It’s June 10, 2016. I haven’t done a Friday Yes or No in months, due largely to the fact that I had to teach a class on Fridays up until a month ago.

But that’s over, and so is the hiatus for Yes or No. Here goes:

Q1: Are these the best days of the year, being both long and warm?

A1: Yes

Q2: Has the Stanford Rapist case been blown out of proportion?

A2: No

Q3: Is that because it’s about time that people understood the consequences of violence against women, and that’s what the letter written by the victim in the case helps to show?

A3: Yes

Q4: And because the cluelessness of the rapist, his family and the judge in the case is staggering?

A4: Yes

Q5: Are Americans paying enough attention to the Brexit vote scheduled later this month in the U.K.?

A5: No

Q6: Is Brexit, Britain’s exit from the European Union, a good idea?

A6: No

Q7: Will I write more about that as the vote draws near?

A7: Yes

Q8: Do I generally like the players the Mets drafted last night?

A8: Yes

Q9: Do I care who wins the NBA championship or Stanley Cup?

A9: No

Q10: Is there any surprise in President Obama’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton?

A10: No

Q11: Is there any surprise in Elizabeth Warren’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton?

A11: No

Q12: So these developments aren’t a big deal, right?

A12: No

Q13: They are?

A13: Yes

Q14: Is that because it’s a sign that the Democrats are putting their best battlers together for the tough campaign ahead?

A14: Yes

Q15: Does my 10-day moratorium on mentioning the name of Clinton’s opponent end next week?

A15: Yes

Q16: Has it been easy to maintain this?

A16: God, no!

1. It’s Thursday, June 9, 2016.

2. Both of my journalism classes at William Paterson heard me expound this past semester on what’s bad about social media and the Internet in general.

One flaw I pointed out is as obvious to them as it is to me – the anonymity afforded people when they comment on stories or post tweets.

That anonymity is seen by its availers as a license to spew hate.

3. That point is hammered home by The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, a journalist whose work includes the insightful exit interview with President Obama on foreign policy. 

In his latest piece, Goldberg writes about the anti-Semitism he’s encountered online, particularly on Twitter. And he explains why he has added multiple parentheses to his name in his Twitter handle – he’s appropriating a tactic the haters use to signal that someone they’re writing about is Jewish, as if the parentheses diminish them somehow.

Goldberg’s piece demonstrates his talent. On the one hand, he treats the haters like the lowlifes they are and shows how they twist themselves into pretzels to make their case.

But he’s hardly dismissive. Goldberg sees the danger these crackpots pose to the world and understands that fighting this crap is a job for all thinking people. And while I see the anonymity the jerks hide behind as a negative, he sees some hope in it – if people were more brazen about their anti-Semitism, it would signal more acceptance of such sentiment.

Since Goldberg started using parentheses in his Twitter handle, other writers who are Jewish have done likewise. They’re taking their stand against the hatred that, I still believe, the anonymity of the Internet gives a home.

4. Jews are not alone in this. Women, African-Americans, Hispanics and others who don’t conform to some dopey preconception get trashed by people hiding behind what they think are clever handles.

I applaud Jeffrey Goldberg and other journalists of the Jewish faith who stand up to anonymous hatred. Perhaps neo-Nazism is the cockroach of hatred – it keeps getting stomped and yet survives. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep on stomping.

1. It’s Wednesday, June 8, 2016.

Yesterday, I lamented the early declaration of Hillary Clinton’s becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee. I thought the Clinton people would have the steam taken out of a planned celebration that would come after New Jersey’s voters put her over the top in the state’s primary.

Instead, it was some superdelegate that the AP and other news organizations called Monday and found out how he or she was voting at the July convention.

So the early declaration was going to spoil what should have been a momentous occasion for the Democrats and the nation, right?

2. Nah!

Hillary Clinton and her people did their darnedest to capture the moment. There was the video putting the accomplishment in historical perspective. The huge flag-waving crowd at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The dramatic entrance of the candidate. The technical glitches (all right, they’re not something the Clinton people wanted).

And the speech.

It was a good combination of exhorting her supporters, reaching out to Bernie Sanders and his supporters, excoriating her opponent, telling listeners what she stands for.

And reminding folks of the history. It was especially touching that she mentioned her mother, who had a difficult start in life and who she wished could have seen the moment.

3. It was a great moment for our country that this step forward finally came to pass.

And it’s testimony to the candidate, who is at the same time the most hated and most respected woman in this country. Which, when you think about it, seems about right. Because this a very deeply divided country, and it’s changing in ways that make a good portion of it extremely unhappy.

The next president is going to have been as tough as the problems that are coming our way. Hillary Clinton is.

4. By the way, let me repeat my one criticism of Hillary Clinton’s speaking style.

I know she’s not the orator President Obama is. Who is?

And I don’t have any use for the criticism of her that she shouts. That’s stupid.

No, what drives me crazy about a Hillary Clinton speech is how she tends to step on her applause lines. She has little concept of letting her supporters contribute to the moment.

One of these days, I’m going to take the time to show this on a clip. Because she can sometimes kill a big moment for her by plodding away at the speech. It’s as if she feels as though she has to complete the speech in a certain amount of time or else she loses points or something.

Clinton doesn’t have to watch Barack Obama to see what I mean. She used an Ann Richards clip in her introductory video. Ann Richards knew not to say anything after she delivered a great line. It’s not a big flaw, but I wish she’d solve it.

5. As for Sanders, it really isn’t as hard as pundits make it seem. He’s lost and, since he’s not an idiot, he knows it.

The question is how to end this in the best way possible. It is in his interest to take his time. It is in his interest to say that he wants his delegates to the convention to represent his positions on the platform.

It is also in his interest to say that he is unequivocally backing Hillary Clinton for President and wants his supporters to join him.

I expect him to do that sometime next week, if not sooner. It’s the only way he maintains the victory he’s won by exceeding expectations and raising the importance of issues such as income inequality and campaign finance reform.

And if, as former Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin predicts, Sanders delivers a stemwinder in Philadelphia in support of Clinton, that will be a sweet, sweet moment for the Democratic Party.

6. Sanders can be part of a dream team of powerful advocates for Clinton. Besides him, it’ll include President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Not to mention whoever she picks as a running mate and her husband, who’s done this before. 

Clinton’s victory speech was delivered in the place where the U.S.S. Missouri, the ship on which Japan surrendered to end World War II, was built. With Sanders on board, she’d take a pretty powerful battleship of a campaign into the fall contest.

1. It’s Tuesday, June 7, 2016.

2. AP says Hillary Clinton is the presumed Democratic presidential nominee. CNN says Hillary Clinton is the presumed Democratic presidential nominee.

I worked for both of those organizations. So it’s got to be true.

3. And yet, could there have been a less satisfying declaration of a winner than last night’s?

About the only people who could like the way this happened are the folks at the AP and the person, if he or she knows, who became Clinton’s 2,383rd delegate.

Other than that, it’s kind of meh.

Bernie Sanders and his people don’t like it for obvious reasons.

But Clinton and her people can’t be thrilled either. There’s six primaries today that, except for the District of Columbia, end the process. The plan was that sometime tonight, probably after New Jersey’s polls close, that 2,383rd delegate would have been captured.

I’m sure they had a whole hullabaloo planned. Balloons, confetti, maybe even fireworks. And it would have come after the satisfaction of somebody in Perth Amboy or Piscataway going to the polls and filling in the Hillary Clinton bubble on their ballot.

Plus the element of uncertainty, though a facade, was going to help turn out voters in California. That’s a primary Clinton really wants to win, if only to give Sanders a graceful way to bow out of this campaign.

Last night’s declaration was no great moment for the networks. Why bother watching the coverage tonight if it’s all over? It’s a gasping end to the record-setting amount of punditry seen by Americans since last summer.

Worst of all, the anticlimatic declaration of Hillary Clinton’s victory seems to obscure the momentousness of the fact that, for the first time in 228 years of electing a President of the United States, a woman is one of the last two standing.

4. Perhaps it will sink in more when she’s standing at the podium in Philadelphia. But it’s a big deal.

Hillary Clinton isn’t the most popular presidential candidate the Democratic Party has ever nominated. And, yes, she has her faults.

But a lot of the negative vibe involving Hillary Clinton stem from the fact that she is a she. That she’s smarter than the guys she has been and is running against. That she brings experience to a job that requires it, big time.

Her qualifications are unquestionable. Her politics can be debated – I happen to agree with her most of the time.

But her gender should not be an issue. We will now see how America treats its first female major-party presidential candidate – and whether this, as in 2008 with the first African-American, will be a moment everyone can look back at with pride.

5. If you want to get an anger fix, read Frank Bruni’s New York Times column about Cassandra Butts.

She was President Obama’s nominee to be ambassador to The Bahamas. But she died recently of an unsuspected case of leukemia, never having received a confirmation vote 835 days after her nomination.

One idiot, Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, put a hold on the nomination in a fit of pique with President Obama. Cotton is the same jackass who organized the letter that Republican senators sent to Iran in an effort to scuttle the nuclear agreement that we eventually reached.

In the Bruni column, a Cotton spokeswoman says the senator had respect for Butts and her career as an activist, but that he wanted to inflict maximum pain on Obama.

What this coward didn’t have the guts to do is put the nomination to a vote. He could have voted “No” and railed about all the evil he believes Obama has visited upon the world. Maybe he could have gotten his fellow Republicans and Obama haters to join him.

But instead, he used this wussy way out.

As I said – if you need to get angry today, reading Bruni is a good way.

1. It’s Monday, June 6, 2016.

2. It’s the 72nd anniversary of the Allied invasion of Normandy. Thousands lost their lives on the beaches and surrounding area as the U.S., Britain, Canada and others began the difficult task of wresting France back from the Nazis.

As important as Memorial Day is, this anniversary soon after is something Americans of all ages should never forget. The bravery of the men and women who took part in the invasion is worth a thought or two this otherwise beautiful day.

3. Ramadan officially started last night when the thin crescent after a new moon was spotted.

As someone who used to make work schedules, Ramadan is quite the wild card. You know when Christmas is. And you have a pretty good idea when Easter or any of the main Jewish holidays or holy days fall, generally within the late March to late April timeframe.

But Ramadan’s start gets progressively earlier each year. When I last did a work schedule to accommodate it, it was in July. It will get to the point that, in 2030, there will be two Ramadans in one Western calendar year – one beginning a few days after New Year’s and the second starting the day after Christmas.

4. While Ramadan is a generally joyful event, its main feature is fasting during daylight hours. And Muslims don’t fool around when it comes to this — fasting means you can’t have anything, period. That includes water.

So this year seems to be a tough one for Muslims, especially those who live in the Northern Hemisphere. Because Ramadan 2016 or 1437 (that’s the year according to the Islamic calendar) straddles the summer solstice.

During the next month, there’s more than 15 hours of daylight every day here in New York. If you’re going to fast for 30 days, you couldn’t pick 30 longer days than these.

Therefore, here’s hoping this isn’t an especially hot month and that my Muslim friends get down as much liquid as they can at 5 a.m., in the suhoor meal before dawn.

5. The more I became aware of Ramadan, the more curious I became.

For instance, imagine being a Muslim in Alaska or somewhere else closer to the North Pole, where there is almost no night. Sunrise in Fairbanks today was 3:17 a.m. Sunset will be at 12:22 a.m. tomorrow.

What I’ve learned is that the folks who issue decrees in Islam tell people in these areas that they can go by sunrise and sunset in Mecca. Which gives them a little bit of a break over the Muslims in New York – while sunrise in the holy city is 5:38 a.m., sunset is a little after 7 p.m.

The daily payoff for such devotion is the iftar, the meal that breaks the fast after sunset. It’s supposed to be pretty elaborate – a banquet with rich dishes and a celebration of family and friends.

6. To all who celebrate this holiday, my hopes for some great iftars, the strength to get through long days, and a Ramadan kareem.

7. I’m not a religious person. I respect your right to your beliefs. I expect you to respect my search for whatever the truth is whether it’s what you believe or not.

But I feel strongly that ignorance about religious customs is, as all ignorance is, not cool. We keep hearing Muslims put into one classification as if all 1.6 billion of them are a monolith and believe exactly the same thing. But that’s not true of any other religion – as Christians should clearly understand.

The more we know, the less stupid we are. That seems obvious, but in 2016, it’s a thought that bears repeating.

1. It’s Saturday, June 4, 2016.

2. It’s the day after the death of Muhammad Ali.

One of the things I tell my Journalism class is that the obituaries of really famous people are prepared far in advance by major news organizations. Generally, these are people who are key figures in the world, who are either advanced in age or ill or both.

Sadly, ever since Parkinson’s disease took control of his body, newspapers and Web sites have been preparing for this day. They did their job well: I’ve included links to four of the many great stories I’ve read so far this morning: Keith Olbermann on ringer.com, Dave Anderson in The New York Times, David Remnick in The New Yorker and Tim Dahlberg for The Associated Press.

3. I especially wanted to see the AP one because it was thanks to my time at that organization that I actually got to see Ali in person. And because Ali’s death stirs warm memories of people in my life, both here and gone.

When I started working as an AP Broadcast sports writer in 1977, Ali was in decline. He was technically still the heavyweight champion, the most coveted prize in boxing. But his skills were clearly declining and the guys I worked with knew it.

Still, we were all shocked when Leon Spinks beat Ali for the title one night in early 1978. Spinks was nowhere near the fighter Ali had been. That was proven when an even older Ali took the title back from him later that year, then retired.

When I finally saw Ali in person, it was 1981, when he was promoting a comeback fight with Trevor Berbick. Ali sat at a table in the front of a hotel ballroom. I was asked by my friend and mentor, the great Marv Schneider, to put a tape recorder on the table in front of Ali.

And so I did. It was a small task, but I was shaking. I was going up to Muhammad Ali.

I stared at him and he stared back with the glare with which he started any news conference. I fumbled around, of course, because I do that with whatever I do, as I put the cassette recorder on the table.

As I looked at him, he looked sternly at me – except that his eyes seemed to smile. Something made me feel better about being near him, as if he was saying to me don’t take this so seriously. With that, I shuffled back to my seat in the back of the room.

Ali was somewhat animated in the news conference and, being that I was seeing Ali, I was impressed.

But Marv, who once told me there were rooms in his house that he had furnished with just the extra money he earned from recording Ali news conferences, didn’t share my enthusiasm. Marv said Ali looked tired and didn’t have nearly the spark he had for all those years. “He ain’t what he used to be,” I can hear Marv say in a voice that anyone who knew him would recognize instantly.

4. Who Ali used to be, and who he was, was something more than your run-of-the-mill fighter. In the ring, he was an artist. He revolutionized his sport by moving around. The rest of the line in his famous “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” poem is “Your hands can’t hit what your eye can’t see.” In his prime, his shuffle made him impossible for the sport’s big punchers to tag him.

Ali made you understand why boxing can be a sport and not just two guys beating each other up. But what it did to him made you realize that, yeah, it is also just two guys beating each other up, and no matter how good you are at it, there’s a physical price to be paid. I saw what happened to Ali and I haven’t watched a fight in a very long time.

It’s unusual to say that a boxer could be influential outside the ring. Having met so many of them, I can vouch that they are, as a class, remarkably polite and thoughtful people. That’s at odds with what they do. Boxing is how they cope with whatever difficulties confronted them in life.

Ali is their inspiration. He didn’t just fight. He stood on principle when it came to his faith. As a young white American, I didn’t understand that at first, and I was part of the jeering section.

5. But because he was willing to pay a price – in his case, losing more than three years in the prime of his career to fight his draft evasion conviction – he made me realize what it means to be true to what you believe.

He became a goodwill ambassador to the world. He promoted peace. He tried to help those in need. His celebrity, built in part by amazing self-promotion, proved to be selfless in its message of helping.

Ali wasn’t a saint. By all accounts, he treated women fairly cavalierly in his youth. He was cruel to his greatest rival, Joe Frazier, who had helped him when he was down. That cruelty perhaps helped make Ali-Frazier one of the greatest rivalries in the history of sports, but that appears to have been small comfort to the proud, and talented, Frazier.

6. But there’s no doubt of Ali’s inspirational powers. It’s why I was so nervous that day 35 years ago when I actually stood within two feet of the man. It’s why my image of him on this day is of that twinkle in his eye and the idea that maybe, just maybe, he understood my being in awe.

He was, after all, The Greatest of All Time. He said so himself.

1. It’s Friday, June 3, 2016.

2. It’s the anniversary of the day Billie Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge.

I, apparently, am not the only one who remembers that, as this great effort by Washington Post reporter Neely Tucker shows. 

I’ve always thought Billie Joe and the singer threw an unintended child off the bridge before he decided to jump. But apparently this is considered a mystery.

I don’t think “Ode to Billie Joe” is the greatest song ever. But somehow, 49 years later, it sticks with you.

So when I woke up on the third of June, I thought “I guess it’s just another sleepy, dusty Delta day” even though it’s rainy and gray here in New York.

3. The May jobs report released this morning shouldn’t make anyone happy.

Only 39,000 jobs were added to the nation’s payroll last month, the lowest single-month gain in six years. The monthly figures for March and April were revised by a total of 59,000, which isn’t good, either.

The unemployment rate dropped to 4.7%. But that’s based on a different survey, and doesn’t give as clear a picture of the economy as the payroll report.

What to make of it? For one thing, there’s a little noise in the report thanks to the just-ended strike by Verizon workers. That counts against the May figures, and the settlement will distort the June figures higher.

4. But the weak number isn’t just the Verizon jobs. The total still would have been below 100,000 without the strike, and the number that signals a robust economy needs to be around 200,000.

It’s worrysome, but not panic inducing. The U.S. economy has been humming for awhile now, and it’s done so despite roadblocks such as the slowdown in China and the instability in the Middle East and Europe.

We’ll see how the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve react to the report. My guess is that they’ll wait until the June figures come out on July 8.

5. You’re a San Diego Padres fan sitting in Petco Park last reveling in your team’s 12-2 lead going into the sixth inning. It’s a good time for a beer, to chat with your friends and fellow fans as the Padres finish off a laugher.

What happens after that is a fan’s worst nightmare. Before the game’s next nine outs are recorded, your team goes from winning 12-2 to trailing 16-12.

I don’t know how you cope with something like that.

Wait a minute! Of course I do. I’m a New York Mets fan. Our team hasn’t blown a 10-run lead. Yet. But we have more than our share of patent-pending, rip-out-your-heart losses.

Alas, none of the San Diego media I’ve seen so far this morning thought it would be a good idea to interview the shell-shocked fans at the ballpark. I would imagine there was a lot of stunned silence and unfinished thoughts.

I hope everyone got home safely.

1. It’s Thursday, June 2, 2016.

2. People living paycheck to paycheck are still going to need to borrow money from someone. So the so-called “payday loan” mills that charge outrageous fees and interest rates won’t merely dry up and go away.

But the new rules being announced today by the Consumer Financial Protection Board give just a little bit of relief to those who feel forced to rely on these leeches.

The new rules, as reported by The New York Times’ Stacy Cowley, payday lenders will be forced to verify customers’ income and, what seems most important, will be limited in the number of times a loan can roll over and keep the borrower chained to the lender.

The industry that thrives off this type of usury isn’t going to go down without a fight. Even though the new CFPB rules don’t require Congressional approval, the folks in Congress beholden to the industry will raise a stink about government overstepping its boundaries.

Tell them to go to hell. This is important protection for people who don’t get protected enough.

3. As I said, people on the edge sometimes need to borrow money to keep things together. And they certainly should have options to meet those needs.

But those options shouldn’t make them the 21st century equivalent of indentured servants. The Obama administration and the CFPB are taking a first step to help some people in need. It’s a good thing.

4. President Obama is itching to use his final year in office to influence who succeeds him.

More than two weeks ago, he gave a feisty commencement speech at my son’s graduation from Rutgers University, in which he offered advice that included “When people start talking about the good old days, take it with a grain of salt,” and “In politics and in life, being ignorant isn’t a virtue.”

Yesterday, the President went to Elkhart, Ind., as a reminder of his first days in office, when unemployment in the RV-making community was close to 20%. It’s now something around 4%, and while Obama didn’t do that by himself, his policies and guidance of the national economy certainly helped create an atmosphere for that recovery.

The President trumpeted his policies – and warned that they faced reversals if the wrong person is elected to succeed him in November.

It’s clear who he meant.

5. But you won’t see the one whose name he meant in this space. At least not for the next 10 days.

I’ve made this resolution to not only not mention the Republican candidate for president, but to not mention anything about him except for this explanation.

Why?

As I’ve said in the past week, Hillary Clinton and the Democrats have the votes to win this election without having to convince the few who could possibly be on the fence between her and her opponent. As long as most Democrats come together, we’re going to outnumber the small-minded snails who back the other side.

And yet, every day, there’s something to read about her opponent. And here’s the point. It doesn’t matter to him if it’s negative. He abides by the “as long as they spell your name right” school of publicity. No news is the only bad news.

6. My friends at respectable news organizations such as CNN and The Times can’t do this, and I understand. There are standards of objectivity that they abide by, and should, even when exploited by a demagogue.

And now, with all the stories you’ve seen in recent days about various scandals, the news media is doing its job of holding the presumptive GOP nominee’s feet to the fire. That screeching you hear from him is part of him.

But you and I don’t have to say anything about him. He doesn’t matter. We have to talk about what we want for our country. We need a vision for the future. We must think about how we’re going to make our world better for our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and those of our neighbors.

That’s what a presidential campaign should be about. That’s my intention from here on out.

7. We’ve got this. Act like it.

1. It’s Tuesday, May 31, 2016.

2. The Republican establishment has gone two ways in the wake of the Trump takeover.

Last week, the guy Trump called “Little Marco” folded like a cheap tent. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who will go down in infamy for making penis size a campaign subject, decided that Trump wasn’t so bad after all.

Now, Rubio says, he will campaign for Trump, make speeches for Trump and apologizes for any bad things he said about him. 

He joins New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in the capitulation camp and gets back into the speculation about who Trump will pick for a running mate.

3. Then there’s the #NeverTrump movement. Right now, the leader is William Kristol, publisher of the conservative Weekly Standard, who says an “impressive” third-party candidate is on the horizon.

He won’t say who he is (I’d bet a lot of money the candidate isn’t a she), or how he’ll run a campaign that can defeat both Trump and Hillary Clinton.

Kristol joins such prominent GOP figures as Mitt Romney, New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse and the Bush family as unwavering in their refusal to bow before Trump.

At first glance, there’s some admirable about these holdouts. They understand the threat to the nation that Trump poses, that the alienation of all the groups Trump seems compelled to attack, will destroy the Republican Party as the nation’s demographics continue to change.

4. But here’s the thing: It’s one thing to understand the threat. It’s another to have enabled it. Maybe they all seriously believed that what the Republican Party stood for was diminished government, and not for a return to the kind of racism and bigotry that scarred America for generations.

It turns out you can’t have one without the other. And try, like Lady Macbeth, to wash their hands of this responsibility, it ain’t happening.

5. Here’s what Democrats have to remember: They hold the cards. As long as the people who support Bernie Sanders don’t do anything stupid, Hillary Clinton can win this thing pretty easily and put Trump and the too-late-and-too-short #NeverTrumpers away.

Trump might have helped with his statements that he would withdraw from the Paris climate change agreement and that the California drought is a hoax. Given the rightful emphasis Sanders has placed on the climate change issue, any Sanders supporter who says he or she would vote for Trump before Clinton is a hypocrite.

Democrats have the numbers in their favor. They have to unite and they have to get all the people who Trump has insulted to the polls. 

6. To that end, California Gov. Jerry Brown today endorsed Clinton. Given his prior battles with her husband, that seems like a big deal. 

Brown paid respect to Sanders and the issues he’s raised in the campaign.

But here’s how he ended his letter to Democrats and independents: “Hillary Clinton, with her long experience, especially as Secretary of State, has a firm grasp of the issues and will be prepared to lead our country on day one.”

“Next January, I want to be sure that it is Hillary Clinton who takes the oath of office, not Donald Trump.”

Amen.

1. It’s Monday, May 30, 2016.

2. It’s Memorial Day.

3. It’s a testament to human imperfection that every nation in the world has war dead to commemorate. Even the Swiss, whose famed neutrality was forged in battles with those who didn’t respect it. In whatever ways they deem appropriate, nations on every continent pay tribute to their war dead.

What makes those who fought and died for the United States of America different is they trace their origins to all the other countries of the world.

Perhaps they could have fought for the country where their families originated. Perhaps they could have gone somewhere else.

But, for whatever reason and in whatever circumstance, they fought for this country. That they died for it is the price they paid so that their chosen countryman could live in the freedom they protected.

4. And they fought and died despite some shortcomings.

African-Americans were enslaved for more than two centuries and have faced varying degrees of discrimination in the 150-plus years since emancipation. And yet the cemeteries are filled with those who wore the American flag on their uniform.

Hispanics, many of whose relatives didn’t speak English and have been derided for that, died for this country. Asian-Americans, who faced exclusion and taunts and – for some – even internment, died for this country.

Jews and Muslims died for this country despite proclamations by many politicians that this is a Christian nation. Those Muslims fought for this country even as some said they were one with the enemy.

Gays – many of whom were forced to deny their identity so that they could, in fact, fight for this country – died for this country.

And I’m going to throw in my fellow Italian-Americans. Faced with discrimination, taunting and insinuations that they were all Mafioso, they fought and died for this country.

When some blowhards talk about making American great again, they insult the idea that these people didn’t already make America great. That these people, and all the other Americans who gave their lives from Lexington to Kabul, weren’t part of something that gets greater and greater as each day passes.

Other nations can claim that those who fought for them are a varied bunch. No nation can claim it with the force and conviction that our nation can. That so many of them – at best guess, about 1.4 million of them – have died to make us the most vaunted nation in the world is the reason today is so very special.