Dying for America

Tyler Simmons' life is over. There is a purpose to it. Regrettably, it's not what it should be.

Tyler Simmons: American hero.

If you have a moment, watch this heartbreaking news segment on Sgt. Tyler Simmons, the Air Force technician who was one of six Americans to die when a refueling aircraft crashed in Iraq earlier this week.

And, if you listen to lying, deceitful ghouls like Donald Trump and J.D. Vance and Pete Hegseth, Sgt. Simmons, a 28-year-old Ohioan, died defending his country. Died for our freedoms. Died standing up for everything this land stands for.

In a circuitous sense, I agree.

Now, the war in Iran is the grotesque fever dream/fantasy of a lunatic five-deferment conman who mocked POWs for being captured, dismissed those who died in war as “loser and suckers” and refused to attend a service honoring the American dead because it was raining. It is entirely about ego and oil and big-dick energy, and we have yet to hear a reasoned explanation for its occurrence.

So, on the one hand, Simmons died for nothing.

For idiocy.

For Trump.

And yet …

I believe, strongly, we need everything to go to shit and bottom out. We need Trump’s economy to plummet. We need gas prices to skyrocket. We need humiliating congressional testimonies, as we’ve seen from Kristi Noem and Pam Bondi. We need the type of garbage that happened yesterday with Jeanine Pirro. We need these awful, incompetent, sinister dillweeds to be exposed and revealed and branded for the cartoons they are. We need our fellow Americans—even those still hypnotized by MAGA—to wake the fuck up and realize their food is no longer affordable, their children remain unemployed and their service members are being killed in a war Trump assured us would never happen under his watch.

Obviously, I do not want people to die. I wish—deeply—Tyler Simmons were still alive, and that one day his mother would know the joy of grandchildren. I don’t care about a person’s political affiliations—you should not be taking your final breath fighting an inexcusable war in the name of Donald Trump.

But, ultimately, I feel like Tyler Simmons and his (thus far) 12 fellow deceased American soldiers have died for the United States of American. For their lost lives remind our nation’s 330 million citizens that what we presently are, and who we are led by, is not—in any meaningful way—what this country stands for.

They are reminders of the lost path we now travel.

They are also inspirations for a recovery.