Helping Donald Trump understand sacrifice

Donald J. Trump thinks that he has made sacrifices.  Apparently during his Wharton School of Business education, they did not teach the proper definition of the term. Merriam Webster defines sacrifice as "the act of giving up something that you want to keep especially in order to get or do something else or to help someone."

Mr. Trump, your hard work was not a sacrifice.  You creating jobs for others which allowed you to further enrich yourself is also nowhere near a sacrifice on your part. So in an effort to help you understand sacrifice, I'm going to provide a couple of examples of true sacrifice.

Lewis Burwell Puller, Jr., was born the year before Donald Trump.  Like Trump, he was the son of an iconic man.  His father, Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller was a Marine Corps legend.  A Lieutenant General who is the only person ever to be awarded the nation's second highest award for valor on six separate occasions.  The son chose to enter ROTC in college and became a Marine Corps officer.  In 1968, while Donald Trump was getting himself excused from compulsory military service due to "heel spurs", Lieutenant Puller was severely injured by a booby-trapped howitzer round while serving as an Infantry Platoon Commander in Vietnam.  He lost his right leg at the hip, his left leg below the knee, his left hand and most of the fingers on his right hand.

He went on to graduate from law school and took a job as an attorney for the Veterans Administration.  He served on the clemency board during the Gerald Ford administration.  He battled depression and alcoholism and two years after the publication of his Pulitzer Prize winning autobiography, Fortunate Son, Lewis B. Puller, Jr., took his own life. 

That's sacrifice.  He should have died from his war injuries but it was his will to live that kept him almost for another 26 years.  Years he continued to serve without concern for making himself wealthy.

* * *

Bob Kerry didn't try to avoid military service.  When he got his draft notice in 1965, he volunteered for officer training.  Then he volunteered to become a Navy SEAL.  Choices that would wind up costing him a leg, and that would earn him the Medal of Honor.  

After that sacrifice he served as Governor of Nebraska for a term, and then two terms as a U. S. Senator from that state.

That's sacrifice.  That's service.  Donald Trump has done nothing in terms of sacrifice and service.

* * *

Baseball Hall of Fame slugger Ted Williams could have spent World War II and the Korean War playing on Navy baseball teams, far away from the front lines.  He volunteered for training to become a Naval Aviator.  He spent WWII training other Navy pilots.

During the Korean War he volunteered to fly and flew 39 combat missions.  Donald Trump claims that his military school education gave him more knowledge about the military than most who served.  That alone validates the comment of CNN's Fareed Zakaria that Trump is nothing more than a bullshit artist.

Donald Trump hasn't sacrificed a damn thing throughout his entire platinum-spoon in the mouth life.