It's a mighty big ask — but it'll burn Trump in the hell he's made

As the reprehensible Donald Trump hunkers down in his belt-high filth, and attacks the U.S. for a second time, I want to urgently underline the danger we are in right now, while also expressing again what an extreme insult this gruesome man, a convicted felon, is to anybody who has ever worn the uniform.

What we are seeing in Los Angeles, and what I promise you the draft-dodging coward will bring to more of our cities in the coming days and weeks, is rooted in bloodlust and cowardice and is a hallmark of fascism.

By words and by deed, it is clear as day that Trump has absolutely no respect for the United States of America which he has already violently assaulted once, nor our men and women who wear the uniform, because like any authoritarian leader he sees them as servants to him, and not our country.

Read that again.

Once you understand that Trump will use his presidency and whatever is left of his miserable life to settle scores and return the favors of the crooked dictators, billionaires, and wobbly weaklings in his political party who helped install him in office, you can better prepare for the hell that’s most assuredly coming.

And when that hell arrives, we must ensure that it is he, not us — who feels the terrible heat. This country cannot stand by while a lewd, tin-pot dictator uses our troops to attack us, on behalf of him.

After all, Trump is a proven America-attacker, NOT a defender.

Rather than calling in the National Guard on January 6, 2021, to defend this nation and overmatched local enforcement officers under siege from his assembled mob during the most violent attack on our Capitol since 1814, he sequestered himself in a room in the White House and seethed for hours while rooting for the attack’s success.

To me, as a United States Navy veteran, and an old man who loves his country enough to call it out when it has fallen off the tracks, Trump’s attack on America was the most disgusting, anti-American, unpatriotic thing I have ever witnessed from a U.S. citizen — much less a president.

And it got worse, because it always does with this abomination of a man ...

Just four years later, and with lightning speed, Trump pardoned those enemies of America who attacked us, because he knew he was going to be asking more from people who, like him, have proven they could care less about our country, and our laws and elections that guide us.

Since disgracing his office for a second time, Trump has surrounded himself with the very lowest of the low in his noxious cabinet, including his reprehensible Secretary of Defense, the hard-drinking Fox News host, Pete Hegseth. When the bumbling Hegseth isn’t casually sharing top-secret intelligence with our enemies, he is bringing out the absolute worst in people, and in this case our military.

In Trump’s dirty mind, when the time came for him to conquer the U.S., he was going to need troops and so-called leaders who were willing to go along with his worst instincts. He would need lowlifes like Hegseth to circumvent military leadership if necessary to make sure his carnage became a terrible reality.

There would be no Gens. Mattis, Kelly or Milley to stand in his way, and check his worse impulses this time around.

So now, as the unstable Trump escalates and warns he will “send our troops everywhere,” we are quickly getting to the dangerous point of no return when we must hope our military will not to obey unlawful orders from a Commander-in-Chief who could care less about them or our Constitution.

Like it or not, that’s a mighty big ask.

Look, I am many things but I am not naive. I know that many — far too many — active duty military and veterans align with this terrible MAGA cult. Despite the oath they took, they are not immune from the homophobia, racism and misogyny that has intentionally been injected into the bloodstream of a country that has always been susceptible to these diseases.

As a vet, I rage at these people, and wish I could shake some damn sense into them.

I cannot tell you what I would have done as an enlisted man all those years ago had I been ordered to barrel into one of our cities and violently engage with my fellow citizens, but I can tell you that it would have made me absolutely sick to my stomach.

I can also tell you that far better men and women than myself have laid their lives down protecting America from psychopathic fascists like Trump.

Anybody who enlisted, and took an oath to conquer a U.S. city does not have their head, nor their values, screwed on straight.

That Trump putting our best and bravest in this terrible position is a horrible insult, and just the latest proof that he has absolutely no respect for the United States of America or our military that protects us.

The hour is late, and it is time for every veteran across this nation to stand up and make our voices heard.

THIS CANNOT STAND.

(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)