Democrats Can't be "Real" Veterans

Discrediting liberals' military service is an intrinsic MAGA pathology, linked with toxic masculinity. It shows they don't really love the troops.

When Kamala Harris picked Tim Walz as her VP last week, Republicans had some oppo-research ready in waiting. To hear them tell it, Walz—who served 24 years in the Minnesota National Guard—“abandoned his unit” to avoid deploying to Iraq, then committed “stolen valor” by misrepresenting his rank and deployment history.

If you care about the details underlying these accusations, the Washington Post gives them fair and meticulous coverage here. If you’d rather a veteran who understands this stuff give you a fair TL;DR, I’m happy to oblige. Walz used imprecise language in a 2018 campaign ad on gun control, but otherwise behaved absolutely normally after two decades of exemplary service, in ways no veteran would begrudge were it not for political bias.¹

The rest of this post is less concerned with the details of Walz’ service (let’s be real, the details are never the point to MAGA) than with the broader inevitability of this phenomenon. Because make no mistake, there is no way Tim Walz could have avoided this line of attack. There exists no form of military service he could have on his resume that MAGA Republicans would not have tried to dishonor, because a Democrat serving honorably in the military destabilizes their entire worldview, and they value that worldview far more than they value the military.

To understand why, start by remembering three things about the MAGA movement:

1. MAGA is a form of tribalism. There is an ingroup and an outgroup; an “us” and a “they;” the “real America” and the sinister threats it faces, be they elites or immigrants or “woke” or pedophiles or the deep state.
   

2. MAGA is a form of nationalism. While other tribes may care about what’s good for the world, or what comports with higher principles, MAGA sees what’s good for the nation as the highest political goal.
   

3. MAGA is a form of conservative populism, which embraces violence as a political tool. Where classical liberals call for tolerance, restraint, and procedural rules facilitating peaceful coexistence between tribes, populists relish breaking rules to smash the elite order, and often cheer violence against perceived outgroups.
   

Next, consider three insights about this combination of beliefs:

1. For these beliefs to make any sense, the ingroup needs to overlap with the nation; “we” are the “real America.” That Democrats are equally American must somehow be defined away. Racism and ethno-nationalism help with this (Barack “Hussein” Obama must have been born in Kenya), but even white outgroup members are dismissed as “traitors.”
   

2. Similarly, these beliefs require a contrived monopoly on patriotism. The constitution may work as a symbol, but fealty to its pesky text is not “real” patriotism (after all, “people won’t fight for abstractions.”) MAGA has to narrow that big beautiful word to conflate it with their ugly brand of conservative populist ethno-nationalism.
   

3. These beliefs make the military an especially potent symbol. Fighting for your country fuses nationalism and violence under the banner of patriotism. Even better, deep-seated norms make it taboo to question the patriotic value of the violence our military wages. This insulates noxious conservative ideas from criticism, and provides a socially acceptable outlet for their basest nativist impulses.
   

This is all you need to get why Democrats can’t be “real” veterans in the MAGA mind. But there’s a fourth insight that paints a fuller picture:

4. Valorizing violence and gatekeeping “realness” go hand-in-hand with toxic masculinity, which MAGA also leverages.

MAGA distinguishes itself from its outgroups with appeals to traditional masculinity. “We,” the blue-collar masses who work with our hands and don’t get offended ^{except all these times}, are tough, strong, practical doers and achievers. “They,” the delicate white-collar snowflakes who work artsy desk jobs in the ivory tower, are soft, wimpy, effeminate talkers. Not only can Democrats not be real veterans, they can’t even be real men.

This distinction maps perfectly onto the basic yin-yang balance that research shows people want in elected leaders: warmth vs. strength. Democrats start with an advantage in warmth and a vulnerability on strength, Republicans start with the opposite, and both sides need to hit the other where they’re vulnerable.

What fewer people recognize is that it also maps closely to military rivalries. It’s the grunts vs. the POGS; the enlisted vs. the commissioned; the Joes vs. the brass. Walz enlisted, which should theoretically mark him as one of the men. But his public demeanor is also warm, kind, and ebullient, which defies the terse and angry masculinity conservatives esteem in military leaders. In any case, he’s a Democrat, so he has to be painted as some kind of pansy.

Military culture gives infinite ways to do this, which can be recycled for each new Democratic veteran. That’s because the military has both a formal and an informal rank system. The formal system is your pay grade, marked by the stripes on your chest. The informal system is a subconscious estimate of your general badassery, marked by your military bearing, training badges, and combat experience. In essence, how well do you meet the patriarchal ideal of an aggressive, violent, dangerous killer?

The military is also full of ambition and careerism; of driven, competitive, Type A people. This produces an astounding amount of credentialism and one-upmanship surrounding both rank systems, which in turn gives conservatives all they need to discredit anyone’s military service. The “real” veterans are always the ones who had X credentials your guy didn’t.

The resulting behavior

Put these ingredients together, and you get a predictable result. In the abstract, MAGA demands limitless praise to all military servicemembers in every context. They weaponize that demand to cancel anyone (like Colin Kaepernick, for example) they can frame as even faintly critical of the troops.

But the moment a troop disagrees with them about politics, they can invent 100 reasons his service wasn’t real. Suddenly, your service isn’t enough if you weren’t active duty. Active duty isn’t enough if you didn’t deploy. Deploying isn’t enough if it wasn’t to a dangerous combat zone. Deploying to a dangerous combat zone isn’t enough if you weren’t in a combat arms branch, or the real door-kickers and trigger pullers in infantry or Special Forces. Infantry isn’t enough if you weren’t a Ranger, etc.

I shit you not, people with a Ranger tab are sometimes teased as not being “real” Rangers if they didn’t serve in a Ranger Battalion. Even people in Ranger Battalions are constantly puffing their chests about which one is best. They literally have an annual Best Ranger competition.²

To the conservative mind, military service is one big dick-measuring contest. No matter how you serve, you are never enough. (Why does that sound so familiar? Could it possibly have something to do with the military’s mental health crisis?)

The hyper-scrutiny on Walz’ record, and record of talking about his record, is just this same tactic on steroids. Did he carry weapons of war “in war”, or merely while training for war? Did he retire as a 1SG by training, or merely retire after serving as 1SG for several years? It’s preposterous, irrelevant nitpicking.

Never mind that Trump literally dodged Vietnam with phantom bone spurs. The scrutiny is only ever in one direction, because the scrutinizers don’t actually care. It’s all bad faith. It’s all a compulsive response to the cognitive dissonance of the other side being just as patriotic as you.

Tim Walz could have literally won the Medal of Honor for singlehandedly preventing another 9/11 and they would find some reason to dismiss his service. Before I knew Tim Walz existed, I could have told you that MAGA would do this to any veteran who stands against them. You know how I know?

How about General Milley? He was badass: Airborne Ranger, Special Forces, combat arms. He deployed ten times, including three to Afghanistan and one commanding the mission in Afghanistan. Then he served as Chief of Staff of the Army and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: the highest-ranking military officer in the entire country. He has a dizzying number of prestigious military awards. He retired after 43 years of rockstar service.

But he also worked to stop Trump from pulling off a coup, or stumbling into war with China on the way out. So Republicans called him a traitor who should be fired and court-martialed, and Trump implied he should be executed.

How about LTC Vindman? Remember him? He got the Purple Heart for being wounded by an IED in Iraq. He’s an Airborne Ranger, too: a hard, tough, front-line fighter who bled for our country.

But Congress ordered him to testify about a conversation he overheard, in which President Trump pressured the Ukrainian president to investigate Hunter Biden in exchange for continued U.S. aid. So Trump fired Vindman and his brother, bragged about it on Twitter, blocked his promotion, and organized a smear campaign of intimidation and retaliation that forced Vindman to retire. Then Trump’s followers sent Vindman so many threats he had to reach out to the Army for help securing his family.

How about John McCain? He was a combat veteran. He flew planes in Vietnam until he was shot down, seriously injured, captured, and tortured as a prisoner of war for six years in North Vietnam. Republicans adored him and made him their Presidential nominee. But his idea of patriotism inclined him to be a never-Trumper, so Trump called him a loser and denied his heroism because “I like people who weren’t captured.” When McCain died of cancer, guess how Trump supporters behaved?

Conservatives may claim, and even believe, that they care deeply about the military. But in truth, they often only care about it symbolically or instrumentally. They find it a useful pretense for what really enthuses them, which is violence against the outgroups they’re taught to fear and dehumanize. They like that the military imbues that violence with an aura of heroism and necessity, which makes it easier to enforce their draconian ideals and tactics.

Likewise, MAGA politicians love veterans as props in their reelection campaigns—but in truth, they prefer us as dead props. That way the symbol is more potent, and less likely to be contravened by our actual voices. MAGA loves how veterans make them feel when we are empty vessels for whatever bile they vomit into us.

They don’t care about people fighting actual wars half as much as they care about the culture war and the gender war. The more absurd excuses they find to betray, demean, and demonize veterans who disagree with them about politics, the more transparent that becomes.

1. Alternatively, if you want a different veteran to give you a pithy rant about the absurdity of these attacks, I’ll quote one of my Facebook friends:

“Veterans attacking Walz are dogs barking because their masters commanded it. Not once, not one single time, have any of them *ever* thought it was "stolen valor" for an E7 who served for years as a 1SG to say "I am a 1SG." Not once, not *ever,* did they think it was "stolen valor" for an E8 serving as his unit's CSM to say "I'm my unit's CSM." They never in their lives thought it was "abandoning your unit" to retire after 24 fucking years. They literally gave it no thought at all until fucking yesterday when they heard someone say it on Fox News.

Brotherhood, loyalty, esprit de corps, it's all just words to these people. They don't "have your six," because to them being a weird ass Republican dipshit is more important than any military brotherhood.”

2. This is not to say such competition is never healthy or useful among actual frontline fighters. It’s just absurd when leveraged to discredit 24 years of service by Mr. Bone Spurs.