Despite what my left-leaning friends say, there is a big difference between President Donald J. Trump and Adolf Hitler.
Hitler was a hero.
He volunteered for military service in World War I, served on the front lines, was wounded in the leg, gassed, awarded several decorations and promoted.
Hitler ran messages through a storm of lead. Trump charged into Stormy Daniels, spurning the condom as cover for cowards.
Although not much worked out for Hitler in the end, his military service was very useful to him in his rise to power. He cast himself as the ordinary man, the frontline soldier come home to a Germany stripped of power, a Germany with no pride, a Germany where the money was worthless.
Hitler said he would make Germany great again.
You can see how that would work.
You're a German in 1936, a war veteran with a little shrapnel in one knee. You did your bit. You did your best. And Hitler, well, he's just like you, a veteran who paid the price and came home to a country where the old manly virtues of flag and country are being ignored and a stein of beer costs 100,000 marks because of insane inflation.
Of course, maybe you thought Hitler was pretty strong on the Jewish question, but you didn't like Jews much either. No one in your family had ever liked Jews, not for hundreds of years.
Trump, who has given nothing to America except a series of failed casinos, cozies up to the notion of military manliness every chance he gets, shamelessly doing so despite a displayed dislike for combat.
And unlike those ignorant, bigoted Germans of 1936, Trump's followers don't even demand that he be one of them, that he have any record of service to the nation, military or otherwise. Trump slid out from between the silk sheets of unearned privilege, and proudly announced that he spoke for the little people.
The little people, who like patriotic fireworks displays far more than they like Mexicans or due process, couldn't wait to salute this draft dodger.
Of course, Hitler wasn't a bad deal at first. You didn't "disrespect the flag" in Hitler's Germany, and you "honored our brave soldiers." You didn't talk back to the cops either, because they, too, were heroes. Hitler wanted German youth to be strong and rough because children cannot be allowed to become soft and questioning. The military virtues, Hitler knew, were the only virtues worth having. Everything else was weak and soft and not manly. He'd learned that in the trenches.
Where Trump learned that lesson, I don't know. Studio 54? Maybe. The dance floor was a war zone after midnight, when coked-up models in killer heels could pierce a man's instep until blood flowed, particularly if that man's feet were already weakened by bone spurs.
The draft was over by the time I came of age. My father, a tremendously unsentimental World War II combat veteran, once told me that if I joined the military, he'd never speak to me again.
Still, I had my nights on the dance floor, and if the girls weren't models, they at least wore killer heels. I might have been hurt badly.
And today, I realize that my war record is every bit as good as our president's, and I blush with pride. I am a hero. Unfortunately, I will never be as heroic as Hitler, and neither will Trump, although Trump is certainly trying. Down on the border, the hard-earned courage of the dance floor is on display.
To find out more about Marc Munroe Dion and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Dion's latest book, "The Land of Trumpin," is a manly, military peek into America's flag-draped self-destruction. It is available in paperback from Amazon.com, and for Kindle, iBooks, Nook and GooglePlay.
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