COMMON DREAMS – When Rory Fanning, a burly veteran who served in the 2nd Army Ranger Battalion and was deployed in Afghanistan in 2002 and 2004, appeared at the Donald Trump rally in Chicago last month he was wearing the top half of his combat fatigues. As he moved through the crowd, dozens of Trump supporters shouted greetings such as “Welcome home, brother” and “Thank you for your service.” Then came the protest that shut down the rally. Fanning, one of the demonstrators, pulled out a flag that read “Vets Against Racism, War and Empire.”
Click here to see a YouTube video of Rory Fanning being ejected from a Donald Trump rally. During the incident he was doused with a drink and struck.
“Immediately someone threw a drink on me,” he said when I interviewed him on my teleSUR show, “Days of Revolt.” “I got hit from behind in the head three or four times. It was quite the switch, quite the pivot on me. Questioning the narrative, questioning Donald Trump’s narrative, and I was suddenly out of their good graces.”
Nationalists do not venerate veterans. They venerate veterans who read from the approved patriotic script. America is the greatest and most powerful country on earth. Those we fight are depraved barbarians. Our enemies deserve death. God is on our side. Victory is assured. Our soldiers and Marines are heroes. Deviate from this cant, no matter how many military tours you may have served, and you become despicable. The vaunted patriotism of the right wing is about self-worship. It is a raw lust for violence. It is blind subservience to the state. And it works to censor the reality of war.
“A lot of soldiers who’ve come back from war see themselves as anything but a hero,” Fanning said. “To throw that term around loosely is dangerous. It’s a way to manipulate soldiers. It buys their silence.”
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So, I’m not for or against any of the crazy stuff you post on this site. I served for the right that you should have that ability. what bothers me is this story you tell. It sounds like a thing we call stolen valor. There is no respectable Army ranger or soldier in general that would only wear the top half of fatigues to a civilian function. Its unheard of. that dress uniform means something to those of us who served. Any of you civilians can pretend to dress up like a service member. You can put on a convincing back story just as well. Fact is we know our own. We know your bullshit.
ed note–the ‘crazy stuff’ that is posted here is 100% factually-based and with absolutely no ‘bullshit’ in it, using your words. The only reason you characterize it as such is because you don’t like it, pure and simple, no different than those in the pro-Abort community whose hackles get raised every time they are forced to view pictures of what the end result of their positions are.
I know your type very, very well and got a good taste of it many years ago when I ‘wore the uniform’. You people get dressed up in your army clothes and get your army gear and you’ll go and kill ANYONE your government tells you to kill and will do it all under the guise of ‘protecting freedom’ because you are too brainwashed to see that you are being taken for a ride. Besides the politicians themselves (who see the Constitution as of no more value to them than toilet paper) you people who blindly go about the world causing murder and mayhem–that must–by virtue of the simple laws of physics–come back to haunt us are more dangerous to our security and freedom than a million man army crossing our borders.
Trump’s groupies are just as brainwashed as the followers of Jim Jones. It’s a cult of personality which gives meaning to their drab lives and hopeless situations. Anyone who invades their space and tries to inject a little truth gets the bum’s rush accompanied by a chant of the cult leader’s name. Trump’s the messiah come to save them with his big mouth, bluff and bluster. It’s a scene reminiscent of the goings-on in the pavilion at Jonestown.