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We have completely unqualified people declaring war and sending OTHER PEOPLE's kids to fight for THEIR interests and sick vanity projects. How obscene is that?
The Fortunate Son Sends Us to War
The people who run up the bill aren't the people who pay it
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It is easy to pay a bill if you’re not using your own money.
That’s the thought that kept ringing through my head as I watched the “Secretary of War” smirk and chortle his way through a war time press conference wherein he disparaged our allies for “clutching their pearls” and dismissed what he called “stupid rules of engagement.”
Anyone who cares about the sanctity of human life pauses and deliberates long and hard before resorting to violence. It’s not “pearl-clutching” – it’s quite literally the bare minimum of responsible governance. And anyone who cares about the morality of war – about the nobility of going to battle to prove your commitment to ideals – understands the need to adhere to a set of moral standards, especially in bloody battle.
But this disconnect between war as cosplay and war as reality is what happens when policy is made by people who have consistently failed up.
It’s what happens when life-or-death decisions are made by men of means with thin resumes and thick breath whose futures have been protected by a full-time cleaning crew charged with fixing their mistakes before there was too much damage or too much attention.
Consequences are rare for these people.
They are not rare for the rest of us.
In 1969, John Fogerty penned a song in 20 furious minutes, after learning that a senator had been able to use his clout to keep his son from being sent to Vietnam. The song features one of the most well-recognized guitar riffs in music, but it’s the words that reverberate with me right now:
Some folks are born made to wave the flag / Hoo, they're red, white and blue / And when the band plays "Hail to the chief" / Ooh, they point the cannon at you, Lord / It ain't me, it ain't me I ain't no senator's son, son / It ain't me, it ain't me I ain't no fortunate one, no. (Fortunate Son, Creedence Clearwater Revival).
Back in 1969 Donald Trump was wealthy enough to afford the bone spurs that kept him from being drafted.
He is the Fortunate Son, personified.
And so, of course, is his son.
Fortunate Son was written in 1969 but it could have been written this past weekend. It’s about the cost being paid by the regular, everyday people who are expected to pick up the pieces and sacrifice themselves to keep a system that doesn’t benefit them running.
It’s about the disparity of the value of life – how those Fortunate Sons with soft hands are consistently protected and coddled and fawned over, while the rest of us are expected to bleed and be grateful for the privilege.
It’s a protest song about the disparity of the cost of war – and about who runs up the bill versus who pays it. The moral resonates as well as the riff. But fifty years later, we still haven’t learned the lesson. Perhaps we are meant to repeat the chorus again and again until it sticks.
Because Donald Trump has taken us to war. But the bloody cost of it won’t be borne by Trump or billionaires like him. His son won’t see a battlefield. Billionaires will make money off the war.
They’ll continue on in their gilded ballrooms with barely a second thought of the people bleeding out in the desert. On Saturday night while the world reeled and military families lay awake worried for their loved ones, Republicans hosted a fancy fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago. Trump attended, saying it was “more important than ever.” Moments after Pete Hegseth announced a service member’s death on Monday, he was shaking hands and laughing.
They are as grotesque as they are predictable.
Consequence has never been part of their operating system. They’re used to “suckers” – honorable, responsible people – taking care of whatever bill they have run up. And now these men, consequence-blind and grinning, are driving us headfirst into a world war.
The bill they are running up won’t be settled by a senator’s son or a billionaire’s kid.
It will be paid for with the blood of everyday Americans who have been thrown into a conflict they didn’t ask for and didn’t want. It will be paid for by kids from poor and middle-class families from every corner of the country.
It will be paid for by brave kids who deserve better than to be sacrificed for a voluntary war of vanity.
Let’s get to work.
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