#patriotismispublicservice

When I got back from my third tour as a combat medic in Iraq, where I experienced all of the emotional highs and lows of that unjustified conflict, I noticed a strange phenomenon...people who called themselves PATRIOTS, don't think I am one.

In fact, those same people, who often have never served, decided that I am the opposite of a patriot.

It was a slow realization. One that was seared into me as I lost friends from my childhood and lost any hope of meaningful communication/relationship with my father.

To them, the self-proclaimed PATRIOTS, the folks who stormed the capitol on January 6th, smearing feces on the walls of the sacred building where I once served (in a congressional office that I was geographically but not political aligned with), are the real PATRIOTS.

To the self-proclaimed PATRIOTS, even though no one in the #2xpopularvoteloser's family served, even though he called a POW a loser, even though his kids stole money from a veteran's charity, he is/they are the PATRIOTs and I will always be just a "libtard," (or worse).

Eventually I just stopped debating/arguing with them.

They'd say: You don't understand the Constitution.

I'd ask: The one I put my life on the line to defend? Or the one I got my political science and law degrees studying? Or the one I use now to help veterans in my career?

They'd say: Americans must stand for the song and the flag.
I'd say: No, I had to stand at attention for the flag and the song for eight years. Because of that service, he gets to kneel if he chooses and you get to stand if you choose. It is the freedom we defend, not the flag.

They'd say: You don't understand the sacrifices our soldiers make.

(Seriously, lol. I wish I was making this up).

I'd say: nothing. Because at some point, you have to realize that there is nothing to be said.

Patriotism isn't found on a t-shirt, or standing for a song or the flag, or mounted to the bed of a pickup truck. Not on @foxnews or @tuckercarlson's hour of xenophobia and hate.

People who write "PATRIOT" in their @twitter bio aren't. If you have to say it, you're not it.

Patriotism is found in service. Service to others. Service to the nation. Service to our cities and towns and people.

The patriots are the people who kept counting the votes as the man who knew he was losing screamed that they weren't. #patriotismispublicservice

Patriotism is showing up to work at the Capitol each day, even as do-nothing never served anyone but themselves cowards like @tedcruz and @HawleyMO @laurenboebert and @mtgreenee raise their fists and cheer and assist treason that puts your life at risk.

That's patriotism.

Patriotism is working as a public health expert even as that job is unprofessionally threatened over Twitter.

Patriotism is putting forth a better campaign, a better debate, a career of service, losing on a technicality, and conceding.

Patriotism is brushing off the insults.

Patriotism is standing on a debate stage while the right-wing hate machine personified does what he does, and insults, and just saying, as @POTUS did, how he was going to serve and help the American people. ALL of the American people.

See, its not that I'm not a patriot. Its not that in my career I don't practice my belief that #patriotismispublicservice, its that the faux PATRIOT that do-nothing never served Ivy League elites like @TuckerCarlson have created to soften their inadequacies, is a fiction.

That PATRIOT only exists in rhetoric.

And lets be honest, people like the @HawleyMO's, @tedcruz's, and @tuckercarlson's of the world, they know that real #patriotismispublicservice, and they know they don't have the intestinal fortitude to engage in it.

So, don't waste your time caring what those on the far-right think about your patriotism. Their PATRIOTism is a fiction.

Just serve. As President Kennedy put it: "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."

https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=91&page=transcript