You Had One Job, White Boi

What would Harry S. Truman say to Trump this morning?

Forgive me for getting personal here, but I had family members in Truman’s army. A brother on a submarine in the Pacific who put himself in harm’s way when his ship was hit by a Japanese torpedo. A brother-in-law slogging through the mud up Monte Cassino in Italy to defeat the Axis. Another brother finishing his training on an aircraft carrier, itching to go into battle for his country when President Truman made an earth-changing decision to end the war. That’s World War 2, in case you’re thinking I’m talking about the TV ratings war during the pandemic.

I’m imagining a letter Harry would write this morning, sitting near his beloved Bess and daughter Margaret, who’d no doubt be playing the piano for her dear old Dad, all of them in some choice spot in Heaven looking down on his successor.

He’d start out, Dear Captain Bone Spurs, or should I say White Boi (they called him “Give ’em Hell, Harry, beacause Truman wasn’t one for mincing words), I guess you haven’t read the Oath of Office, the Constitution, or directions on how to find your asshole with both hands. (See above ref. to Truman’s colorful language).

I’m calling you white boi because you seem inordinately proud of the lack of melanin in your skin. Like it’s some honor you received for single-handedly crawling 25 miles through three feet of snow each morning to personally rig all the voting booths in Democratic precincts. Which, we all know, you would have hired somebody to do and then stiffed them when they sent you the bill for services rendered.

Instead, it’s simply a function of DNA and the unfortunate coupling of two parents as unqualified to raise a man capable of holding a glass of water as you are to raise two sons that equal one man without help.

Get over yourself. White boi. I haven’t spent all that much time up here in Heaven, speaking in geological time, that is, but because of my street creds on Earth, I got a seat with the mucky-mucks. And I can tell you, I’ve met some pretty impressive leaders of nations who wouldn’t give a spare pyramid for your white skin.

Just the other day, I was chatting with my buddy, Tutankhamun. You’d know him as King Tut. He’s the kind of guy you’d make fun of for being a cripple.

You see, according to Wikipedia, “Tutankhamun was physically disabled with a deformity of his left foot along with bone necrosis that required the use of a cane, several of which were found in his tomb as well as body armor and bows, having been trained in archery. He had other health issues including scoliosis and had contracted several strains of malaria.”

So yeah, he like, really did have bone spurs. Yet, we’re also told, despite these pre-existing conditions, “Tutankhamun restored the Ancient Egyptian religion after its dissolution by his father, enriched and endowed the priestly orders of two important cults and began restoring old monuments damaged during the previous Amarna period. He moved his father’s remains to the Valley of the Kings as well as moving the capitol from Akhetaten to Thebes.”

Plus, we have it on good authority he could run down a ramp unaided and drink from a glass with one hand, even while Black.

Be that as it may, I asked Tut what he thought about the kerfuffle down on earth about knocking down monuments, since he’s a guy who’d know a thing or two about statues.

He laughed at me. “You call those toys monuments? That guy is worried because a couple of his subjects don’t like those minor trinkets? What does he expect? If you want a tribute to your accomplishments, you don’t make a clay figure of a man on a horse.”

I looked at him, scratching my head. After all, we had statues of our heroes, Lincoln and Grant, Thomas Jefferson in his own rotunda. What was he talking about?

“Think Sphinx,” he said. “Let your enemies pull one of those mother’s down.”

Tut had slipped into that imperious tone of his, and I realized he wasn’t really talking to me anymore. He was remembering the good old days. And when he talked about enemies, he wasn’t thinking of a man like Trump. That white boi? Tut would have had his likes in chains, as slaves, lugging big blocks of sandstone across the desert for his monuments.

And Trump’s pretty little white sons and daughters? Well, we know in what corner of the harum he would have had them set up. As the scullery maids and boot polishers along with the other pale, pasty faces he had captured on his travels.

Yeah, mention “White Supremacy” up here in Heaven and they think you’re talking about the clouds.

But that’s not what got my attention this morning. See, as a former US President, I keep an eye on the office. Some of what I see I like, some makes me break my cane over my knee. Bess tells me to take a walk to calm down. It’s not my job any more, and she’s right. She’s always right.

I can’t help it though, when you have a lunkhead like Trump sitting in the Oval Office. Some news cycles, it’s all I can do to keep from raining down a plague of locusts on him. Oh, yeah. I can order that up. Just go over to the office of VengefulGod.com and put it on your tab.

But knowing him, he’d sneak into the bunker until his underlings cleaned up the mess and then he’d take credit for it.

So what’s the bug up my ass today? Commander-in-Chief. These days, with everything automated, it’s the easiest part of the job. You just have to salute the guy at the bottom of the steps when you walk out of Airforce One. Over and out.

I know, sometimes he salutes the guy with his Big Mac order because he gets the uniforms mixed up, but I’m not going to call him out on that. Not going to play the age card, the job is hard enough.

But really, even though you don’t do any commanding any more, you are sort of the chief. And it’s up to you to at least act like one. After all, you’re responsible for our troops. We don’t call the men and women of the armed services our Treasure for nothing. They are in real fact the boots on the ground that keeps the rest of the yahoos in the country safe.

So what the fu*k is that guy letting our known enemy put a bounty on the heads of our National Treasure? OMFG. Let me at him.

Where in the Constitution does it say our troops are up for sale to the highest bidder, bonus if you’re working for our enemy, like Putin?

Typical Trump, he’s blasting all over Twitter it was news to him. Nobody told him. Like he doesn’t get the PDB every day. He doesn’t read it? Can’t read it? Not my problem. Hire somebody to translate it in sign language if he has to. It’s his fu*king job to know what’s in it.

And if his people aren’t competent enough to find that sh*t out, he should fire them. Isn’t that the one thing he’s good at?

Now, don’t tell me I don’t know the pressures of the President in a time of war, that maybe he had too much going on what with the pandemic, the tanking economy, possible damaging Jeffrey Epstein revelations, and Sleepy Joe on his ass in the polls. Like none of that is his fault. Gimme a break. But back to my point.

I dare you to find a US President with more on the line than I had when the Japanese refused to surrender in the summer of 1945. We were losing our troops left and right. The word was, the Emporer’s people regarded him as a god. True that. Look up Shintoism. And they would fight to the last man.

I had two options. Take him at his word and continue with the conventional war. Some said we had it in our back pocket.

I wasn’t so sure. On the other hand, we had this new weapon. The A-bomb. Scared the living shi*t out of me, but I knew it would get the white flag from Japan and bring our men and women home.

The cost? Leveling Japan and unleashing the Devil.

I had a sign on my desk. The buck stops here.

All the decisions ultimately were mine. The lives of those men and women fighting in battle were on my head and conscience. I got every bit of intelligence the US could glean out of the woodwork, mulled it over and over and over, and finally I said, “Hit it.” Or words to that effect. The rest is history. So don’t tell me about presidential pressure or the president didn’t know. It’s his job to know.

It’s why he was elected. His one job. Protect the country.

Instead, he’s putting a bounty on our troops, our Constitution, our country.

The sign, The buck stops here. He probably thought Obama put it there and tossed it in the garbage.

Let me make it clear, you don’t get a free ticket to a peaceful immortality when you’re in a posititon of power and you make life and death decisions, especially when a lot of death is involved. Ask me how I know.

Yeah, I’m up here in Heaven in the box seats with a lot of perks, but that doesn’t mean the people who died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki aren’t up here facing me every day.

I have the rest of eternity to explain to them why the lives of the Americans were more important than the lives of the Japanese. I have a handbook to help me, to explain to them that countries are run by leaders. And when the leaders make decisions to protect their people, and they make those decisions in good conscience, they get a break in Heaven. They are welcomed as the heroes they are to their people, but they still have to explain their actions to those who suffered under their leadership.

So now it’s my job to explain to all the people who didn’t have a beef with America but were just following the Emperor’s party line why I had to kill and maim them, to doom their descendents with birth defects and ruined cities and lost treasure. I’ll have a long time to help them to come to the understanding that what goes around, comes around. That it was just the nature of life on earth.

Because that’s what Heaven is all about, a place to understand the mysteries and confusions that makes human life so difficult. To learn that often there is no reason, there is only what’s in the heart. To do right for the people you took an oath to serve. But that doesn’t make looking into those sad eyes for eons and eons any easier.

Make no mistake, however, people who use a position of power for self-aggrandizement won’t get so much as a bone spur inside the gates of Heaven. At least there’s justice in that. And the scales of justice tip heavily to the detriment of presidents who squander the lives in their care just for personal gain. And that goes double for their lackeys. I’m looking at you, GOP.

From what I’ve seen since Trump’s been in office, he’s going to a place for all eternity that seems made to order for white bois. How do I know? Well, there’s just so many of them down there. Trump will feel right at home.

Signed, Give ’em Hell, Harry

So that’s what I think President Truman would say to Trump after hearing of his treasonous activity in turning away at news that the Russians may have put a bounty on American troops in Afghanistan. It wouldn’t shame Trump, he’s not shameable. But it might make some MAGA voters think twice about putting him back in office if they realize that Trump doesn’t care about their sons and daughters that he’s put in harm’s way. I mean, we have MAGAs in the military and their lives are worth saving, right? Of course, they are. Just ask their parents, they’ll tell you. Their president, not so much.

If Republicans want another GOP pres, fine. Elect one. Lots of candidates in this country. I wouldn’t like your choice, but I know this election isn’t about me. But what will it take to see that anybody else is a better choice than Trump, if their only qualification is that they won’t sell our troops to the highest bidder? Is that a bar too low.

Anybody? I’m waiting. So are the ghosts of twenty American fighters sold to Putin in Afghanistan.

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