On Friday, The Huffington Post ran a piece titled, “Becoming A Racist: The Unfortunate Side Of Serving Your Country?” The author was one David Fagin, a self-described “writer, musician, Trump Resister, food snob.” The food snob contended that an outsized contingent of those who serve in the military have been infused with intolerance and racism:
By now, we’re all familiar with PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and even with proper treatment, the debilitating state it can leave a returning soldier in, sometimes for the rest of their lives. But to learn that these brave men and women over there return with a new-found hatred for those different from them, especially after their mission is one of liberation from those who kill and persecute anyone of different faiths/beliefs, is quite disturbing to say the least.
To support this shocking contention, Fagin presents absolutely nothing other than conjecture. He tells the story of his uncle, an NYPD officer whom he apparently believes became intolerant on the job, after spending a career fighting a disproportionately minority crime wave. Fagin adds, “of course, he was a Trump supporter.”
One gets the feeling that Fagin attributes support for Trump to racial intolerance, and then uses the backward logic that the troops largely supported Trump thanks to their own intolerance. Fagin writes:
But to think that even a small portion of them are returning from duty harboring feelings of such intense anger and disgust toward anyone who isn’t white, leads one to believe the military isn’t doing enough in the area of outreach, post-discharge … the military needs to focus their attention on treating this new type of expression of their trauma, as, although returning from battle steadfast in the “Us vs. Them” mentality is nothing new, taking a job as security guard for neo-nazis, is.
This is asinine. I know a fair number of active-duty and recently retired military members. They’re militantly apathetic about race. That’s thanks to the fact that race matters far less than quality of character when you’re in a foxhole with someone. The military itself is quite racially diverse — about 12% of those in the military are Hispanic, about 17% are black. My security contingent is two guys who served together in Iraq and Afghanistan; one is of Turkish extraction, the other from the South. They started a business together after coming back from war. That’s not uncommon by any stretch of the imagination. Every single head of every single branch of the military made an independent statement condemning white supremacism after Charlottesville. Every major veterans group in America did the same. Where is the actual evidence that our soldiers are being turned racist by the military?
This just sounds like anti-conservative, anti-military animus at root. Members of the military tend to be more conservative than the public at large; the Left conflates conservatism with racism; therefore, they suggest that people who are in the military must be racist. What’s more, since the military draws from all parts of society, the military must be inculcating racism.
That’s nonsense. It’s bigotry to boot. But it’s not all that surprising from a Trump Resister and food snob who writes for The Huffington Post.