Junk Mail, Junk People

I get a lot of junk mail. That's partly because I have enough of a heart to contribute to causes that touch me.

I'm sure it's also because I get put on a bunch of lists, since I give to things I've never seen. Kind of, well, 'if you liked that you'll really like this.'

I paused when I opened one of them the other day: The D-Day Memorial. 

You know, D-Day. The greatest invasion humankind has ever known, staged to overthrow the evil rule of a dictator who was on the way to killing six million Jews, gypsies, gays and other people he didn't think deserved to live out their lives in peace and contentment. He would have killed more had the Allies not liberated the prison camps. That's part of the reason D-Day happened.

We sent over 150,000 men to take those beaches on June 6, 1944. Americans, British, Free French, Poles, Canadians and others, from 12 countries in all, stormed the beaches of Normandy. More than 4,000 died that day. The worst of it was on Omaha Beach.

Some of them were from the little town where the D-Day Memorial sits: Bedford, Virginia, between Roanoke and Lynchburg. They were part of A Company, 116th Infantry, 29th Division. Many of them, nearly all of them, never quite did get to the beach. 22 men from there tried; 3 came home.

That's because they were the very first who had their LCI--Landing Craft Infantry--open up like a cow's tongue and allowed them to distribute themselves along the beach. But as soon as it did, as soon as they started wading in the surf, they were machine gunned. They were right in the teeth of German resistance.

They had no place to go, no place to hide. They were doomed.

Eisenhower knew it was going to happen. Bradley knew it was going to happen. Teddy Roosevelt, Jr., who landed somewhere in the proximity of Utah Beach, then started inland from where they were, about a mile down from that planned landing, knew it had to happen to someone.

But the boys from Bedford got it the worst. It was a slaughter. Somebody had to go first, so this could have been written about others. They died that day so others could live and establish a beachhead and work their way inland, as difficult a task as that was.

Four hours into the attack, Bradley, who commanded the invasion itself, thought about going in and picking the survivors up. It was that bad and looked like that much of a stalemate.

Then two things happened: First, the Americans, pinned down though they were, figured out, like we usually do, that when the original plan doesn't work, you go to Plan B, even if there isn't one at the moment. They regathered, reorganized, and got themselves up the bluffs from which deadly fire was raining down on them.

Second, as part of that ad hoc, unplanned moment, very anxious ships from the U.S. Navy whirled in, in harm's way from German artillery, and shelled the machine gun nests scattered along those bluffs. They were deadly accurate. "Thank God for the U.S. Navy!" said one soldier.

You know the rest. Slowly, painfully, and with lots more casualties, the Allies drove toward Germany.

The bodies of those who never made it to the beach washed up for weeks.

Now, compare that to the cowardice of those who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, who benefited directly from the storming of Normandy, whose ancestors gave their very lives so that they could have Hee-Haw, Tiger King, So You Think You Can Dance, Toad Suck Days (in Arkansas, home of the jackass who put his feet up on Nancy Pelosi's desk; he's in custody) and all the other stupidity our culture creates.

All so that they can complain bitterly about the fact that they had the very same chances everyone else had but thought they couldn't take advantage of it because they were white, because someone else decided to give black people a hand up because they were still suffering from the vestiges of slavery and Jim Crow. So here and there--certainly not everywhere--some got job and educational opportunities that white people have always had.

How awful, right? What a country. How terribly unfair. So they got back at somebody because the ugly, horrible president told them it was okay.

The so-called trod upon weren't, though. They simply gave up and settled for a life where they could get just a little money, a job on the fringes where you needed to toil but not think too much. Yes, maybe they had tough breaks. Name me someone else who hasn't. 

Some of us overcame them. Others wallowed in them. They hung over the bar on Friday nights and believed anything they were told, said whatever came to their shallow minds first: generalized, underinformed, and often bigoted, blaming others for failing to do what they could have done had they applied themselves a little better. Now they watch Fox News and One America Network and tune out the truth in context.

So when someone comes along and gins them up, saying with unmistakeable dog whistle phraseology that it's those people who caused their awful lives, certainly not themselves, that somehow gives them entitlement to storm the Capitol and tear it up: Wrecking offices, killing guards, smashing windows, stealing items, smearing feces on the walls. They got Pelosi and Mike Pence out there, as well as members of Congress. Heaven knows what would have happened if they had fallen prey.

Some of these losers were wearing t-shirts that said 6MWE: Six Million Weren't Enough. That refers to the Jews who were killed by the Nazis. Not enough. Should have been more. That's their answer to D-Day, to the sacrifice made by those brave men.

Free country, I suppose. Free to be cruel. Free to be stupid. Free to be ugly and awful. Free to go on Twitter and spread lies. Lies like: The boys at Normandy were suckers and losers.

How I wish they could face those who did the real work, had real courage, did something with real meaning. The boys from Bedford, Virginia, I bet, would shake their heads at what happened and say: That's not what we did that for, so that you could trash the capitol of our country, the very symbol of our freedom! Who do you think you are?

That's what I want them to explain: Who did they think they were to do what they did and justify it somehow? To try to hold up, if not directly overthrow, the very government that was doing its job, what they keep saying it should but can't figure out what that means. Or, if they can, having sour grapes about the results, when in fact nobody ever gets exactly what they want. 

That's the idea. That's what compromise means. Angus King, Senator from Maine, said it again on "60 Minutes": the Constitution is full of compromises. As if anybody would read it, or read anything about how it was made. But that's history, you know? Dumb topic. Did anybody pay attention to that stuff?

I didn't especially like it when their guy, the incompetent master of smearing and lies, got in the back door through an Electoral College technicality. But I didn't return to Washington, DC and assault the Capitol, looking for its leaders to, what, kidnap or kill? So suddenly, they don't deserve to live out their lives in peace and contentment, either?

How come these hooligans did that? What gave them the right to destroy what took hundreds of years to build? Who do they think they are?

There have been a couple who have now said they were sorry. Apology not accepted. You must face the judge first. I'd like you to clean up the mess, too. Or at least pay for it.

After all, that's my place, my house. I pay taxes to keep it up. You ripped it apart.

It was just another piece of junk mail. But it made me think about the junk people who upset an entire nation. I would happily pay higher taxes to track them all down.

Do your job, FBI. Be very thorough. I don't care if it takes years. I don't remember being this angry for a while.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. One day closer to a vaccine. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark