Dad would be enraged!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

You know already that my father wasn’t a particularly political individual.

Pete Kanelis and I did not talk much about politics, or even much about current events. Dad didn’t have an attention span that would allow him to digest the complexities and nuance of public policy.

He did, though, believe deeply in this country. He loved the U.S. of A. He was a patriot’s patriot. Dad signed up to fight in World War II on the very day that the Japanese attacked our fleet in Hawaii.

Dad spent the bulk of his combat duty fighting the Germans and the Italians in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations … which brings me to what Dad would have thought had he seen the terrorists who attacked the Capitol Building on the Sixth of January.

My father would have flown into a frothing rage at the sight of the t-shirt that bellowed “Camp Auschwitz.”

Dad knew who the enemy was when he suited up for the Navy. He endured constant bombardment from Nazi fighters and bombers while serving in the Med. He also knew that Adolf Hitler was a tyrant and a demon who needed to be crushed. Dad did his level best while he was thrust in harm’s way to crush that monster.

Auschwitz, the infamous Nazi death camp, didn’t become known to Americans until nearly the end of World War II. Dad certainly knew then the nature of the beast he enlisted to fight.

I cannot help but think of the anger that would boil up inside him had he been around to witness the insurrection we all saw unfold … and the nature of the morons who ransacked the seat of our democracy while wearing an emblem that salutes Auschwitz.