All of Hugh’s podcasts of his radio show and his off-air extended interviews can be found at InterviewWithHugh.com

Ohio votes next week on the GOP nominee to replace retiring Senator Rob Portman in the United States. I’ve had all five major candidates on repeatedly (and for an equal amount of appearances and indeed minutes-on-air-within-a-couple). I completed my coverage of the Ohio Senate primary by talking with State Senator Matt Dolan this morning:

Audio:

04-28hhs-dolan

All of Hugh’s podcasts of his radio show and his off-air extended interviews can be found at InterviewWithHugh.com

All of Hugh’s podcasts of his radio show and his off-air extended interviews can be found at InterviewWithHugh.com

Spent yesterday at places like Pointe du Hoc, Omaha Beach, and the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial.  It was, as one friend described it, a somber day.  While at the Memorial they played the National Anthem and Taps.  Not a dry-eye in the house – my own included.

You spend a day looking at places where people did extraordinary things – truly extraordinary.  Did you know the casualty rate for the first two waves into Omaha Beach was 90% – 90%!  Then you go to a place that quite appropriately memorializes their sacrifice.  You cannot help but be moved on the deepest levels.

The back of the memorial reads:

To these we owe the high resolve that the cause for which they died shall live

And I grew angry.  9-11 was quite analogous to Pearl Harbor.  How quickly it politicized and compartmentalized.  The Russian attacks on Ukraine are deeply reminiscent of Hitler’s invasion of Poland, and yet we cannot find the will and organization to provide material support to Ukraine, let alone start fighting ourselves.  Chamberlain negotiated with Hitler and so we negotiate with Iran.  Clearly we have not maintained that “high resolve.”

All those graves I saw, so much honor due, and we fail to honor their sacrifice.  How dare we!?  Who do we think we are?

I read the headlines this morning and they are silly, just silly.  The world is closer to the explosion of a nuclear weapon in anger than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis and we worry about celebrity divorces and whether the fact that I got a “B” instead of an “A” is a result of some inequity when I simply failed to measure up.  The world is a very serious place and we are fundamentally silly.  We seek excuses for our self-absorption while our freedom slides into an overwhelming fear of a germ.

Some days it seems we have not merely lost the “high resolve,” but also the foundation on which the resolve can form.  Is it any wonder I grew angry?  I want to lash out and scream at a world that seems pure madness in light of such substantive things.

But such anger is misspent – it helps nothing.  All I can do is try and maintain the high resolve myself and; hopefully, pass it on.  The best I can do is honor those that came before and their immeasurable sacrifice.

All of Hugh’s podcasts of his radio show and his off-air extended interviews can be found at InterviewWithHugh.com