Editor,

Memorial Day has always been a melancholy time for me. The news channels always show the tiny American flags on the graves at Arlington National Cemetery and show the president’s speech, always given at the tomb of the unknown soldier, usually in praise of the proud, brave soldiers buried in the cemetery.

These emotions are especially close to my heart because my father, who died in the service of our country as a Navy pilot, has been buried within sight and earshot of the tomb of the unknowns since 1955.

You can imagine how I felt this Memorial Day when I turned on the television and saw a man who faked bone spurs to evade the draft talking about how my father, and all of the other brave patriots resting at Arlington, would be HAPPY that he is doing such a great job of running our country.

The idea that that lying, draft-dodging creep would have the slightest idea what those thousands of patriots would think about anything would be laughable if it were not so self-serving.

President Trump is debasing our country with every word he utters and every tweet he spews. Calling opponents by insulting names, abusing women and bragging about it, denigrating everyone of a different race or ethnicity than himself, is something that belittles us all.

I was taught as a young boy that lying is always wrong, the president apparently never learned that, because he lies about anything and everything, day in and day out. I was taught, by another American hero who was my stepfather, that the mark of a true gentleman is the way you treat those who can not help you in any way. Apparently, our president was taught to ignore, insult and degrade anyone if he thinks that it can get him a vote.

We have a saying down south where I was raised, “He would lie if the truth would serve him better.” This saying has never applied to anyone more precisely than to our current president.

I hope that our country can survive this despicable human being and use his reign as a reminder that we, as a country, do in fact have basic principles. I hope that our people can pull together and offer us real choices in the next presidential election, give us the chance to elect an honorable, patriotic person as our president.

That, in fact, is something that would make those heroes at Arlington proud of us, and dare I say “happy”?

Kirk Lacewell,

Langley