was a solemnity in military service. There was nothing more dignified than putting your life on the line in service to your nation. That didn’t mean you were supposed to get excited when troops were deployed to fight abroad; it meant the opposite. You were supposed to worry about them, to keep them in your heart, and to pray for their safe return.
Unlike my grandpa, I never had a desire to serve in the military. In fact, getting drafted was one of my great existential fears for many years, probably because my grandpa had been honest about what he did and what he saw during the war. But I’ve always had a healthy respect for those who do choose to serve, and a solemn appreciation for those who have returned wounded and those who gave all.
And that is why I find former President Donald Trump’s antics at Arlington National Cemetery to be one of his most disgusting and vulgar displays yet.
On Aug. 24, Trump and his entourage visited Arlington National Cemetery accompanied by a Gold Star family. As they made their way to Section 60 to visit the grave of the slain soldier, the cemetery’s public affairs director attempted to stop them. The director did this for two reasons: one, only cemetery staff are allowed to take photographs in section 60, and two, political or election-related activities are federally prohibited in military cemeteries. By having a photographer and videographer in tow for what was clearly a publicity stunt, Trump and his entourage were in violation of Arlington’s rules.
This led to an altercation between the director and two members of Trump’s staff. Steven Cheung, Trump’s reprehensible campaign spokesman, later said the director was “clearly suffering from a mental health episode.” The director considered pressing charges, but she ultimately declined out of fear of retaliation from Trump supporters.
Trump and his entourage forced their way through anyway and snapped their photos. Feel free to look them up if you want to see the grave of a man who lost his life in service to his nation, and standing next to it, Trump with a big smile and a thumbs-up like a car salesman about to offer you an unbelievable interest rate on a Buick.
Section 60 is the area of Arlington devoted to the recently deceased. It is the part of Arlington where you’re most likely to find parents, children, wives, and husbands in mourning. It is the saddest and most solemn part of our nation’s most solemn cemetery. And Trump and his cronies showed it all the gravity and dignity of an Old West photo booth at the county fair.
For literally any other person, this would be the disqualifying moment. If I got in a fight with an employee at Arlington National Cemetery, I would not only be disqualified from public office, but I would probably be fired from my job and spurned by my friends and family, and they would be right to do so.
For Trump, however, it’s a barely perceptible bump in the road.
Much like the apocryphal story of the frog that doesn’t jump out of the pot of boiling water as long as the temperature is increased slowly enough, it’s sometimes difficult to grasp just how abnormal our current situation has become because it’s been such a gradual decline.
However, I’ll tell you this. If I could go back in time and tell my grandpa that in the year 2024, I would write a newspaper column about how Arlington National Cemetery should be treated with dignity and respect and that I assume the column will receive hate mail, he’d probably ask me if this country lost a war.
Sometimes, I’m not so sure we didn’t.
