America’s Veterans and the Demise of Patriotism

When I drove through America during the first Gulf War of 1991 there was pride in the country’s soldiers and veterans everywhere. People celebrated the 43 days of “Operation Desert Storm” as redemption for the loss in Vietnam. There were “Support Our Troops”-Signs” on every front lawn and victory parades in every town. Yet by 2015 Donald Trump could call war heroes or war dead “losers” and “suckers” and still be elected with almost 2/3 of American veterans consistently voting for him ever since. As a “thank you” the recent cuts declared by Elon Musk’s government efficiency unit (DOGE) hit veterans disproportionally since they make up one third of the federal workforce. And Donald Trump just announced that he would rename “Veterans Day” into “Victory Day for WW I”? How could such a winner-takes-it-all- and narrow nationalism replace the heartfelt patriotism of glorified times past? 

A good place to find out about those changes and contradictions seems to be Tuskegee, Alabama, home to the “Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site”. Here in the old hangars of an airfield the history of the first African Americans to be trained as Army Corps pilots in World War II is vividly displayed, showing the scandal of their mistreatment and the pride of their achievements; plus, their return from victorious combat abroad to remaining second class citizens at home after 1945. 

Meet Eric Walker, his sister Sharon and their nephew Blair, who are looking at the multiple presentations of racism and patriotism in a museum sadly lacking in visitors. They call themselves “a proud military family”. Their uncle Robert was a Tuskegee Airman for whom, as they recount, the discrimination he suffered was as traumatic as the flying above enemy terrain. Eric has served in the army in Asia for 15 years and Sharon has been with the reserves. They brought their nephew “to learn about our history”. 

So, where has this patriotism gone and why? “People have no memory, no interest in history or things outside their narrow lives”, Eric says, “and a very short attention span.” The picture he uses to describe the current mixture of memory loss and innocence is that of Rip van Winkle, the hero in a popular children’s story who wakes up bewildered after a deep 20-year-long sleep whilst the United States have turned from being a British colony into an independent country. “People are overwhelmed by all this other stuff”. 

The Gift Shop at the Central Alabama Veteran Affairs Medical Center in Tuskegee, Alabama

Tuskegee also houses the “Central Alabama Veteran Affairs Medical Centre” with numerous facilities outside of the town. Answering your question one of the medical staff will tell you “the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have turned people against patriotism. They feel fucked by the military-industrial complex”. And now he observes many of his patients in the medical unit being worried that the services and special programs will be cut by Elon Musk and his team. People like James, 64, who we meet in the canteen. He served with the California Cannoneers and is now fighting for a new hearing aid. He might still get it, and he is sure that they can’t touch his future 35.000 Dollar-pension, but the program that treated his drug abuse and saved him from homelessness, that is another thing. “This might not be there for others after I have left”, he says. 

The census of 2023 counted almost 16 million veterans living in America of whom 66.000 still fought in WW II. That amounts to roughly 6 % of the total population down from 18% in 1980. In 2024 the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) had a budget of 129 billion dollars and was providing for lifelong care and benefits for nine million veterans with a staff of about 400.000 employees. Yet the so called “Project 2025”, the blueprint for many policies of the Trump Administration, would cut benefits for disabled veterans and replace VA hospitals with privatized outpatient clinics. An internal memo from March 2025 spoke of 80.000 job cuts at VA starting in June.  

So far nobody knows how many workers at VA have already gotten their leave letters and some have been fired and reinstated shortly afterwards. Sharon at the Tuskegee Airmen Museum explains that its funding had been cut to only be restored after strong protests from the black community. Nationwide many veterans’ groups object the “chaos” those orders and confusing actions have been creating. 

But why target government bureaucracy where it serves the weakest and the disabled? An article in “The Atlantic” of September 2020 lists a whole litany of Donald Trump’s contemptuous comments about heroes, war victims and military service. The sources quoted here paint a picture of a person, who avoids a military graveyard because “it’s filled with losers”; who does not understand concepts such as patriotism, service and sacrifice because they are “non-transactional life-choices”; of a President who is “deeply anxious about dying or being disfigured, and this worry manifests itself as disgust for those who have suffered.” 

In Montgomery, not far from Tuskegee, I meet the veteran journalist Dwayne Fatherree who translates the President’s psychopathology into political terms. “With Donald Trump we see a shift in the concept of success and the concept of white patriotism. “Success is only what serves you and American patriots of today are a narrow band for whom world politics are no longer an issue. “For them outside is The Other”. 

But how did this happen in a Republican Party which historically has long been on the side of veterans and the armed forces? It all began with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 when the Republican Party lost its ideological orientation. After the initial attempt at “putting America First” in the mid-90s ended in a defeat to President Bill Clinton and after the Bush years produced “forever wars”, a financial crisis and gave way to Barack Obama as the first black President in 2008 the Republican Party finally found a new enemy within. By then there was enough resentment and racism resurging to feed the new propaganda. 

With the help of powerful right-wing media, the proponents of a new white nationalism christened the liberal and “woke” democratic left as the new “communists” at home. And it worked. By November 2016 ideologues like Steve Bannon, courtesy of Fox TV, had prepared the ground for an egotistic entertainer usurping the White House by presenting a Christian nationalism without any morale but fought for in battles which are only about yourself. And it speaks to the power of Trump’s performance that this long gestating project even resonates with people hurt by it. 

Because when you travel around America and talk to vets here and there, many will stick to their President whatever his policies do to them. Men like Bubba whom we meet at Post 3016 of the “Veteran of Foreign War” Selma, Alabama. Bubba has not fought in any foreign wars. He only served with the National Guard from 1970 to 1976 “to avoid the Vietnam War”. But he likes to come here for the camaraderie and to have a beer in the late afternoon.  

Did he vote for Donald Trump? “Yes, of course, and no regrets”. And what about the President’s open contempt for veterans? “I had no choice”, he says, because Kamala Harris would have kept the borders open. He tells me that many whites have left Selma “because they think black people have taken over”. For him Donald Trump “will stop the federal money going to all kind of places, but to me”. For Bubba that seems to be more important than honoring the “Veterans of Foreign Wars”. And many in the country’s few thousand VFW-posts would probably still agree with him. 

After having left the impressive airmen museum at Tuskegee Eric Walker from the “proud black family with a long history of fighting for freedom” sends me an email adding to his comments from before. “I am ashamed of my country with Trump and his band of fools. But what gets to me is the sheer number of people who voted for him”. 

One wonders what will have to happen to America for this kind of pride to be honored again.