American Patriotism and Politics – My Journey, By Kirk Howard

In 1952 there was an election. Dwight David Eisenhour was chosen President by the American people in a landslide victory. It wasn’t even close. Adlai Stevenson could only muster 89 electoral votes compared to 442 for the General and his running mate, Richard M. Nixon.

My mother was a Democrat. Dad was a Republican. I’m not sure why that was but it played out in our family on January 20th, inauguration day. Lucky for me I was born at 15 minutes after midnight, so January 21st is my birthday. I think Mom held out for that fateful 15 minutes so that I would avoid being named Dwight David Howard. While the country ‘Liked Ike’ I would have hated it.

Mother preferred Kirk Douglas, the actor, and thus she was able to convince Dad to name his first-born son Kirk. The middle name, David, was a combined honor for the president and Dad’s youngest brother, David Howard, who was a pilot in the US Air Force.

Dad had another brother named Frank, who was a fighter pilot and achieved the rank of Colonel in the Air Force. During the Viet Nam war Frank was shot down during a mission over North Viet Nam and made it to the gulf where he was rescued. He was awarded a Silver Star for his accomplishment and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. The family seemed proud of both of my uncles for their service to the country but I only remember meeting them as a child one time.

My father was born in 1926 could have been a soldier in WWII had he not chosen to join the Merchant Marines instead. He would have been 18 years old in 1944 and available for service. I’ve never questioned why he chose that route, but it is what it was. There were stories of his equatorial exploits on the ships, and in the bars while the fighting in Europe and Asia raged on.

His home port was in New Orleans. He spent the last years of the war in the Caribbean, Central and South America. It was considered ‘military duty’ but I remember him complaining that when in port some drinking establishments skimped on the Coca Cola in their rum and Coke. Tough duty. I know I have his genes.

As I grew up in the Midwest there wasn’t much discussion of patriotism other than the 4th of July parade that dad participated in one summer. He grew a little goatee and wore a “deluxe western bow tie” with a vest, popular in the 1800s.

In Catholic school we said the Pledge of Allegiance every day and studied American History. I remember that in 1962 after the Cuban Missile crisis we did a school play and I was chosen to play the part of John F. Kennedy. I only had one line:

“Send out an immediate message to Moscow that any Russian vessel seen leaving or entering Cuban waters will be immediately attacked and destroyed by US Naval forces.”

The assassination of President Kennedy seemed to bring the country together for a while. The television coverage brought the tragedy into all of our living rooms. I mostly remember the caisson march down Pennsylvania Avenue with the riderless horse and boots turned backwards. There was also the image of John-John holding Jackie Kennedy’s hand while saluting as his father’s coffin past in front of him.

As American involvement in Viet Nam increased under President Johnson, we saw the horrible war footage and heard about body count, which was General Westmoreland’s measure of how the war was progressing. We heard more about the dead Viet Cong than we did about the loss of our own soldiers.

There were also the protests on the evening news that I remember around 1968, when I was 16. Dad called them ‘damn hippies.’ I was ambivalent about the whole thing. Dad and his friends were mostly supportive of the war and the incoming Nixon administration.

The assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. followed by that of Robert F. Kennedy caused a furor in America and I remember becoming more sympathetic to liberal causes. But there were few black people in our neighborhood at the time, so race and politics didn’t affect me one way or another.

Just about all Americans, particularly the “Boomers’, were influenced by a guy named Duke Morrison. ‘The Duke’, was born in Winterset, IA in 1907. He rose to fame in Hollywood and his studio executives renamed him and marketed him as John Wayne. Because he always played the western hero, he was looked upon that way in his personal life as well.

Interestingly, while he played the tough guy in several WWII movies he never served in the military like many of his famous compatriots, including Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable, Audie Murphey, Henry Fonda and David Niven.

He was 34 years old when the US entered the war but got a deferment as a ‘family provider’ since he has a wife and four children. He was much criticized for this and, as the war progressed, he was encouraged by studio executives not to join the service because of his value in making movies.

He expressed some personal regret about this and eventually appeared with female Hollywood celebrities in a touring USO show in the south Pacific.

In retrospect he was not an American hero. His career progressed exponentially during that time because so many other leading actors were fighting for America and he stayed home in the comfort of Hollywood.

In his later years he was great friends with Ronald Reagan and other conservative figures and became a spokesman for the National Rifle Association with Charlton Heston.

While I came in on the tail end of John Wayne’s career, I remember his mostly for three of his roles; True Grit, Hitari and his propaganda move about the Vietnam war, The Green Berets. It was this last one, made in 1968, that encouraged lots of guys to join up and go fight the ‘good fight’ against those yellow commies.

In the late 70’s and 80’s there were four other movies that I saw that presented the Vietnam war as it really was in my view; morally ambiguous, psychologically damaging, or tragic. These movies had an effect on my patriotism because I realized that no matter how noble we thought we were to try and stop the spread of communism it was wrong to go to war and a far away place where we killed so many people. And we skittered away with our tails between our legs.

In 1969 I went to the drive-in to see a new movie called Easy Rider. It was a classic and controversial film of the day with Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson. The youth of the day loved it for the most part and the older adults hated it. It was a battle between two kinds of patriots; the young rebellious ones and the older redneck types who hated hippies. The hippies lost that battle.

Peter Fonda wore a motorcycle helmet emblazoned with an American Flag. Initially, I couldn’t afford one, so I painted a half shell helmet with stars and stripes instead. A year later I shelled out $60 and I bought one just like the one in the 1970 movie. It’s ironic, in my view, because in the movie it was a symbol of rebellion as well as a symbol of patriotism. You can be antigovernment without being anti-American.

At some point I had a conversation with one of my dad’s buddies, a guy named Vern. I must have been 17 at the time and we talked about the draft. I said I didn’t know what to think about the war and the only way to really have an opinion was to experience it personally.

My dad through me out of the house in January of 1971 for doing something stupid. There was no discussion. I just had to leave. I packed up all my stuff into my 1957 station wagon, which became my home for the next few weeks.

I had a buddy from school named Paul Groth who lived about a mile from dad’s house. His father was a retired Army Helicopter pilot. Colonel Groth was a good guy but very regimented and strict. The Colonel and his wife agreed to let me live with them as long as I followed their rules. I was in my senior year at high school and working at a restaurant with Paul so it worked out well.

Paul had two brothers. His oldest one had been in Viet Nam. He was a door gunner on a Huey helicopter and got shot up pretty badly during a mission. He spent a long time recovering and was separated from the service even though he had planned to make it a career.

My association with the Groth family gave me a positive opinion of the service despite their oldest son’s severe injuries from the war. My Selective Service draft number was 75 when I turned 18. That number was low and I anticipated that I might get the call. That meant that I would likely not have much choice in determining what my ‘occupational skill’ would be. The worst-case would be the Infantry. Those were the grunts who beat the bushes flushing out the Viet Cong.

I was working as a broiler cook in a restaurant after graduation and knew that flipping steaks was not going to be my career. I visited the Army recruiter, and he talked a good game and convinced me to join up, promising Military Police Training and Airborne Jump School.

I gave notice to my employer and I told the Groths. The Colonel said I could stay with them until the day of induction. The more I thought about it, the more I had second and third thoughts. Ultimately, I decided that I needed to go to college instead and I backed out of the enlistment.

Dad said he couldn’t afford to send me to college, so I was on my own. Colonel Groth wasn’t happy about my decision to un-enlist and told me that I should find alternate living arrangements. It was an amicable split, and I moved into an apartment with a guy I knew from high school. But now I needed to find a new job since I had been replaced at the steak house. The only thing I could find was that of a carhop at a Steak N’ Shake. Pay was shit but the tips were good.

I made barely enough money to cover rent and tuition at Florissant Valley Community College, but I was out on my own.

Winter was setting in and it was cold, running burgers and fries to the parking lot five nights a week. I had no idea what I wanted to focus on, so I chose ‘Fine Arts’ as my field of study.

By Thanksgiving I was done. All I could see was a dead end ahead and the draft was still an unknown possibility. I made another visit to the Army recruiter and joined with a three-year commitment. I would get what I had originally signed up for; Military Police Training and Airborne Jump School and I would leave for Basic Training on January 2nd. In mid- December I gave notice to my boss at the restaurant. He tried to talk me out of it and offered me a position as a Manager Trainee. I gave it a quick thought but decided that I needed to take a different path, one that would take me away from Florissant, Missouri and all of this nothingness. I would be a soldier in the US Army. I would be a good soldier. It was the patriotic thing to do. Maybe I could even become an officer someday.

At some point around the time I was leaving I found out that the draft numbers for that year were capped at 73. At number 75 I wouldn’t have been drafted but now they had me for the next three years. Oh, well. Let’s make the best of it. Maybe they would see my leadership potential and make me an officer. After all, I had been an assistant restaurant manager. How naïve of me…

The night before I left for boot camp, we were having a ‘Going Away’ party and I shaved my head down to the nubs with an electric razor. I knew that the army barbers would do it but I thought it would be a kick to have it done for the party.

My buddy, Mike, drove me to the induction station in downtown St. Louis. I entered the building with about a hundred other men and was reminded of the movie, Alice’s restaurant, where the inductees were separated into sections and the draftees were moved to the ‘Group W’ benches. There were no such benches here.

First on the agenda was taking the oath to uphold the constitution of the United States of America. I proudly said ‘Yes’ to that with my head and my hand held high.

Then we boarded the buses and were shipped off to Ft. Leonard Wood Missouri where we would become fearless fighters for Uncle Sam.

After arriving and talking to other inductees I found that there was a distinction between the source of these troops. I was categorized as RA which included guys like me who volunteered and draftees, who generally looked sad. Then there were the NG’s. These were guys who joined the National Guard. There were also the ER’s…the Enlisted Reserves. Soon I realized that my recruiter never gave me an option of NG or ER and that I was just another grunt that had a three-year commitment. Now it was just a melting pot of Americana.

I was ‘Gung Ho’ for all of Basic Training. I scored well on all the tests including how to brush my teeth and how to fold my socks and underwear. I actually got recognized for how tight my footlocker was organized compared to my fellow warriors.

It was ten degrees on the firing range laying in the snow, but I could consistently hit a pop-up target at 300 yards with my M16 rifle, and I was classified as an Expert. I was proud.

I could also run faster than most of the others and came in top 10 in PT all of the time.

None of this was my ticket to leadership however and even though I had expressed my desire to lead I wasn’t chosen as squad leader. Maybe I was too skinny. They chose a bulkier recruit. How naïve of me…

We all graduated and I was shipped out to Ft. Gordon Georgia to learn how to crunch crime at MP school. I was happy to get out of the snow and could smell spring when I saw my first red clay in the Georgia sunshine after the all-night bus ride.

I learned all about the UCMJ…the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Actually, I learned just enough to go out on the road in a Jeep and harass soldiers about their uniform violations. This was where I realized that most MPs couldn’t even spell MP.

So, let me jump in here and say something about patriotism. America is a melting pot. I was sheltered for most of my early years. Now I was beginning to experience a diverse group of American thrown together for a common cause. Whether the cause was right and just didn’t matter. I was a cog in the spinning wheel. I valued being an American and was fine serving alongside these other Americans. And John Wayne was still a hero in my mind.

As time progressed, I served my country, in Georgia at Ft. Benning. Initially I was one of the soldiers who sat in a Jeep outside of the apartment of Lt. William Calley. For those who don’t remember him he was the scapegoat that was charged and convicted in the My Lai massacre where a company of soldiers killed more than 350 presumable innocent people, including women and children on the orders from their superiors. Calley was the only one convicted and his superiors skated.

After proving that I could type 30 words a minute (thanks to Mavis Beacon typing class) I became a clerk typist for the Military Police Investigation Section. That was somewhat uneventful though I learned that I had distain for the police mentality. I had First Seargent tell me “Howard, you have an apathetic attitude.” I smiled at his and responded, “You’re right Sir. I just don’t care.”

A girl I met who worked in the Overseas Levy Board pulled a few strings and got me transferred to Schofield Barracks on the island of Oahu. I hated being a cop. All we did was harass other soldiers since there was literally no crime on post. I was not a good soldier. My attitude deteriorated and I was taken off the road and made Permanent Charge of Quarters where I worked an overnight shift of 16 hours, and I was off work for the next two days. I spend my free time off post with some local people that I med through my second part-time job as a display artist for Liberty House, a department store in Honolulu. I couldn’t wait for my three-year commitment to end so I could go back to the real world, such as it was.

The only political thing I did during my time is service was to vote for George McGovern when he ran against Richard Nixon for president in 1971. I had already decided that the was wrong and the country was moving in the wrong direction and this was the only thing that could be done by a PFC in the US Army.

Being in the service didn’t do anything to improve my patriotism. I left service with a tainted view and returned to Florissant, Missouri, where just about everyone seemed ambivalent about America. The “Fall of Saigon” in April of 1975 was the icing on the cake with regard to America’s involvement. That was just a little more than a year after I returned.

When Nixon was impeached, I remember being elated that the American system of government was finally working. I enjoyed watching the Watergate hearings and seeing John Dean getting roasted about all of the corruption that had occurred in the White House. We learned about ‘the Plumbers’, the involvement of Haldeman and Erlichman. Nixon’s resignation was widely lauded, but I felt the country was stumbling in the eyes of the world.

For a long time after the Army, I watched the news but had no conscious thoughts of politics or patriotism. I was ambivalent and just shook my head a lot. I didn’t vote in any election for several years. I put my head down, found work, and plodded forward. I didn’t know anyone who was political or had strong feelings, one way or the other, about what was happening in America.

Gerald Ford stabilized things and Jimmy Carter brought sensibility and empathy to government. But Jimmy was weak and the Republicans pounced after the fall of the Shah of Iran and the taking of the hostages from the American Embassy in Tehran. This was one of the causes of an oil crisis that reduced the flow of oil globally and caused long lines at the pump and higher prices. I didn’t take time off to vote for either candidate.

Ronald Reagan was running for President, at the time, against Jimmy Carter. Carter’s weakness, the oil crisis and his “malaise speech’ allowed Reagan to win the election. Unbeknown to the rest of the world Reagan’s team negotiated for the hostages to be released on the day of his inauguration in 1981. These are the types of things we learn in retrospect that muddy the waters regarding the people that we might revere initially.

I admit that I was a Ronald Reagan Republican after he was elected, much to the dismay of my wife at the time who was pretty far left. I saw him speak at the New Orleans Hilton when I worked there and remember that he was floating the idea of a ‘flat tax’ where everyone payed 25%. At the time I thought that was a good idea, not realizing its inequity. People who work but don’t make much money can’t afford to pay a quarter of their salary to the government while people who make a lot of money can afford to pony up more.

I had just joined the management team at the hotel and was probably making $18,000 a year at that time. I don’t remember what percentage of tax I was paying but it was likely about 25% so it didn’t matter much to me.

Reagan’s ‘Trickle Down’ theory of economics sounded really good. The rich pay less taxes, take the money they save and invest it in their businesses to create jobs for the masses, and everybody wins. By the end of his second term, it seemed pretty clear that the rich just got richer and the middle class and the poor stayed right where they were. I like to say it was and still is the ‘Trample Down’ theory of economics.

I was too busy at my job, however, working 60- and 70-hour weeks so I didn’t take the time to vote for any candidate.

The marriage didn’t work any better than Reagan’s theory and we all moved on. Bush Sr. won the next election promising no new taxes, then he raised taxes. He lost the next election to a good ole boy from Arkansas who dilly dallied outside the bonds of holy matrimony, but he turned out the be a pretty good President. Had he kept his zipper up he would probably go down in history as one of our best. Here is where my conversion happened and I became a Democrat. I didn’t vote for Clinton the first term but did get out to vote for him the second term.

Another Bush came along, this one with a W in his name. I voted for Al Gore because of his stance on the environment and the economy and I thought Bush was a liar. But in retrospect, they are all liars. After 9/11 we all saw Americans rallying around the flag and Bush was going to save America from itself. But then we found out that the decision to invade Iraq, which was based on erroneous information about WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) was all lies. He and VP Dick Chaney dabbled in a little “nation building” believing that they could change the country and it’s people to become more like the US. They just turned out to be war mongers, getting us involved in an Iraqi quagmire, one of the longest wars in American history. I didn’t vote for him either time he ran, and I thought he was a moron. The Florida Supreme Court stole that election from Al Gore but he took the defeat like a statesman and conceded.

Bush ran for a second term against John Kerry for his second term. My new wife was a Republican because her father was a Republican. We had two signs in our front yard; one for Bush and one for Kerry. My Republican neighbor thought that my sign was the one for Bush and was surprised that it was the other way around. Kerry lost.

Barack Obama came out of nowhere and ran for President against John McCain. I didn’t know anything about Obama and liked I McCain, who was in my mind a great American hero. But when he chose that bimbo, Sarah Palin, to be his running mate it showed poor judgement, so Obama got my vote.

Obama took over during the ‘Great Recession’ and America had slow and steady growth for the next eight years. He really cared about the common man and was a great leader. Turns out Obama was a great President, but many hated him, in my view, only because he is a Democrat. And he is black. Racism is alive and well in America.

America recovered over the next eight years. Look at the statistics. We had a slow and steady rise in just about every measurable economic indicator and unemployment declined. The trade deficit was reduced. Wages for the middle class rose. We finally had a healthcare plan, though it was woefully inadequate compared to what we needed.

But the recovery wasn’t fast enough for the billionaires. Trump rose up with his promise to ‘Make America Great Again’, the same mantra that Ronald Reagan had used. But Trump was no Reagan and the new Republicans were not Reagan Republicans. He might have been the first RHINO because he was always a Democrat before Obama ridiculed him at the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2011. After that some believe that was the impetus for Trump to decide to run for President as a Republican.

I never liked Trump. He had a horrible reputation as a New York City wheeler and dealer, and I could tell he was a scumbag. His foray into gambling in with casinos in Atlantic City New Jersey and his eventual bankruptcy were signs of his poor judgement. His stiffing of contractors and workers during construction and after the hotels failed was a sign of his unscrupulous nature.

When he and his immigrant prostitute of a third wife floated down the escalator of Trump Tower and announced his run for President I scoffed. “It’ll never happen,” I said. “Americans can’t be that stupid to elect Trump as President.” But they were. It didn’t help that the candidate running against him was Hilary Clinton. She was hated by the right even more than Trump was hated by the left. It’s ironic that Bill and Hilary attended the Trump wedding and they were close friends for many years.

When Biden ran against Trump in 2020, I felt he was too old, but the party put him forward as the best candidate to beat Trump. And he did win because there was so much backlash about Trump’s horrible first term in office. Biden got seven million more votes than Trump, but the MAGA faithful still thought the election was stolen. And to this day there are still millions of people that think that because of Trump’s mantra “If you tell the same lie over and over eventually people will believe it.”

Uncle Joe lost the last election to Trump because he was too old and weak and the Democratic Party was too inept to stand up and say so. The field of potential candidates other than Biden was too weak as well and the heir apparent became a half black, half Indian woman from California.

Kamala Harris was still a better choice than Trump in my mind, but the Democrats shot themselves in the foot by waiting too long to see that Biden’s age was an issue and his mental capacity was diminished. Her 90-day candidacy was not enough time to mount a serious challenge to a resurgent Trump.

The tipping point in the campaign, in my view was the attempted assassination of Trump. The MAGA faithful rallied around their candidate and people who might have been on the fence sided with Trump.

The Project 2025 action plan, written by a group of far-right wing zealots from the Heritage Foundation. It is the conservative blueprint to restructure the US federal government and implement right-wing policies. It was adopted by the Trump administration, and they have eliminated and decimated the numerous government agencies in the last year and a half.

Because of this he has proven to be even worse than we could ever have imagined.

I’ve been railing against Trump for ten years. I am not a religious man. I don’t believe, like many Christians do, that any human was chosen by any God to save humanity from itself. But I believe that if there is ever going to be an ‘Armageddon’, or an end to the world, it could be brought on by a human. Donald Trump is the proverbial Anti-Christ, in my opinion. If he’s not stopped and banished, he will destroy America and in doing so allow other nations to rise become dominant.

Jeff Daniels, the actor, did a monologue in a scene from ‘The Newsroom’ where he railed about why America is (or is not) the greatest country in the world. While it was broadcast on TV sometime during the Obama administration it is even more relevant today. I recommend that everyone go to YouTube and watch the snippet from the show. It encapsulates exactly how I feel about America.

I’m happy to be American and I love our country, but we have a long way to go to recapture the true spirit of America where ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL.