You didn't get the memo? Patriotism is now a conservative thing- it's been taken into the Republican Party and copyrighted.
That's the joke of it all in my twenty year career (1992-2012)...
- First there was Bill Clinton, who the GOP paraded around as having "never served" despite him being only one of fourteen Presidents that didn't serve in American history. As a young Marine, I bought into the propaganda, despised Clinton for it, and only later learned that I should have appreciated his second half (in terms of foreign policy and local economy).
- Then came George Bush, who was supported by Conservatives no matter the cost and despite having one the worst SECDEFs in our history. The Liberal criticized Bush at all costs while the GOP seized upon the opportunity to add to the idea that "Democrats are weak on Communism" and only Conservatives truly "support the troop." <--- This was not true at all. The result was a Left who could not make the proper arguments against a Right who didn't even bother to make the proper arguments because they used the troop argument to shrug. In the mean time, history saw the beginning of a generations long effort in the MENA that was dismissed in favor of the American slogans of the day. (...We are still living the history of a region wide effort to get past the colonial and imperial **** that made 9/11 a reality).
- Obama comes along and defeats a Vietnam Veteran possibly because of those idiotic arguments about Iraq (Obama promising to pull troops out, while McCain continued the "can't set a timeline" GOP slogan that actually defied the troop leadership's clear understanding that Bush had already officially set Obama's timeline). The Conservative base goes on to ignorantly blame Obama for the
natural rise of IS (if you understand the correct Islamic history) while the Liberal base ignorantly blamed Bush's Iraq invasion for it all (which is false because it is not that simple at all).
- Trump comes along and denigrates McCain's military experience and the Conservative base either laughs or shrugs?!
No, they don't get the pull this "patriotism" trash anymore where I am concerned. Not only am I a veteran of the Somalia experience (1993 - my unit is actually mentioned in the movie
Black Hawk Down), Caribbean humanitarian experience throughout the latter half of the 1990s, and combat veteran in two different wars in two different regions after 9/11 with eight confirmed kills (one I absolutely hate), but I am a historian of American Foreign Policy, which includes Cold War behaviors in Southeast Asia. Nobody, but a Vietnam Vet, who intimately understands the issue, gets to degenerate a Vietnam Vet. It really is that simple for me. And Conservatives across the nation (even Vets) declared that Trump, who has never served a damn thing in his life, rated to denigrate?
F....that.