My wife and principal critic on everything I write — an activity she believes I engage too much in — tells me that my writings are generally too long and that I should stay away from satire.
Here is a shot at correcting the former while hoping she’ll forgive me for once again attempting the latter.
Watching and listening to handsome, successful and very, very rich Donald Trump this morning tell NBC’s Matt Lauer how rough his early years in life and in business had been, I reflected back upon my own early career and felt embarrassed about how easy I had it.
You see, while young Trump had to endure the rigors of military training at a tough prep school where he “always felt he was in the military” and where he got way “more training than a lot of guys who go in the military,” uniquely qualifying him to be the next commander in chief, I leisurely enjoyed a total of nine months of piece-of-cake basic military and officer candidate training. To add insult to Trump’s injury, he subsequently suffered draft deferments through much of the Vietnam War.
Then, while I had the luxury of stretching my college education over a period of eight years, all the while enjoying taking night courses while working and serving during the day, Trump was forced to sacrifice his leisure time and attend the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania where he struggled and sacrificed to graduate with a B.S. in economics and real estate.
Finally, this morning we hear Trump tell Lauer, how – after all those hardships — he still had to struggle to make it a go in business.
“My whole life really has been a ‘no’ and I fought through it. I talk about it. It has not been easy for me. It has not been easy for me. I started off in Brooklyn. My father gave me a small loan of $1 million,” he told Lauer.
There was no a dry eye in the audience after Trump disclosed how he scratched and struggled to become successful and build up his fortune.
As for me, it brought back shameful memories of my own squandered youth and opportunities.
How, as a young enlisted man in the U.S. Air Force, earning a whopping $48 a month and with fantastic food, clothing and shelter provided, I was so selfish that I only sent a measly $5 each month to my parents.
How I decided to waste 20 years of my life serving my country instead of building an $11 billion empire.
How I once had silly compassion for the millions of undocumented yet law-abiding, hard-working immigrants and their families who have made the USA their home, rather than calling them rapists and criminals and rather than working on make-your-head-spin plans to kick them all out on Day One.
Subsequently, I have come to admire Trump’s yet-to-be-developed plans to — on Day One — build that uge beautiful wall along our border; beat the hell out of ISIS; take back “our” oil from Iraq; nix the Iran nuclear deal; nullify Obamacare; kick out all Middle East refugees and so many, many more uge, beautiful things.
It is such a lifetime of experiences rooted in hardship, personal ruggedness and all-consuming modesty, compassion and respect towards others — especially women — that has molded Trump into a reluctant celebrity who understands the needs of the poor, the aspirations of our working and middle class and, most important, the wants of the one percent and which will guide him in his quest to make America great once again.
CODA: Reading back, my wife will be happy: Not much satire here.
Lead image: www.shutterstock.com
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.