⚠️ WARNING: THIS IS NOT YOUR GRANDFATHER’S VETERANS DAY POST ⚠️ Contains swearing, sincerity, rage, reverence, and zero tolerance for performative patriotism. If you think “supporting the troops” means slapping a decal on your SUV while voting against their benefits—this is not for you. If you’re allergic to the idea that some heroes wore combat boots and eyeliner—brace yourself. We’re talking about the queer, trans, and unflinchingly human veterans who bled for a country still deciding if they count. Proceed with pride, profanity, and the understanding that freedom isn’t straight, sanitized, or for sale.

Every Veteran’s Day, we’re told to “thank the troops.” And we should. Thank the ones who believed enough in this messy, contradictory, half-broken experiment of a country to wear the uniform and say, I’ll stand between you and danger. Some came home heroes. Some came home haunted. Some didn’t come home at all.  Most got a handshake, a parade, and a benefits package so stingy it could be mistaken for punishment.

And now? The same government that loves to wrap itself in the flag like a security blanket is slashing those benefits, “streamlining” the VA, and letting veterans live out their golden years on folding chairs at underfunded clinics. All while FOTUS preens about how much he “loves our vets”—except the ones who got captured, the ones who didn’t vote for him, or the ones who dared to be queer while serving.

He’s got a trans ban back on the books, LGBTQ+ veterans being shoved out of the ranks, and that sideshow “WhiskeyLeaks” clown talking about “rebranding” the Department of Defense like it’s a goddamn failing Applebee’s instead of the world’s most expensive bureaucracy. 

They don’t see soldiers. They see marketing problems.

But America’s real strength has never come from the generals or the grifters—it’s come from the people who served despite them.

Leonard Matlovich earned a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star in Vietnam before he came out as gay and told the Pentagon, kick me out if you dare.

Christine Jorgensen served in World War II, came home, transitioned, and forced America to look her in the eye and see the woman she always was.

Frank Kameny fought fascists overseas, then fought discrimination at home when his own government fired him for being gay—and he never stopped fighting.

Kristin Beck served twenty years in the SEALs—Team Six, the elite of the elite—and when she came out as a transgender woman, she did what SEALs do best: completed another mission under impossible odds.

That’s courage. Not the flag-waving kind, the quiet kind—the kind that doesn’t fit neatly in a campaign ad.

So this Veteran’s Day, don’t just thank the straights.

Thank the queers, the trans, the ones who served a nation that still debates whether they have a right to exist. They wore the same uniform, swore the same oath, faced the same fire. And despite everything—the erasure, the bans, the hate—they still show up.

Because they know something the flag-fondlers never will: 

Patriotism isn’t obedience. It’s the stubborn, defiant belief that this country can still be better.