On Tacos, Groceries, And The Medal Of Honor

a typical Midwestern taco salad, arranged in layers in a glass bowl on a picnic table. There are corn chips on top. — image via Pixabay

It’s time to talk about politics once again.

As I write this, the Democratic National Convention is starting up in Chicago, but I won’t have time to talk about that just now. And I’m also going to do a whole other post about the political shenanigans right here in Ohio at a later date. Maybe I’ll even find the time to talk about George Santos pleading guilty, at some point. But just at the moment, I need to talk about the presidential race.

Please refer back to my previous remarks on voting, Catholicism and remote cooperation with evil. It’s not a sin to vote Republican, Democrat, or anything else, depending on your reasons, and the people who tell you otherwise are spiritually abusing you. You’re not killing unborn babies if you disagree with such a person. Don’t listen to them, listen to your conscience. And now, onto the news.

Sometime in the past week, we got to enjoy Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz being normal again. They posted a video of the two of them bantering about cooking, with Walz making the self-deprecating joke that he doesn’t really season his taco filling because he comes from Minnesota. This led to laughter all over social media, and people posting photos of the kind of “walking taco” my daughter gets in the middle school lunch: seasoned beef, sour cream, cheese and sparse vegetables, sprinkled on top of the crushed contents of a bag of Doritos and eaten with a fork. My friends from Texas say they use Fritos instead of Doritos and call that delicacy a Frito Pie. If you serve the same concoction upside down in a big salad bowl, it’s a taco salad. If you leave the lettuce and tomato off, it’s nachos. So many people remarked that tacos are always delicious, even when they’re bad or non-traditional tacos. Real Mexican tacos are best, but Taco Bell tacos or tacos you throw together out of a taco kit are fine too. Taco salads and tacos in a bag and tacos you buy from a food truck are all great. You can’t go wrong with a taco.

Republican talking heads responded to this discourse by pitching a fit. Some acted mortally offended, as if Walz had committed “reverse racism” by joking that white people from the Midwest don’t like seasonings. Some attempted to paint him as a liar by screenshotting a recipe he’d used once which involved paprika and garlic powder. And then Democrats got another laugh, at Republicans who think a smidge of Paprika and garlic count as using herbs and spices. I had a good time with this discourse.

Not to be outdone, Donald Trump called a press conference at his summer home in Bedminster, also involving food.

He gave a 60-minute speech to bemused reporters who thought they were supposed to ask questions, while standing next to folding tables piled high with groceries. I don’t know who chose which groceries to buy for this press conference. It clearly wasn’t Trump and it wasn’t a middle class family either. It seemed to me like these were the items a well-to-do person who orders their groceries from Whole Foods would imagine a middle class mom might buy at the local Walmart. There were Oreo cookies and gallons of milk. There were at least six tubs of mediocre name brand coffee which would be cheaper and tastier to buy by the pound at Aldi. There were apples and oranges and the bakery croissants we used to buy only when company was coming. There were quite a few boxes of different kinds of pricey name brand cereal, and none of the generic cheap bags that taste just the same but are a pain to keep fresh. There was no normal inexpensive meat such as chicken legs or hamburger, but there were two pounds of bacon and a huge number of different kinds of name brand sausage, left right out to thaw and go to waste on such a hot day. The sausage was placed next to the podium with the coffee, prominent on camera during the speech.

I think Trump was supposed to gesture to the groceries and use them as a visual aid while talking about how inflation and price gouging were making life challenging for consumers, but he never got that far. He didn’t stick to the speech written on the pile of papers in front of him. He just complained about how much he hates Harris.

“She called us WEIRD! We’re not weird,” he said, as he campaigned in front of a table piled high with rotting sausage on a stifling August afternoon.

Later in the week, he insulted Congressional Medal of Honor recipients— certainly a unique move to make 80 days before an election.

Specifically, he said of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor: “That’s the highest award you can get as a civilian. It’s the equivalent of the congressional Medal of Honor, but civilian version. It’s actually much better, because everyone who gets the congressional Medal of Honor, that’s soldiers, they’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets, or they’re dead. She gets it, and she’s a healthy, beautiful woman. And they’re rated equal.”

Today, he doubled down on those remarks and said much the same thing.

I don’t know of anyone, liberal or conservative, who wasn’t scandalized by that remark and his doubling down. I’m a filthy dirty hippie when it comes to the military. I had to Google to find out exactly what both those awards meant. But when I found out, my hair stood on end.

I don’t know exactly how one plans to win the Republican base while insulting the most heroic veterans, but Donald Trump can’t seem to help himself. He is absolutely disgusted by wounded veterans and soldiers killed in the line of duty. He couldn’t stand John McCain because McCain was a prisoner of war. He refused to visit the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery for fear that his hair would messed up and because he didn’t see the point. He called dead soldiers “suckers” and “losers.” He refused to be seen with military amputees. We all know he despises disabled people in general and says they “should just die,” but people who became disabled or were killed in combat sicken him even more.

Donald Trump honestly can’t imagine doing something that isn’t for his own personal gain. It fills him with revulsion because he can’t imagine why anybody would.

Personally, I’m deeply cynical about a lot of things America has done overseas. But you can’t not admire a person who risks or sacrifices their own life to protect their fellow men– a person who throws himself on a grenade to save others, or evacuating wounded soldiers under fire, or the other truly heroic things that Medal of Honor recipients have done. It’s honorable and admirable to lay down your life for something greater than you are. A person who can’t see anything good in that is a dangerous, evil man.

I’m not voting for a dangerous, evil man.

I’m going to follow my conscience and vote for the lady who’s a good cook, and the white guy who doesn’t season his tacos.

You follow your conscience as well.

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows and Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.