Trump’s Gettysburg Redress (of Grievances)
Sunday, October 23rd, 2016
by Reed Galen
Dear Mr. Trump,
May I ask you, at long last, have you no decency, sir? You travel to some of America’s most hallowed ground, where so many young men gave their lives and you blaspheme their memory. From the same land where President Abraham Lincoln, our country’s first Republican leader, stood and delivered what some consider to be the finest remarks on the United States and its unity and you soil it with your tawdry threats and continued accusations of a rigged election. If anyone rigged this election, it is you. You are on track for an electoral loss not seen in decades — no grand conspiracy caused that — you did.
You are no leader, sir. Like your mentor, Mr. Cohn before you, you interest yourself only in the promotion of your own agenda and the decimation of those who would stand in your way or dare to object. Unlike Mr. Lincoln, the men astride Little Round Top or marching headlong into cannon and shot with Pickett’s Charge, you display no bravery, nor courage and have sacrificed little, if anything for the country you now wish to lead.
Like so many previous times during this campaign, you promised a more thoughtful vision for America’s future. What we received instead was what we’ve come to expect from you — tired platitudes, promises you clearly never intend to keep and divisive language. Perhaps worse than your behavior and performance these last four months is that so many Americans entrusted you with the opportunity of a lifetime and you have squandered it as if it was one more hotel to send into bankruptcy; a transitory event, that regardless of its outcome, ensures that you will somehow be personally advantaged. I guess one person’s “step down” is different than another’s. Not content to undermine and further sully our damaged political process, you cannot find the dignity to stand in awe of the sacrifice of Gettysburg and its meaning.
Rather than preaching unity, like Lincoln, or practicing it like Robert E. Lee, you rain down sectionalism, nationalism and nativism on an angry and unsettled people. Your words incite to violence; the last step before our discourse breaks down completely. It is terrible irony that you chose these rolling hills of southern Pennsylvania to continue the decline of our time-honored traditions.
Just down the road, General Dwight Eisenhower, another American hero and Republican president, lived out the last years of a life well-lived and a country well-led. It is hard to see how you could lead an international coalition to defeat the face of evil, keep a nation safe at a time of continual crisis or deploy the 101st Airborne to de-segregate schools in Little Rock.
You came to Gettysburg not bearing the gifts of liberty, but the baggage of personal transgressions. In the face of so many lost souls — who fought so great a struggle for the greatest country history has ever known, did you lift up our spirits and our hopes? No. You threatened legal action against women who would dare cross you, regardless of your boorish behavior.
The only good thing we can say about the coming Election Day is that it will rid us of you as a potential President of the United States. But what you have wrought, unearthed and foisted upon this Republic will be with us for far too long, I fear. History will judge you, sir, not as a truth-teller, but just another in a long line of would-be despots who played on the fears of the populace for your own vulgar purposes. We are stronger as a people than you give us credit for. Our road to redemption may be long, but God willing, we will prove you wrong in your assessment.
Sincerely,
The good, decent and free Peoples of the United States of America
Copyright, 2016. Jedburghs, LLC.
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