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Economic inequality is the most important issue in the 2024 election

We waste speech, essay, column and TV time calling each other stupid, fascist, demonic, ugly, communist, liars and a thousand other epithets without ever asking why American women live about 8 to 10 years shorter than women in industrialized, civilized countries that appreciate the common good – and have universal health care. Is that too difficult to understand? Is our brain too wounded?

Poet Robinson Jeffers has an answer:
“Never blame the man: his hard-pressed
Ancestors formed him: the other anthropold apes were safe
In the great southern rain-forest and hardly changed in a million years.
But the race of man was made by shock and agony.
A wound was made in the brain when life became too hard
And was never healed. It is there that they learned trembling religion
And blood sacrifice. It is there that they learned to butcher beasts
And to slaughter men and hate the world.”

Let’s examine the charge that Governor Tim Walz lied when he said he went to war with a rifle. Every man or woman who joined the military during a war carried a weapon that he would fire if he were in the front lines. Army historian General S.L.A. Marshall and researchers have determined that 41 million Americans have served in modern wars. (A stray fact: 41 million Americans have worked for McDonald’s!) 

Here’s where it gets interesting. During wars, roughly 40% of all troops never get deployed to a combat zone. Most are issued and maintain a firearm. Of the 60% who are deployed to a combat zone, only one in 10 pull a trigger on a weapon aimed at an enemy. So, in the end, only 10% carry fire directly at an enemy.

A shocking statistic. After the battle of Gettysburg in the Civil War, where the Union had 23,049 killed and wounded and the Confederacy 28,049 K and W, 27,000 muskets were found on the battlefield loaded  some with multiple loads. Some men hate to kill people, so they never pull a trigger. It happens in all wars. Others are killed before they can pull a trigger. 

Another shocking statistic. Civil War researchers have discovered that 127 women posing as Union Army troops were killed on various battlefields and were discovered only upon examination of wounds.

Why wars are so expensive
Researchers after World War II, by examining manufacturing records and what was in ammunition depots, estimated it took 45,000 rounds of small arms ammunition to kill one enemy.  
Of course, we have other means, from knives to grenades to nuclear bombs for killing. Using the same criteria, Marshall’s researchers estimated it took 50,000 rounds to kill one enemy soldier during the Vietnam War. 
In my own situation during the Korean War, I served three years on active duty and five additional years on reserve as a Marine Corps officer (1950-1958). I was never deployed to that combat zone. I was assigned to Atlantic and Caribbean beaches! As commander of a heavy machinegun platoon, I was in command of a unit that could fire around 35,000 rounds a minute just with machineguns. Each of my troops also carried a semi-automatic Garand rifle that fired eight-round clips. 

As the unit officer, I was assigned a Browning Model 1911 45-caliber semi-automatic pistol with a seven-round magazine. An officer who has to fire his pistol to survive is in deep doo-doo. 
I might add, snipers are always looking for officers wearing pistols so they can kill commanders. If on front lines, I would always carry a rifle for that reason. I do have a Marine Corps Expert Rifleman’s Badge.
My last command was a Marine infantry company of 130 troops. About 2/3 of any large military organization, whether brigades or divisions, never pull a trigger and are made up of engineers, transport, clerical, maintenance, cooks, communications, headquarters staff and medical personnel. They may never pull a trigger, but when the shooting starts, everyone from the president of the United States (including five-time deferred Donald Trump) and the cooks in the mess hall, all help to pull triggers.

A further explanation. Most infantry battalions, unless reinforced, have about 650 troops spread among four rifle companies of 130 men, and three platoons of about 30 (headquarters, communications, and support) troops. So, about 90 infantrymen are doing the fighting and the actual trigger-pulling. 
That means two platoons are at the front, and one is being held in reserve in case something bad happens. Some will be firing 81mm mortars and performing other support duties. A couple might be using flame throwers. 
A final note on this issue to fellow Marine JC Vance: pretend you learned something in boot camp and at Yale University and keep your mouth shut instead of attacking Governor Tim Walz and his 24-year tour in the National Guard. He helped pull a lot of triggers in those years, reaching the top rank of command sergeant major in his battalion. 

Vance was promoted to corporal while serving as a media specialist, writing special Marine stories and handling press relations. I wonder if he carried a rifle and a camera at the same time, but he helped pull triggers also.

The Manhattan village idiot is beyond stupidity about honors and medals 
Have you ever seen the “tramp” burst out laughing, the “genius” shed a tear, the “only-I-can-do-it” guy tell the truth, the “chosen one” praise a general of the Army, or compliment a reporter from “the fake news?” 
No question he is a complete narcissistic nutcase who needs serious psychiatric help 24/7. He used “I” 207 times in his 93-minute acceptance speech. Only a sociopath in a half-civilized world would be facing 4,000 lawsuits because of lies, ignorance, sexual predation, ignoring contracts and fraud. 
A statement about inveterate liars by Arthur Schopenhauer, a 19th century German philosopher, nails the Lyin’ King Trump to his “Christian” cross: “If we expect a man is lying, we should pretend to believe him, for then he becomes old and assured, lies more vigorously and is unmasked.”
“Tramp,” who calls Ka-MA-la Harris a “bum,” was unmasked as a liar immediately upon his first one because he didn’t want to cover his face, “the most beautiful one in the world.” He just made that determination this week. He’s never wanted to cover his face with a mask, even after leading the Divided States of America to the highest rate of COVID-19 per 100,000 in the world and leading the Republican states to much higher rates than Democratic states.

Bette Grande needs to be unmasked immediately because in her latest Forum column she wrote that Minnesota small businesses, churches and daycare facilities all suffered from government COVID-19 policies. Quit lying, Bette. Get the facts. The elderly and others died of higher rates of the virus because the Center of Disease Control’s recommendations and regulations about vaccines, masks, social distancing, the closing of certain businesses, hospitalization and the use of medicines were not followed in Trumplican states. 

Bette, the Trumplican Party has done such a good job lying about all vaccines, just 69% 0f parents of children (from 94% 23 years ago) favor requiring vaccinations for school children. 
Steve Bannon, one of the most resourceful of Trump advisers, suggested that someone should kill Dr. Tony Fauci. The good Dr. must have been effective to earn such rage. I think Bannon is still in jail for avoiding a subpoena. 
By the way, Bette, I see Xcel Energy is replacing three large, coal-fired power plants by 2040 with thousands of solar panels covering many acres – one near Becker, Minnesota. That is Trump country and some Trumpians are smart enough to know climate change isn’t a hoax.

Forty-one million soldiers were taught to pull triggers in modern times
And only 3,536 who pulled triggers, fired other weapons and conducted themselves with extreme valor have been awarded the Medal of Honor, alive or posthumously, the highest military award. 
Our family had three members who were among the 41 million who have been in the U.S. military since 1861. I am one. My oldest brother was deployed to the Pacific theater in World War II and ended his military career as a clerk in General MacArthur’s Tokyo headquarters after the war. 
My other brother was in the Army Air Force and was taking off from a California base in his first solo flight as a bomber pilot when the Japanese surrendered. 
So, according to “Tramp,” we were members of the “suckers” and “losers” who were eligible to win the Medal of Honor. Complete with his five deferments for microscopic bone spurs visible only by a greedy doctor, the Lyin’ King is a first-class member of the pantheon of the world’s greatest cowards.
Trump seems to be jealous of and hate military personnel because he knows the truth: he is a coward. In 2020 when more than 30 U.S. troops suffered brain trauma when hit by Iranian missile strikes, he called the injuries “headaches.” It takes an illiterate, ignorant, uninformed person to come up with that diagnosis. Several generals have called him a moron and said he is totally unfit for the Resolute desk. 

Only a fully credentialed psycho-sociopath narcissist could call the Medal of Freedom awarded to distinguished Americans – mostly, but sometimes to political and personal friends – more important than the military Medal of Honor. This controversy blew up when he gave Miriam Adelson, the wife of a Jewish billionaire casino owner, the Medal of freedom for giving millions of campaign funds to him after he had moved our embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. 

The Lyin’ King compared the two medals: “The Medal of Freedom is the highest award you can get as a civilian. It’s the equivalent of the Congressional medal of Honor. The Medal of Freedom is actually much better because everyone (who) gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, they’re soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they have been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead.” 

The records indicate Trump awarded only one Medal of Honor during his term. It was awarded to Sergeant Major Thomas P. Payne for the following action on October 22, 2015: “During a daring nighttime hostage rescue in Iraq, Payne led a combined assault team in rescuing 38 hostages. He exposed himself to enemy fire several times during the raid and led the assault team in controlling the enemy in a compound.” 

March 25 is known as the Medal of Honor presentation day. Valor does not always involve triggers and death in combat. A Black U.S. Navy sailor was awarded two Medals of Honor for saving the lives of many sailors in 1881 and 1883 in unusual situations.
Trump awarded 24 Medals of Freedom during his term. He honored 14 athletes, far-right politicians who told him he was great, and Rush Limbaugh, an entertainer and provocateur who poisoned the air waves from 1988 to 2021 until he died from cancer. He spent three hours a day spouting White Nationalist claptrap to his “ditto heads,” who kept his phone ringing. His ditto heads often demonstrated there was nothing between the dittoes. 

They often reminded me of Yogi Berra’s famous axiom: “We’re lost but we are making good time. When we come to a fork in the road, let’s take it.”