Arlington is the temple of American self-respect, dignity, and optimism

Can MAGA Americans summon enough self-respect to take Arlington's side and end their weak, indulgent civil war against the rest of us?

These pictures were taken in September 2021, during my most recent visit to Arlington. It was a early on a Sunday morning; and I had the grounds almost to myself.

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MAGA “Christians” have long defiled and damaged their own faith by elevating Trump above Jesus. In much the same way, self-declared MAGA “patriots” have long defiled honorable military service by elevating the cowardly J6 felon Trump over the national purpose of the military and the basic respect due every veteran.

In my observation, these MAGA “patriots” — some of whom served, some of whom didn’t — don’t care about operational and moral realities of the military. Mostly, they just like flying fascist or upside down flags and fantasizing about turning the military’s power, figuratively and literally, against itself and against the libs and neighbors they’re told to hate.

This was certainly the message I took from Lakeland’s self-appointed MAGA “veterans czar” Gary Clark in his ill-fated 2023 Memorial Day presentation to my Kiwanis Club. He complained publicly that there too many women and people of color in the military and expressed rage about the treatment of Capitol Lynch Mob participants. I wrote about Clark’s “pissed off,” self-indulgent Memorial Day presentation in the following two articles:

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Gary Clark's lazy, bigoted lies about the military and America dishonor his former uniform, part 1

Should Bonesaw Jesus execute Gen. Milley -- and other questions for Gary Clark, part 2

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A contrasting shrine of national self-respect

As I’ve written many times before, my Dad was a combat-wounded Vietnam veteran, who served honorably as a draftee-turned-NCO in a brutal war he properly came to regard as foolish. He reckoned quietly over the years with the destruction and horror his country required him to take part in, in ways he largely kept to himself. But he admired Hugh Thompson Jr. deeply — and expressed that to me. The Vietnam Memorial wall became sacred to him; and he took great pleasure, comfort, and pride in the fraternal bonds he shared with fellow veterans of all political persuasions.

He expressed humble self-respect about the totality of the military service that helped define his life with a wry, oft-repeated quip: “I’m the only reason you’re not speaking Vietnamese today.”

This is how he expressed his self-respect as a citizen and veteran in his final months of life, as I wrote in 2021:

The last vote this patriot father ever cast was to peacefully remove from power a personally corrupt and vicious, Capitol Lynch Mob-inciting, would-be tyrant who ducked Vietnam as an inheritance baby; trashed veterans as “losers and suckers;” and sought to use the military to overthrow representative government and install him as a mad king. The military resisted this quite heroically in 2020.

My Dad first took me to Arlington when I was 8-years-old, as part of a trip to Washington D.C.

We watched the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which happens hourly or half-hourly (depending on time of year) 24 hours a day. The precision, the marble, the solemnity, the sounds of clicking feet and rifles — all of it burned into my 8-year-old consciousness in a way that has never left me.

I think I’ve visited Arlington every time I’ve made a trip to Washington since. It is my favorite part of the Capitol city. Most recently, I visited Arlington in September 2021, just a few weeks after my parents both died. I went alone, early on a Sunday morning, and just walked into the depths and folds of the cemetery that rose on the grounds of Robert E. Lee’s pre-Civil War estate, where Medgar Evers is now buried.

I never really interrogated my love of Arlington before now. I was always just drawn to the fullness of its effect.

One can and should maintain wariness about the allure of martial temples to drive the horrors of wars yet to come. But I find Arlington very different than most military monuments I’ve ever visited in any country. Its power lies in its lack of ostentation, in how its quiet earthen waves of equality in death roll ever outward from Lee’s defeated slave-power mansion.

Everyone buried in Arlington, whether killed in combat, otherwise on active duty, or having died after service, has cast a democratic vote with their moldering bodies to be counted by the American future they served. In turn, the grounds of the cemetery honor that self-respect with profound dignity. Every gravestone — with every Cross, Star of David, Crescent Moon, and any other symbol or lack of symbol — silently expresses an individual’s pride in contribution to the still emerging American story — and America’s reciprocal pride in their individual role.

That makes Arlington perhaps the most solemnly optimistic public space America has ever created. For me, it’s the most perfect national expression of American self-respect, dignity, and purpose.

Indignity made flesh

So of course, the least dignified, least optimistic, least self-respecting “leader” in American history has added Arlington to his list of spaces to hustle in his never-ending effort to stay out of prison and grab pussy.

Here’s the official U.S. Army statement on the illegal campaign event (leading to an illegal campaign video) the Trump freak show was warned not to attempt at Arlington. It turned into the illegal battery of a federal employee simply doing her job — asserting her self-respect — to defend the honor of America’s most sacred national space. Note the parts in bold.

Arlington National Cemetery routinely hosts public wreath laying ceremonies at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier for individuals and groups who submit requests in advance. ANC conducts nearly 3,000 such public ceremonies a year without incident.

Participants in the August 26th ceremony and the subsequent Section 60 visit were made aware of federal laws, Army regulations and DoD policies, which clearly prohibit political activities on cemetery grounds. An ANC employee who attempted to ensure adherence to these rules was abruptly pushed aside. Consistent with the decorum expected at ANC, this employee acted with professionalism and avoided further disruption. The incident was reported to the JBM-HH police department, but the employee subsequently decided not to press charges. Therefore, the Army considers this matter closed.

This incident was unfortunate, and it is also unfortunate that the ANC employee and her professionalism has been unfairly attacked. ANC is a national shrine to the honored dead of the Armed Forces, and its dedicated staff will continue to ensure public ceremonies are conducted with the dignity and respect the nation’s fallen deserve.

Not content to generally trash non-MAGA service members and veterans, MAGA “patriots,” including Trump himself, have now specifically and wantonly defiled a corner of the most hallowed ground in American military culture. They polluted a small piece of perhaps the most self-respecting public domain our nation has ever created. The Arlington groundskeepers should fumigate the space thoroughly.

You can see how the lack of self-respect and self-awareness leads directly to the gross disrespect of others.

The gravestone I circled above has nothing to do with the selfish, thumbs up, party vibe of Trump’s campaign images, later used on his campaign’s TikTok channel. You can see from the picture that it doesn’t seem to be grief or honor causing one group of family and friends to trample the dignity of another for the benefit of Trump’s TikTok. The two guys on the far left, one of whom seems to carry a terrible wound, come across as deeply uncomfortable with this scene; but they’re captured in the spectacle nonetheless.

Here’s how the family of the illegally appropriated soldier reacted:

“[A]ccording to our conversation with Arlington National Cemetery,” Marckesano’s sister wrote, “the Trump campaign staffers did not adhere to the rules that were set in place for this visit to Staff Sergeant [Darin] Hoover’s gravesite in Section 60, which lays directly next to my brother’s grave.”

“We hope that those visiting this sacred site understand that these were real people who sacrificed for our freedom and that they are honored and respected accordingly,” she added.

This is what the pied piper of indignity does — he degrades. He forces one family of one patriot to assert its self-sovereignty because the Trumpsick family of his neighbor in death chose self-indulgence over self-respect.

This is an opportunity, weak men

I’m thinking deeply these days about self-respect and self-indulgence, which I consider the core American divide today. It’s related to the manhood divide I discussed recently. Real manhood cannot exist without real self-respect. And real manhood is not self-indulgent.

It took mass self-indulgence, coupled with an equally massive collapse in self-respect, to launch the MAGA civil war against America back in 2015.

And how many millions of times in the course of that ongoing civil war has the dynamic of that Arlington picture played out across the country, in every community and neighborhood? How many millions of times have the mob armies of self-indulgence forced families and individuals just trying to live their lives with honor and dignity to assert their self-sovereignty in self-defense? The aggressive MAGA civil war has been particularly stupid and indulgent in Florida.

Socially, I think the forces of American self-respect were beginning to grind down the forces of self-indulgence even before the patriotism of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris gave the forces of self-respect the greatest public boost of political morale I’ve ever seen.

MAGA’s self-indulgence and the lack of self-respect among its “respectable” allies have collapsed entirely into a rancid shared degradation. You can’t tell one from the other. As I’ve said many times, there is no difference today between MAGAs and the supposedly “respectable” citizens desperately looking for a plausible excuse to ignore their consciences. The “respectables” are like those poor guys caught in the picture — except much worse. They refuse to leave the picture; and yet want our respect.

Whatever happens on Election Day, the forces of no-self-respect are going to wake up the next day without any self-respect. Trump and his boys take self-respect from you; they don’t give it to you — because it can’t be given. There is no winning for you, MAGAs, because you lack the self-respect to lose. And that means you can’t compete; you can only whine.

Gary Clark’s Memorial Day presentation is an example of this curdled, late-MAGA self-indulgence.

It wasn’t joyfully indulgent like “lock them up” was way back in 2016 MAGA meth bender salad days. It was angrily and bitterly indulgent, drowning in weakness, grievance, falsehood, and complaints — such as the fact that normal people consider J6ers lynch mob criminals worthy of punishment, not pardon.

When I publicly called out Gary Clark, Lakeland’s self-appointed voice of veterans and military matters, on his self-indulgence, in public, he said nothing. And the handful of weak people who objected (they know who they are) took it out on somebody else, not me — as weak people are apt to do.

So here’s a chance at a do-over, Gary and crew.

Can you summon the self-respect and manhood to take Arlington’s side in the MAGA civil war? Can you live up to the bullshit you mouth in public? Or are you just going to keep giving your pathetic thumbs up to the camera forever?

Whatever you do, you’ll find me on the side of Arlington, dignity, and self-respect.