OpEd: Why are vets coming out against Nazis with more fervor than ANTIFA? Let me explain with marital aids.

Writing on the internet can come with a mixed bag of emotions.  I get lots of feedback from readers, and arguably even more from those who never bothered to read what I wrote at all and instead just want to explain why they’re mad at the headline (using ONLY CAPITAL LETTERS).  I get it, the work we do addresses important topics, and logically, the more important a topic is, the easier it can be to get heated about it.  I don’t take any more offense when someone calls me a lib-tard for suggesting a war with North Korea could be tragic, than I do when called a fascist for thinking fitness standards should be equal for both genders in the military.  It just comes with the territory.

Despite doing this sort of work for a fair amount of time, however, sometimes I’m still surprised by the responses I see on my own, or other writer’s, work.  Such has been the case since last weekend’s battle royale in Charlottesville between Nazi-flag carrying white supremacists, and anarchists that have, honestly, been looked upon pretty favorably in the media since.  Reasonable people from every part of the political spectrum have found themselves choosing sides in the fracas, with many veterans like me choosing to be quite vocal in our disgust toward the Nazi-types that, in many cases, claimed to represent us.

I’m a white, heterosexual male and a veteran – which makes me exactly the sort of dude a neo-Nazi organization hopes to recruit.  The thing is, my experiences in the military ran exactly counter to the ideology they preach, so when I see guys like Michael R. Tubbs, an embarrassment to the coveted title of Green Beret and, I’ll go ahead and say it, an aspiring domestic terrorist, picking fights with counter-protestors, I take offense.  He, and folks like him, claim to be fighting for equality on my behalf, as their effort isn’t solely to help their own organization – but to help the white race at large.

However, as writers like Frumentarius or Derek Gannon have found, voicing your opposition to Nazis marching in America isn’t met with high-fives from the types of people we often interact with online.  Instead, claiming you’re anti-Nazi comes with immediate accusations that you must, therefore, be pro-communist, extremely liberal, or trying to help advance the causes of disgusting groups like ANTIFA.

It’s a logic leap akin to suggesting that, because I don’t like the taste of veal, I must be a vegan.

Now, I know that, for those people who already think I’m a borderline communist agent for questioning the decisions of politicians they like, my words are going to fall on deaf ears… er, eyes as this case may be. For those of you out there that see this whole thing as one big, ugly mess, let me explain to you why guys like me have been so public in our disapproval of one group, while rolling our eyes at the onslaught of furious “yeah, but what about…” messages, comments, and tweets that have come our way regarding the others.

Some of you are going to get really angry at me.  That’s cool, guys.  We don’t have to agree in order to respect each other and work together toward a better America.  Here’s the thing though: the Nazi movement in America is a lot like having to go to the hospital for getting something big stuck up your butt.

If you know anyone that works in an emergency room, I encourage you to reach out to them and ask if they have any good “insertion” stories.  Most of the doctors and nurses I know have at least one… in fact, it’s such a common problem that you can find a number of peer-reviewed medical papers addressing how best to treat these types of injuries.  In many cases, we’re not even talking about losing your grip on a marital aid… we’re talking about losing things that have no place in the human body… things that are far too large to seem as though they’d fit… and yet, there’s an entire website devoted to doctors sharing the X-rays.

So what does that have to do with Nazis?  Let me explain.

“The one I remember the best was a male patient that came in after a wooden rod stuck in his rectum,” Dr. Jamin Brahmbhatt, a urologic surgeon who works at South Lake Hospital – Orlando Health in Clermont, Florida said. “He had to be taken to surgery for removal.  He did admit to trying different objects and this was the first time he got into trouble.”

See, you might have read that quote and thought, “a wooden rod??” but I noticed that last part: “He did admit to trying different objects and this was the first time he got into trouble.”

Now, I’m not here to judge anyone for the sort of things they’re into with other consenting adults, or alone with a few bottles of whiskey, but I’m going to have to extrapolate a bit here because I don’t have any experience in putting stuff in my butt.  Based on the above statement, and logical reasoning, I have to assume that poor guy tried smaller things first.  Maybe he started with a finger, realized he was into that and nothing bad happened, so he moved on to something bigger.  That next experiment also seemed to go how he’d hoped, and again, nothing bad happened, so, in classic human fashion, he kept pushing the boundaries of what he could do, simply because it was what he liked to do.

White supremacists, and even American Nazis, do indeed deserve the same constitutional protections this ridiculous metaphor about butts is being afforded, so when white-power groups threw small demonstrations, they realized they were pretty into that, and nothing bad happened.  So then they moved on to bigger rallies, and again, constitutional protections allowed them the freedom to do so, and, although the rallies were quite a bit bigger, they still got mostly positive feedback.

Before you know it, that poor man, and those Nazi idiots, are moving on to bigger and bigger things, simply because it feels good while they do it, and nothing bad has really happened to them yet.  Eventually, however, you get to that wooden rod.

Nazis proudly marching in the streets of the United States is (you’re right, angry commenter) a legal and protected act when done with a permit – as they did.  The thing is, the Constitution protects their right not to be impeded by the government; it doesn’t protect them from the criticism of people like me.  Just as they’re allowed to voice their opinions, I can voice mine, and it’s my opinion that these men that claim to represent me, are disgusting bigots deserving of the bad press they’ve garnered.

It’s up to us, then, the straight, white, male veterans in America to make it clear that we don’t stand with these people – in part because those on the opposing side are happy to claim that we do – but also because the Nazis themselves hope that we are.  Veterans that have come out against the Nazi movement, in this case, are that wooden rod.  We’re the wake up call that poor man got at a Florida emergency room.  These Nazis got louder and louder because it felt good and didn’t hurt them, like sticking different kitchen utensils up their own rectums, but when they got to the rod, the public shame they experienced (while claiming on Facebook that they didn’t mean it) will hopefully keep them from doing it again… or reaching for something even bigger next time.

It isn’t that we love communism or subscribe to the “liberal agenda.”  It’s not that we hate Trump (or blame him for these idiots).  It’s that we recognize the need to exercise social policing where real law enforcement can’t, and shouldn’t.  It’s not illegal to have bad manners, but your mom still taught you to chew with your mouth closed – just like it’s not illegal to carry a swastika flag down main street in my town, but if we bump into each other while you’re doing it, I’m going to call you out on being an idiot.

So, no, none of us are here to try to advance the Left’s talking points about this or that, nor are any of us card-carrying members of some media conspiracy.  We’re just people with strong beliefs and a sense of responsibility to the country we love.  Sometimes that means calling a Nazi a Nazi.  Sometimes that means reminding people that Hillary Clinton could have saved lives in Benghazi if she’d cared to.  When the same person says both things, it gets tough to decide which group to lump them into and then cheer or jeer them as a member of that team.  Maybe that’s because the team game is a bad one, and we all, writer and reader alike, deserve to be judged by better criteria.

Were there two sides to the violence in Charlottesville? Yup.  Are groups like ANTIFA worthy of the disgusting hero-worship they’ve received from some outlets?  Of course not.  The thing is, one more straight, white, Marine shouting at ANTIFA won’t make a lick of difference – if anything, that’s what some of those people live for.  Instead, if those with right leaning views make it clear that Nazi’s don’t represent them, and those with Left-leaning views make it clear that anarchists don’t represent them either, we can free ourselves from all of these morons and try to make actual progress in this country, instead of letting our debate about the merits of each drag us down to their depths.

Extremism just doesn’t work.  Whether we’re talking politics, religion, or butt plugs, we’ve all got to try to stay reasonable.  If you’re furious about the bad rap the non-racist protestors are getting for Charlottesville, fine, but that doesn’t make the bigots next to them better through proximity.  If you think the veterans that write for SOFREP must hate America because they also hate Nazis, however, all I ask is that you take a step back and try to think about that poor guy with the wooden rod up his butt.

It’s our job to stop hate movements from gaining popularity and social leverage by embarrassing them back into their mom’s basements.  I can’t fix ANTIFA, so I focus on the group that my platform can (try to) weaken.  In exchange, I pray those on the Left start following suit with their own extremist groups… but we can’t keep using their behavior as justification for our own.

When you see a wrong in the world that you have the power to right, you right it.  We’ve become so accustomed to pointing fingers, we’ve forgotten they’re attached to people who are damned good at getting things done.  If we create a culture of responsibility, of policing those who purport to represent us, maybe we can get past being lumped in with offensive ideologies by those who disagree with us.

Maybe we can even start to work together one day.

For all the anger tied to our nation’s history in the past few weeks, we tend to lose sight of what it was our founding fathers had in mind when they got this party started in the first place: people with differences of opinion working together to find a compromise that benefits us all.

It was good enough for George Washington, a man with his own failings but a powerful legacy of liberty.  In his time, that liberty didn’t extend to every person in the nation, but in our own, it can.

We just have to stop yelling at each other for long enough to talk.

Feature image courtesy of Twitter