My grandfather Mel Spencer probably would have been a chubby old man. Even in his 20s, he struggled with keeping his weight down to the Air Force-prescribed parameters for pilots. He seems to have passed down that particular gene to me (thanks, Grandpa). But Mel Spencer never got to be an old man. He never got to be a grandfather; in fact, he barely got to be a father. His only child was 6 months old when Mel Spencer suited up with three of his fellow airmen and boarded his B-47 stratojet for a training run over Waterville, New York, in the midnight hours of Jan. 16, 1962.

Nobody knows exactly what caused their plane to fly straight into the side of Wright’s Peak in the Adirondacks at full cruising speed; what little available evidence is left indicates a combination of dangerous weather and faulty instrumentation (the B-47 was manufactured by Boeing, after all.) Mel Spencer of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, was 28 years old. He didn’t get to see my mom grow up because his service to this country killed him.

I thought about Grandpa Mel the other day when I saw a video of former President Donald Trump talking about a Presidential Medal of Freedom he’d awarded, comparing it to the Congressional Medal of Honor. He said, in reference to the Medal of Freedom, “It’s actually much better because everyone [who] gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, they’re soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead.” Do you know what flying into the side of a mountain does to the human body? “Very bad shape” is putting it lightly.

My grandfather was not awarded any medals for his death because those medals are for actions above and beyond the call of duty, and Mel was very much simply doing his duty. But even the most basic training run can become deadly, and that’s a bargain all American soldiers sign up for, from the weekend part-time National Guard member all the way up to a 20-year lifer: that at some point you may very well lose your life for your country.

Battlefields take many forms. Donald Trump has been in the political spotlight for almost 10 years now and I genuinely thought he had lost the ability to surprise me. But he hasn’t. I literally checked multiple reliable news sources for the video to make sure it wasn’t some sort of AI crap. It wasn’t. He actually said those things. I guess what gets to me after all these years is that he doesn’t even try to pretend to respect fallen soldiers. This man was commander in chief of the armed forces of the United States of America for four years; years in which my baby brother was serving in the Navy.

Donald Trump had the power to send my brother to die in a foreign ocean and join his grandfather and he can’t even pretend to care? Trump clearly thinks anyone who is wounded or dies in service to their country is a rube and a sucker. And that is a personal insult to my grandfather. I can feel my blood pressure rising the more I think about it, I swear. People call me a godless communist who doesn’t support the troops because I think we should spend fewer taxpayer dollars on weapons and military consultants and more on things like health care and housing, but at least I’m capable of showing some respect and human concern for the men and women who put their lives and well-being on the line.

Donald Trump is a pathetic little man; he is an apple that is rotten and worm-ridden to the very core. He is foolish and stupid and hateful; he is a coward, who has never done any deed worth commemorating in his life. He has made no sacrifices for anyone other than himself and he wouldn’t know heroism if it bit him on the butt. What a disgusting way to live. If this is who we think should be leading our country, no wonder America has problems.

I was an English major in college and if we were living in a literary novel right now and I was analyzing the text, I would say that Mr. Trump represented all the worst parts of the American psyche: controlling, selfish, angry and frightened at change and difference. And set up opposite to that, in contrast: the Medal of Honor recipients, representing the best of what Americans can be – selfless, brave, generous, striving always toward freedom.

Victoria Hugo-Vidal is a Maine millennial. She can be contacted at:
themainemillennial@gmail.com
Twitter: @mainemillennial