{"id":21254,"date":"2017-04-25T18:11:20","date_gmt":"2017-04-25T18:11:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=21254"},"modified":"2017-04-25T18:11:20","modified_gmt":"2017-04-25T18:11:20","slug":"congratulations-to-purple-heart-recipient","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=21254","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Congratulations&#8217; to Purple Heart recipient?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Trump Awards Purple Heart at Military Hospital\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/lS6UWYxj1Pg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This video offers something instructive about the president of the United States.<\/p>\n<p>Critics of this blog will see this as a nitpicking, trivial observation. Perhaps it is &#8212; <em>at some level<\/em>. At another level, it illustrates to me that the president doesn&#8217;t quite grasp the notion of &#8220;service to one&#8217;s country.&#8221; At least not yet.<\/p>\n<p>He pinned a Purple Heart medal on U.S. Army Sergeant First Class Alvaro Barrientos. Donald Trump said that when he heard about the award ceremony, he wanted to &#8220;do it myself.&#8221; I give the president high marks for wanting to honor the young man who lost part of a leg while fighting for his country in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n<p>But then he said something I find weird. He offered SFC Barrientos &#8220;congratulations&#8221; for receiving the medal.<\/p>\n<p><em>Congratulations?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>To be fair, I don&#8217;t know what the president said to the young soldier privately when he whispered to him. Nor do I know what he said to his wife, who stood nearby while the president pinned the medal on SFC Barrientos&#8217;s shirt.<\/p>\n<p>But the <em>public<\/em> offering of &#8220;congratulations&#8221; to someone who lost part of his body on a far-away battlefield is inappropriate.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t need to remind the president that the soldier didn&#8217;t <em>compete<\/em> for the medal. He didn&#8217;t <em>want<\/em> to be maimed. He served heroically. He deserves a nation&#8217;s thanks and gratitude &#8230; not its <em>congratulations.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>My hope is that the president learns the ins and outs of these public ceremonial events. No, they don&#8217;t shape public policy or have tangible impact on the lives of anyone other than those who are taking part directly in them.<\/p>\n<p>The <em>optics<\/em>, though, matter &#8230; a lot!<\/p>\n<p>Sergeant First Class Barrientos? Thank you for your heroic service to our nation.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This video offers something instructive about the president of the United States. Critics of this blog will see this as a nitpicking, trivial observation. Perhaps it is &#8212; at some level. At another level, it illustrates to me that the president doesn&#8217;t quite grasp the notion of &#8220;service to one&#8217;s country.&#8221; At least not yet. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=21254\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">&#8216;Congratulations&#8217; to Purple Heart recipient?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,13],"tags":[1424,3788],"class_list":["post-21254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military-news","category-national-news","tag-donald-trump","tag-purple-heart"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21254"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21255,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21254\/revisions\/21255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}