My profound gratitude to America's military leadership.
I cannot describe how heartsick I was at the initial claims that America's long Independence Day tradition of community-based celebration was going to be desecrated by a bombastic show of military hardware, apparently only to bolster the Commander-in-Chief's microscopic and delicate ego.
The Constitution you and all those who serve gave oath to defend is a document of law and equity, a blueprint for building opportunity and promoting a more perfect Union of the diverse people who believe in our promises. Yes, our military is the world's most impressive armed force.
The awesome power invested in our military has its own gravitational pull and its own corrupting temptations, and our history is not without sorrowful evidence of leaders who have succumbed. But it is also bright with evidence of the highest ideals and standards upheld against those pressures.
As you have provided us this Independence Day.
It cannot have been either easy or simple to determine exactly how to uphold the traditions of discipline and the inherent respect required for a Commander-in-Chief, even one as manifestly unfit as the current holder of that rank, while maintaining fidelity to your service oath and Constitution of our civil state. I can't imagine all the possible avenues of negative consequence and possible backlash you face in walking that delicate line. Careers, ethics, the duties owed to advance the well-being of your troops, the eyes of the world, diplomatic and military operations and objectives at stake, intraservice pressures, and (I'm sure) dozens more a civilian can't even imagine.
So now we're down to a couple of Abrams tanks sitting on flatbeds.
There they are. Military might.
Sitting on flatbeds, dusty and worn. A symbol of what we can and have deployed in the service of the Constitution and the advancement of freedom and democracy, safely at rest on their transports. Not rolling threateningly down civilian streets, just quietly sidelined, as military force always should be in times of peace and celebration.
Present, per orders.
But present as a veteran who wears a uniform to a parade and stands on the sidelines, enjoying the day with their fellow-citizens, proud of their role in maintaining or restoring the peace that allows the celebration.
Bless you.
I hadn't realized how deep my trust in our military as an institution went, until I felt the jolt of horror at the thought it would be betrayed.
And you have not betrayed it.
Thank you.
respectfully,
Bright
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