Enough, Already, With Felon and Draft-Dodger

If we take away his having avoided the draft during the Viet Nam era, and later been ludicrously convicted of 34 felonies, do we not have ample reason to abhor the Mango Monstrosity? Is his being a stupid, incompetent, infantile, delusional, corrupt, hateful, petulant, treacherous, soulless fascist, and, indeed, a fecal stain on American history, not quite enough?

There is no purer a manifestation of authoritarianism than the expectation that young people are morally obliged to put themselves in mortal jeopardy — to kill or be killed — in service of their country’s war machine, a core belief of those who embrace the cruel scam of patriotism. Fuck patriotism.

I dodged the hell out of the draft myself after graduating from college. Even at 22, I couldn’t for the life of me see how the Viet Cong posed a threat to Our Sacred American Way of Life, which I didn’t take on faith to be inherently sacreder than that of a Vietnamese who believed Ho Chi Minh more likely to improve his or her life than whichever puppet-of-the-USA was calling the shots in the southern part of their country. I found compelling Muhammad Ali’s observation that “ain’t no Viet Cong ever called me ‘nigger’.”

Those who “served” in Viet Nam because they effectively had no choice — America’s not-fortunate sons, in the Fogertian formulation— are understandably resentful of my and the Monstrosity’s having been able to demur. But their having knuckled under, for whatever reason, doesn’t entitle them to condemn me and the Monstrosity on moral grounds. Thank you for your service, my ass. I’ll save my gratitude for Peace Corps volunteers, or for those who helped out in their own communities.

As I will not pretend to have done myself.

The main difference between me and the Mango Monstrosity as regards our non-”service” is that I have neither described not catching a sexually transmitted disease as my personal Viet Nam, nor delivered speeches about the incomparable gloriousness of “our” war machine. But even with his having done both, let no one ever again list his having dodged the draft as a reason to deplore him.

Enough too — much, much more than enough! —with the 34 felonies, which makes it sound as though he mugged someone this week, set someone’s house on fire the next week, raped a couple of women (and maybe a handsome, long-eyelashed young Nuyorkican or two) the week after that, and so on. There is no doubt that he’s corruption made flesh, and has probably committed felonies beyond counting over the course of his career, but that of which he was convicted was a cosplaying misdemeanor, multiply repeated.

Call me old-fashioned, but I think a jury having found him guilty of sexual abuse packs ten times the wallop of the one bloated-misdemeanor-repeated-34-times thing.