King For a Day

by W.D. Ehrhart

Recently a young man who is in a college ROTC program and about to embark on a career in the U.S. Army seems to have read enough of my writing that he saw similarities between me and the point of view suggested by David Hackworth in his 1990 memoir About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior. My young correspondent, whom I’ll call Emmett, wanted to know if I thought problems like “ticket-punching” and “careerism” still existed in the military, and what he might do to change or at least mitigate them. Did I have any advice for him?

“I don’t know what to tell you by way of advice as you begin your stint in the U.S. military,” I replied. “I personally would never consider serving while the Draft-Dodger-in-Chief is your Commander-in-Chief, the vice president was a military public relations flak, and the guy who likes to think of himself as the Secretary of War was a civil affairs officer.* In all honesty, my best advice to you would be to find a way not to end up in the army, but I suppose it is already too late for you to choose that option.

“It is also my studied opinion that you will, for the most part, not be able to address or mitigate the issues you raise. You will be up against a huge and deeply entrenched institution. My best advice to you is to keep your head down and your powder dry, and get the heck out of the army as soon as you possibly can.”

To this, Emmett replied, “Your reflections leave me with one final question: if you were ‘king for a day,’ what changes would you make?”

Talk about irony. We already have a guy in the White House who thinks he is a king, who behaves as if he’s a king, and who gets away with it because Congress and the Supreme Court haven’t got the courage or the decency or the patriotism to put a stop to it. But Emmett’s question got me thinking, and here’s how I answered him:

“If I were king, I would abolish the electoral college; the winner of a presidential election would be the candidate who gets the most votes, period. Already twice in this century, the majority of American voters did not get the president they voted for. This is not democracy.

“I would also change how senatorial representation is calculated; it is absurd that two senators from Wyoming represent fewer than 600,000 people while two senators from California represent 39,500,000 people, yet both states get an equal vote in the Senate. This is not ‘equal representation,’ nor is it democratic.

“I would repeal the 2nd Amendment, or at least insist upon honoring its ‘original intent’: that every American should have the right to own a Brown Bess muzzle-loading smooth-bore musket, but only if they participate in a well-regulated militia.

“And speaking of the Constitution, I would demand that Congress exercise its power—placed only in the hands of Congress—to determine when and with whom the nation goes to war. This country has not fought a constitutionally legal war since Congress declared war on Bulgaria in June 1942 (bet you didn’t know about that one).

“I would impeach, convict, and remove from office any supreme court justice or other federal judge who engages in the kind of corruption and conflict of interest exhibited by Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

“I would severely limit the amount of money allowed to be spent on political campaigns. Corporations are not people, and $$$$$ does not equal free speech.

“I would reduce the annual military budget by at least 65 percent. The U.S. spends more money on its military than the next 10 countries combined, including three times as much as China and seven times as much as Russia.

“I would redirect the money saved on military spending into health care, education, and housing. The wealthiest nation in human history should not have millions of its citizens struggling to afford decent health care, decent housing, and enough food to eat (far too many Americans have no health care at all, no place to live, and regularly suffer from hunger and malnutrition).

“Health care, in fact, would be single-payer, eliminating any need for the private health insurance industry, which does nothing but jack up the cost of health care far beyond the costs in any other developed country in the world. I’ve been on Medicare for more than a decade, and it works just fine. Medicare for all.

“I would require every American to pay the same rate of social security tax, regardless of income level; if you earn $1,000,000 a year, you should pay the same percent of your income as the person who earns $55,000 year. Same for the 1 percenters who earn $50 million and $85 million and $210 million a year.

“I would abolish the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Heavily armed and armored masked thugs who ignore the 4th Amendment with impunity, beat and brutalize whoever they please, and murder innocent citizens without consequence? Go do some research on Hitler’s Gestapo or Reza Pahlavi’s SAVAK.

“Indeed, go do some research on immigrants living in this country. Most immigrants—documented and undocumented—are law-abiding, productive, tax-paying members of their communities. And somebody seems to want them here because somebody keeps giving them jobs.

 “I would re-unionize American labor. Who do you think put an end to child labor, the kind of unsafe working conditions that led to the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, the 12-hour workday, and the six-day workweek? Go learn something about U.S. labor history.

“I’m sure there’s more I could come up with, but that ought to be enough to get you started.”

Alas, I will never be king, even for a day, and I cannot make any of these things happen. And the felonious grifter who does think he’s king certainly isn’t going to make any of this happen. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Meanwhile, since I suspect Emmett is already irrevocably committed to joining the army regardless of what I’ve told him, I can only hope he doesn’t end up getting killed in some undeclared war in Venezuela or Iran or Cuba or Mexico or Greenland. Or on the streets of the next American city our military is deployed to.

* Back when I was in the Marines in Vietnam, the civil affairs officers were the officers that other officers and senior NCOs didn’t trust to lead men in combat, so they got relegated to civil affairs, where they dealt with farmers demanding compensation for the pigs and the chickens we Marines killed on combat operations. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that hasn’t changed much over the years.

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W.D. Ehrhart is a retired Master Teacher of History & English, and author of a Vietnam War memoir trilogy published by McFarland.