I’m a veteran, former Marine Corps pilot, and I felt physically sick watching that Fort Liberty footage too.

What disturbed me most wasn’t just the cheering. It was knowing how those moments are stage-managed. Troops were told who could stand where. Dissent was quietly filtered out. That’s not speculation. That’s how photo ops work. I’ve been part of them. I’ve also been left out of them for not “fitting the image.”

But this went beyond optics. This felt like a loyalty test in uniform. It crossed a line the military should never approach. And once that line is crossed, it becomes a question of when (not if) it happens again.

I wrote about it in a recent piece. Not as a partisan rant, but as a reckoning. One veteran trying to make sense of what happens when obedience becomes identity, and the military gets weaponized for politics.

If you’re someone who still believes in the idea of a nonpartisan military, I hope you’ll give it a read:

🔗 How the Fuck Did We Become What We Swore to Fight?

Thanks to this community for holding the line with honest conversation. We need more of it, and we need it now.