something I am frustrated by - and have been struggling to articulate - is that the current military discourse is the latest example of Trump doing something that is so openly gross that everyone's reflexive instinct is to plant themselves at a resolute 180-degree opposite pole.

and sometimes Trump can be revolting and selfish and ignorant and totally 100% wrong, without it necessarily being true that the MOST OPPOSITE THING POSSIBLE to Trump is what's right.

I think this is one of the times when it's actually incredibly dangerous to think that way.

like @RobynElyse made the really important point (see my last RT) that like . . . the Vietnam War WAS bad. Progressives HATED it.

if our Trump resistance pushes us into vociferously defending the rightness and goodness of that war, what are we even DOING?????

It can be true that Trump skipping a visit to a war memorial because he didn't want to mess up his hair is one of the most cartoonishly evil things he has ever been caught doing, and also that it is fair to question whether our national myths about war and patriotism serve us.

It can be true that breezily telling a man whose son has died that dying in a war is for losers is an incomprehensibly terrible thing to tell a father, and also that a lot of the mass death caused by American wars IS senseless and unnecessary and, yes, stupid.

So it makes me nervous to see prominent voices, even on the left side of the aisle, rush so quickly to "HOW DARE YOU! RESPECT OUR FALLEN HEROES! Now THIS is something he should resign over!" like the most important thing is always just how Not-Trump you can be.

I don't know what we do with any of this and if you tell me this is not the right moment for a conversation this nuanced and messy, I mean, I hear you

I just worry that progressives are sacrificing an awful lot if we suddenly have to act like we've always been chill with Vietnam

I wish there was a way to have this conversation where we could separate out urgent things like care for veterans (addressing their health, mental health and homelessness crises), from respect for people's grief and loss, from the actual role of the military in world history.

because to me those are three separate things.