Reverence

Anyone who is well acquainted with this newsletter knows that I don’t mind a little irreverent humor now and then, especially when that humor takes aim at some institution, idea, or symbol I hold in high regard, like the Marine Corps. We Marines are famously fond of our beloved Corps and its symbols and traditions¹.

First to fight for right and freedom
And to keep our honor clean;
We are proud to claim the title
of United States Marine.

The iconic image of the flag-raising at Iwo Jima is dear to the Corps. It is depicted in the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, VA and was the inspiration for the design of the National Museum of the Marine Corps a short distance from Marine Corps Base Quantico. It has also been used to skewer the Corps when Marines have failed to keep their honor clean.

I was the Camp Duty Officer at Camp Hanson, Okinawa in September of 1995, when two Marines and a Navy corpsman were hauled to the brig for abducting and raping a 12-year-old Okinawan girl, a horrible crime that became an international incident and prompted an emergency meeting between President Bill Clinton and Japanese prime minister Ryutaro Hashimoto. An editorial cartoon reprinted in the Stars and Stripes used the image of the flag-raising at Iwo Jima to represent the scene of the crime. In the cartoon, one of the figures says something close to, “You hold her down, I’ll get the duct tape.” (I searched hard for that pre-Internet cartoon but couldn’t find it.) When I saw it, I both laughed and thought, Ouch, that’s gonna leave a mark.

The image of the flag-raising was used by an editorial cartoonist again to represent an even more horrible event: the November 19, 2005 Haditha massacre in which 24 Iraqi men, women, and children as young as three years old were shot dead in their homes and in a car. The cartoon drawn to represent that incident shows the flag being planted on a pile of bodies. Again, Ouch!, but also a good lesson to Marines about how the actions of a few reflect on us all.

What brought these incidents to mind was a simple question from a No Kings protestor in Williston, North Dakota. I talked to her after my speech, and she said that she had considered not attending the event because it was a little chilly and a lot windy in Williston that day. Then she thought of all of the Republican politicians, including the entire Republican leadership in the U.S. House, who were painting the event as a “hate America” rally. That made her angry. “What is wrong with them?” she asked.

“They have no reverence for their office or for the people,” I said. I’m unsure why “reverence” was the first idea that came to mind, but a lack of it is apparent in the undignified and juvenile behavior of too many of our elected leaders and at least one unelected billionaire. It’s not that they are irreverent; its that they have no respect or love for the institutions and nation that they serve.

Leaders model behavior, and when they have no reverence for their organization or fellow human beings, they model undignified behavior. It is no surprise that a group of Young Republicans traded racist, homophobic, and misogynistic comments in a Telegram group chat. Exactly the same thing happened in a North Dakota Young Republicans group chat on Telegram in 2022. It wasn’t the Internet that licensed the offhand antisemitism and other awfulness that appeared in these group chats; it was the example set by the political leaders they admire.

It’s also no surprise that the vice president of the United States dismissed the latest incident as kids being kids and defended them with a whataboutism. For him, there is no right or wrong, no moral imperative. There is only his tribe of the right kind of Republicans, and any behavior is okay if you’re in it. Besides, those remarks were taken out of context or it was just a Hitler and gas chambers joke between friends. Who doesn’t do that once in a while?

Help keep the lights on.

How is a young Republican to know the right way to behave, looking at the headlines. How should he comport himself? Maybe a typical headline will give him a clue.

President of the United States Shares AI-Generated Video of Himself Wearing a Crown While Dropping Feces on American Protestors.

Should he honest in his dealings with other people, or is that for losers?

President of the United States Commutes Sentence of Con Man and Identity Thief “With No Further Fines, Restitution, Probation, Supervised Release, or Other Conditions.”

“Why did the president of the United States do that?” a young Republican might ask. “Oh, I see. It was because ‘Santos had the Courage, Conviction, and Intelligence to ALWAYS VOTE REPUBLICAN!’”

Now that young Republican will have a firm grasp of his heroes’ moral philosophy and can go out into the world saying, “I got mine,” and placing the adjective “low-IQ” before the names of Jasmine Crockett, Leticia James, Joy Reid, Kamala Harris, and other women of color. If sends his friends in the group chat a message about his adoration for Hitler and how we need gas chambers, well, that’s just Republican locker-room talk, and it was taken out of context.

Speaker of the House, House Majority Leader, House Majority Whip, and House Republican Conference Chair Say Americans Are Protesting This Weekend Because They “Hate America.”

I have used titles instead of names in these headlines to highlight the contrast with past political leaders. I think most readers still revere those titles, even if the people who hold them have no sense of reverence for their office. It is more shocking to read that the president of the United States has done some unseemly thing than to see that a man who we know lacks any sense of honor or dignity has done that thing.

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Ahead of last weekend’s protests, House Speaker Mike Johnson said that those events would be attended by “the people who don’t want to stand and defend the foundational truths of this republic.” What does Johnson think we are doing at these protests? “No Kings” is the foundational truth of our republic. A person with the slightest amount of reverence for what the Founders and Framers envisioned would easily see that it is our one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all, is the republic for which we stand.

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