Hawthorne calls itself America’s Patriotic Home, and it’s easy to see why.
From Veterans Memorial Park with its enormous stars-and-stripes waving in the breeze, to its annual Armed Forces Day celebration, and its Ordnance Museum on E Street, those who serve and support our military can count on a warm welcome in the Mineral County town.
You don’t have to drive the length of Nevada to be reminded of its proud history and active role in the nation’s defense. With military bases and ranges from North Las Vegas to Fallon, heading in just about any direction will provide ample proof. The Silver State can be pardonably proud of answering the call of duty.
In swing state Nevada, our more than 200,000 veterans — about 10 percent of the adult population, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs — are an important, if not always sufficiently discussed, constituency. As the 2024 presidential campaign rolls toward its final week, the more than 20 million Americans who took an oath to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution are obviously on the minds of the Democrats after recent revelations published in The Atlantic magazine and The New York Times outing former President Donald Trump as a wannabe Mussolini.
Retired four-star Gen. John Kelly, Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff, told reporters he believed Trump fits the definition of a fascist. Kelly went further, recalling Trump having once said, “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had” and at one point offering, “You know, Hitler did some good things, too.”
During the public unrest following the death of George Floyd, Trump was angry at the protesters and asked his Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, “Why can’t you just go shoot them, shoot them in the legs or something?”
Trump has denied making such comments and, predictably, has called the men he once praised highly lowlifes and liars. And we know by now that millions of his supporters, many of whom think his candidacy is divinely inspired, aren’t likely to care one bit that he’s been echoing fascist rhetoric and showing his admiration for authoritarian dictators for years.
But some people who took an oath to defend the Constitution do care. They are among the 750 military veterans and noncommissioned officers of the National Security Leaders for America who are speaking out about the dangers of a second Trump presidency. The group of Republicans, Democrats and Independents recently endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris’ candidacy, but of late has been going farther into the field with surrogates, who are sending a troubling message.
Although Trump’s allies have written off the long, long list of experienced and credible people as Harris campaign political theater, after listening to two members of the group address reporters I have to wonder whether their well-grounded message might have an impact in the waning days of the campaign — especially on veterans.
If Trump is such a strong leader and tough guy on the international stage, you’d think these would be some of the people in his corner. It’s just the opposite. They’ve stepped up and spoken out — many for the first time in their apolitical careers — to express deep concern about a man who fomented an insurrection and tried to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power.
Retired Brig. Gen. Steven Anderson is a lifelong Republican who brought his barbs to the discussion, reminding listeners in the Zoom call that he spent his 31-year career not knowing the political party affiliation of his fellow soldiers because the oath to the Constitution always came first.
“This is a difficult conversation for me,” Anderson began. “As a lifelong Republican who always supported the Republican Party until Donald Trump came along, it’s painful for me to see what has happened to the party. I’m also a soldier … and we were raised in a military in which we were taught to be agnostic to political. We support the civilian leadership of the military. For 31 years in the Army, I never knew if my boss was a Republican, Democrat or whatever. Didn’t know, didn’t care.”
Anderson takes seriously Trump’s threat to use unchecked power to call out the National Guard and even full-time troops to rout out what he described as the “enemy from within,” including members of Congress who have opposed him. He reminded those listening that Trump’s call for loyalty tests to put him above the Constitution is more than troubling. And besides, “the guy couldn’t qualify to be in the military with 34 felony convictions. How can we have a commander-in-chief be in charge of a military that he couldn’t possibly join?”
As an assistant to Kelly in the Trump White House, retired Army Reserve Col. Kevin Carroll gained his own insights into the character of the chief of staff.
“As service members, we all took an oath to the country, not to anyone’s political party,” Carroll said. “In my view, as one veteran, it’s up to us to put personal politics aside and defend our Constitution from the harms of a second Donald Trump presidency. As someone who worked alongside John Kelly, I know he is speaking out about this now solely because he sees this as a fundamental threat to our democracy and our country.”
You don’t have to have served to be sickened by Trump’s rhetoric. But perhaps, as New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu told CNN recently, Trump’s alarmist behavior and rhetoric really is “kind of baked into the vote at this point.”
Cynics such as Sununu might be right. But if an admiration for the fascist style has become acceptable and electable in a nation whose military has fought its dark scourge for so long, then those cynics will soon be proven right.
John L. Smith is an author and longtime columnist. He was born in Henderson and his family’s Nevada roots go back to 1881. His stories have appeared in New Lines, Time, Readers Digest, Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, Reuters and Desert Companion, among others.
