Entitlement

THIS REMARK BY a substack writer I follow caught my attention:

I’m old enough to remember that, too. It surprised me even as a young man that some fortunate people paid a very high portion of their annual earnings to support our country. Then, still a young man, I read a verse in the Bible that said, “For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required.”2 With that idea, I understood the reasoning behind the graduated income tax. 3

On Memorial Day, it’s good to remember such things. If we value the sacrifices our service members made for Democracy, opportunity, rule of law, rejection of fascists, authoritarians, monarchs, and intolerant religious zealots, we do well to remember honorably the men and women who risked, and in many cases, lost their lives for our cause.

“Entitlement” was once associated with the people who ate from the public trough, as an old codger I worked with years ago liked to say. With his snarky remark, he was suggesting a higher value for those who toiled in business than those who worked for the government. He said it with a smile, as a gibe to his friends who worked for the city or the county. During the Ronald Reagan years, entitlement came to be applied to those who were lazy, took government handouts, and lived like queens on welfare, as Reagan often argued.

But the somber occasion of remembering fallen soldiers is a good time to point out that “entitlement” today is a fair word to apply to those who deceitfully avoided military service during the Vietnam war, for example, or who think that their riches entitle them to government services — such as defense, roads and bridges, safe air travel, and rule of law (as long as law rules for them) — without paying a fair share of the cost.

The writer I mentioned at the top of this short essay is Robert Reich. He avoided the draft because he was too short in stature.4 My father avoided World War II because he was too old. I avoided the draft because I was a student and a father. My Dad’s younger brother, my uncle, served in World War II, landing in Normandy. My son enlisted and served honorably in the US Navy.

The president of the United States avoided the draft by using his wealth and influence to contend that he had bone spurs. It was a lie.

Next month, the current president plans to honor his birthday with an expensive military parade in the nation’s capital. Of course, it will be tax monies that fund the event, and somehow, the current president doesn’t see it as the kind of waste that his “government efficiency” guy slashed with glee. One can’t be sure what goes through his oft-muddled head, but I will suggest that he will be pleased that he commands military strength and can use it whenever he wishes. Even though he never served, he might feel very entitled to view the military as his personal possession. To ensure there is no correction on his whim, he has named a Harvard graduate, TV personality and loyalist as Secretary of Defense, ensuring no push back for whatever he may decide is necessary.

If you agree with most of what the current president does, is, and stands for, I ask you today to consider the following quote from Robert Reich’s column this morning:

Trump avoided serving in Vietnam by claiming he had a bone spur in his heel. As Michael Cohen, Trump’s “fixer,” told members of the House Oversight Committee in 2019:

“Trump claimed [his medical deferment] was because of a bone spur, but when I asked for medical records, he gave me none and said there was no surgery. He told me not to answer the specific questions by reporters but rather offer simply the fact that he received a medical deferment. He finished the conversation with the following comment: ‘You think I’m stupid, I wasn’t going to Vietnam.’”

“Stupid” is the adjective the commander in chief applies to those who served and in many cases died in Vietnam. Because he is smart, by his own reckoning, he dodged the draft and avoided personal harm.

He also dishonored Sen. John McCain (that’s his picture at the top of this essay). Remember?

“Loser” is the adjective the current president applied to Sen. John McCain, because he was captured, tortured, and refused to pull rank and be freed. 6

As a transactional, self-interested human being, the current president is now, finally, going to Vietnam. His family enterprise, clearly helped by his bully tariff on the country of Vietnam, is receiving special treatment for a project there. From the New York Times:

“This $1.5 billion golf complex outside the capital, Hanoi, as well as plans for a Trump skyscraper in Ho Chi Minh City, are the Trump family’s first projects in Vietnam — part of a global moneymaking enterprise that no family of a sitting American president has ever attempted on this scale. And as that blitz makes the Trumps richer, it is distorting how countries interact with the United States.”7

Memorial Day is a good time to remember. Our country has its very honorable military heroes and its men and women currently in service. And, it has its “entitled” rascals.