"Not This Time"

A Veteran's Letter and a Family United for Democracy

I recently received this letter from a long-time family friend and democracy activist (Jody Grundy), about her family:

The following statement “Not This Time” was written by my husband Terry’s brother, a life-long Republican and retired U.S. Army Lt. Colonel. We are life-long Democrats and our great differences in political views and affiliations have led to mostly not talking about these matters at all, too great a gap.

But NOT THIS TIME!

Cody reached out across this painful gap to share his remarkable conversion of viewpoint given the extreme threat to our democracy that he recognizes.

THIS TIME he & his wife will vote for Kamala Harris for President!

This election is tearing some families apart. It is bringing ours together in a totally unexpected new way. I have Cody’s permission to share this.

Feel free to do so as well:

Not This Time

by Lt. Col. Cody D. Grundy (U.S. Army, ret.)

All my adult life I’ve identified with the Republican Party––until January 6, 2021 that is. On that day I watched the mob storm the Capitol while President Trump sat in the Oval Office watching it all on TV. Like so many people around the world, I watched in shock, appalled. This was my Capitol, the seat of my government, being violated. Recoiling, I became a “Liz Cheney Republican”. Later, for a time, I backed Nikki Haley, until she bailed out and kissed the Devil's ring. I felt betrayed by the gutlessness of my party's leadership.

I spent my career as a soldier and I believe firmly in the responsibility of command. Trump’s egging on those right-wing fanatics in front of the White House before they began their march on the Capitol showed a total abrogation of command responsibility, perhaps even treason. He was the Commander in Chief! He could have stopped it then and there but, instead, he blessed them, sent them off on their march, and went in to watch it on TV. The whole world saw Americans behaving like Nazi or fascist thugs, clearly at the instigation of their president. It was more than shocking. It was humiliating.

At the start of Trump's administration, some news analysts remarked that the two retired Marine Corps generals in the Cabinet would “keep him under control”. Clearly, they could not, and we saw them replaced with yes-men. It became clear that, if you didn't kiss Trump’s ring and swear total fealty to his views on all issues, and later to his "stolen election" lie, you would be replaced.

Early in his term Trump, in France, made his infamous remark about American soldiers buried in battlefield cemeteries being “suckers” and “losers”. His comment was utterly bizarre, shockingly uncaring of the men who gave everything for our country, and of their families. It was insulting to the American people, and downright cruel.

I had started to despise Trump before the 2016 election, when he boasted during a campaign stop that the way to control women was to “grab ‘em by the p___y” (no doubt what he did while sexually attacking E. Jean Carroll, who sued him and won). He says anything that comes into his sick mind on the spur of the moment, however outrageous or offensive it might be. He loves to insult, loves to belittle. As he campaigned in 2016, I found myself fixated on the thought that, should he win, this would be the president who would represent us to the heads of state of other countries. It was disquieting, to say the least.

A recent outrage was Trump's claim that the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which he’d just awarded to a mega-donor, was “better” than the Congressional Medal of Honor. That remark was deeply offensive to serving military personnel, some of whom said so to the media. Commenting on all this, a man I know said simply, “Trump is an idiot.” I only wish that were the case. I honestly think the man is essentially evil. He basically “stole” the Republican Party, drove people like me out of it, and continues to show contempt for our values. Honor, including our national honor, means nothing to him. Donald Trump is defined by his narcissism, his complete self-focus.

Neither I nor my dear wife have, in two elections, had the stomach to vote for Trump. We could not, as lifelong conservatives, bring ourselves to vote Democratic. We essentially wasted our votes on third-party candidates with no hope of being elected. Not this time, though. This time, we will do whatever we can to keep Donald Trump out of the White House. We're dealing with something frightening, and know it, and we will cast our very first Democratic votes for Kamala Harris.

While I was an undergraduate at Western Kentucky University in the early 1970’s, I was very angry at the strident vehemence of the Anti-War movement. At that time, I already had spent seven years in uniform, part of the time in Asia. I raged about this to my faculty advisor, the late Dr. Jack Thacker of the History Department. He listened patiently as I vented my feelings about left-wing activists. Then, when I had finished, he quietly said, “Cody, if ever this country is taken over from within, it won’t be from the Left––it will be from the Right.”

Dr. Thacker said those words in 1972. I thought he was wrong, that he was exaggerating.

I don’t anymore.