OBSCENITY

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Ask lawyers what the word means, and most will respond with definitions and synonyms having to do with sexual indecency and profanity.

In a First Amendment case involving a film, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart confessed difficulty coming up with a precise definition of "hard-core obscenity" and offered up the oft-quoted, "I know it when I see it."

I get that. I also get that the word covers more territory than just sexual imagery and foul language.

During the Viet Nam war, 22 yr-old ne'er-do-well Donald J. Trump committed a felony by dodging the draft with a phony "heel spur" claim supported by a physician who was a tenant of his father. Truth to tell, others dodged the draft as well during that war, using various means, including emigrating to Canada. Some draft-dodgers went to jail, most did not. Was draft-dodging at that time "obscene"?  A judgment call. If it were done in 1943, I would say yes, but in 1968, I would say it didn't reach the core of immorality because of the nature of that conflict.

For John McCain, the calculus was different. A 1958 graduate of the Naval Academy, McCain was a navy pilot, and about the time Donald Trump was lying to his draft board, John McCain became a casualty of the war Trump feloniously avoided. McCain was shot down on a bombing run over North Vietnam, injured, and spent five years in a brutal prison camp with a broken arm. When offered repatriation on account of his father's position as an Admiral, McCain refused, and said it would be dishonorable to be preferred over other captured servicemen who had been imprisoned longer than he.

In 1999, and again in 2015, Trump inexplicably attacked McCain's honorable service with the disgraceful put-down,

"He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

Now, by any definition, that was obscene.

And recently, when the White House directed the U.S. Navy to hide the ship named after Admiral McCain, or at least cover the name, lest Trump see it on his trip to Tokyo, that was obscene.

And when the disgraceful affair was exposed by the press, Trump said he didn't do it, but was sure the people who did were "well intentioned," that was obscene.

And when Trump was interviewed on his trip to the UK, and explained away his failure to serve in Viet Nam by saying "I was not a fan of that war," that was obscene.

And when he elucidated that Viet Nam was "very far away, but I would have been honored to serve," that was obscene.

And when, 72 hours later, on the 75th anniversary of D-day, Trump had the gall to go to Normandy beach and praise the draftees who died on that beach as

"young men with their entire lives before them, husbands who said goodbye to their young brides and took their duty as their fate"

those words, coming from his lips, that was obscene.

In that speech, Mr. Trump failed to mention whether any of the 600,000 draftee-casualties of WW II were "fans of that war." Neither did he raise that issue with respect to the 211,00 American casualties in Viet Nam. That was obscene.

And the failure of our political leaders to call him out, to call all this what it is, that is obscene.

This is, for me, the very lowest point of the Trump presidency, and the lowest point of my confidence in, and respect for, my countrymen.

A bientot.

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