Picture someone you love who died serving this nation, or even someone you’ve never met.

Imagine them wherever they took their final breath on this planet:

Jumping into churning, frozen foreign seas in a screaming storm of artillery fire.

Shivering in a filthy trench in the terrifying blackness of an insect-blanketed jungle floor.

Leaping from a fire-engulfed plane into a disorienting maelstrom of explosions.

Crouched in the blazing sun within the crosshairs of a sniper perched 500 meters away.

Slowly withering away from malnutrition in anonymity and solitude.

Try to place yourself in the company of one of the hundreds of thousands of eldest sons, sisters, husbands, fathers, wives, best friends, and favorite uncles, who, with a courage and selflessness we will never fathom, placed themselves in the path of bullets, bombs, torture, and brutality in the cause of America.

Now, imagine telling those brave servicemen and women just before they gave their very lives for this nation, that it would one day be placed in the hands of a treasonous felon with abject disregard for the laws of this land; a man lacking a single noble impulse or patriotic thought.

Imagine breaking the news to those beautiful souls facing certain death, that five or twenty or sixty or one hundred years later, America would be helmed by a billionaire insurrectionist who would ridicule their bravery, make a mockery of their sacrifice, and place those who followed them in harm’s way, by allowing a disgraced TV personality to oversee them.

I wonder if they’d have reconsidered their path, if they’d have declared themselves conscientious objectors in his coming war on the Constitution, if they would have abandoned the road that would bring their lives to a premature and violent termination.

Given their unfathomable courage, I don’t imagine they would, but as someone standing here today and living through this historic farce, I sure as hell wouldn’t have blamed them. We have allowed ourselves to have our freedom suffocated by the very fascism our forebears leveraged their very beings trying to defeat.

Watching our current service members being unnecessarily placed in peril in Iran, used as disposable pawns in a reckless and illegal war of distraction by a morally bankrupt parasite, should be enough to make any actually patriotic American sick to their stomachs. As we witness our children being carelessly thrown into half a dozen conflicts around the world designed to pad the portfolios of billionaires and swallow up oil-rich real estate, we should be mourning our shared failure as U.S. citizens.

By allowing our Military to be at the whims of this traitorous felon, we have failed our veterans; squandering their service and wasting their sacrifice. Donald Trump’s seditious presidency, his undeserved occupation of the Oval Office, and his very repugnant presence in the highest seat of power in America are a slap in the face of those we honor on Memorial Day who died so that we could endure.

His kleptocratic Administration, populated by grifters and foreign assets, serves as a massive middle finger to the millions who lost years and careers and futures and limbs trying to protect a Republic that is now teetering on the edge of the abyss.

And whether on Memorial Day or Veterans Day or Independence Day, or any day we wake up with such a small, cowardly, petty disgrace of a man leading this nation, we should be livid at the insult he is to those who truly loved and love America. We should collectively grieve our part in this mockery that is being made of their sacrifice, and openly and loudly stand in opposition to him as a way of properly honoring them.

With our voices and circles of influence and financial resources and votes, we should stand on the front lines of our lives to continue their brave, sacrificial work of protecting this beautiful but beleaguered nation.

It is the very least we can do for them, knowing they did the most they could do for us.