Many people have said that anti-Catholicism is the last acceptable bigotry, that may be true nationally but another bit of bigotry hiding behind the “thanks for your service” phrase that is so often mouthed is anti-military bigotry. The subtext of much of the reporting on military veterans is pushing memes that would be familiar to Civil War veterans (not kidding, post Civil War demobilized soldiers were often portrayed as morphine addicts and prone to both violence and crime), because most of them started there. Drug abuse, depression, suicide, homelessness, violence, domestic abuse are all widely associate with military service in mainstream journalism without even a whisper of acknowledgement of young men and women getting focus in their lives, lives repaired and turned around, mentors and role models created, college graduates and entrepreneurs created. Now, in the aftermath of General John Kelly’s well-deserved chastisement of Florida Representative Frederica Wilson–the loud mouth race-baiter with the fashion sense of a rodeo clown and the manners of one of the bulls (if “empty barrel” is racist, then I’ve just broken all kinds of rules)–that anti-military bigotry has felt comfortable enough to leap out into the open and dare anyone to challenge it.

It was in the logic of a military coup that John Kelly advanced his four arguments defending the President. https://t.co/XyOa0eW5vS — The New Yorker (@NewYorker) October 21, 2017

The article itself is simply juvenile. It is the fevered imagination of someone vaguely familiar with the United States and its history and that is coupled with a blatantly dishonest description of Kelly’s statement. But it was met with kudos from the media and the loony left:

Headline is obviously provocative, but Gessen gets at deeper roots of why what Kelly said is so so problematic. https://t.co/slHeVs0Amy — Elliott Lusztig (@ezlusztig) October 20, 2017

Tweets by mehdirhasan

.@mashagessen – an “expert in authoritarianism” for The Weekly List on possibly the most disturbing part of Week 49. https://t.co/InrCPE5JBo — Amy Siskind (@Amy_Siskind) October 21, 2017

Tweets by frankrichny

Interesting analysis of Kelly statement from someone who grew up in the Soviet Union. —> https://t.co/f4uYFBzr9Q — Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) October 22, 2017

The real objection is that Kelly was able to effectively demolish the goofy narrative being pushed by the left and their willing idiots on the right. And when it comes to willing idiots, no one takes second place to the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin. She’s long been portrayed by the Post as a “conservative,” but one of the most useful side effects of Trump’s presidency is to expose her as a frothing leftist. For instance, back in June she hammered Trump for abandoning the Paris Climate Agreement, she’d previously criticized Obama for signing on to it. Just last week, she was screeching about Trump’s stupidity wanting to modify the Iran nuclear deal after she spent over a year complaining about the deal when Obama made it.

Opinion | Let's not staff a White House with generals ever again https://t.co/zd7zZ4Iu4P — Jennifer Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) October 22, 2017

Kelly, rather than restrain these authoritarian impulses, fuels them. https://t.co/zd7zZ4Iu4P — Jennifer Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) October 22, 2017

Kelly’s eagerness to defend unconscionable behavior and lack of respect for civilian politicians feed Trump's demons https://t.co/zd7zZ4Iu4P — Jennifer Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) October 22, 2017

Congress should start by barring generals from acting in civilian capacities in the White House. https://t.co/zd7zZ4Iu4P — Jennifer Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) October 22, 2017

This is beyond bizarre.

Kelly is only a “general” in honorific terms. He’s a retired officer who is now a civilian. Apparently laying down and rolling over are the only proper responses from Republican White Houses–it seems as though the Bush White House and its vapid and flaccid reluctance to push back are mandated by the Constitution–because she clearly considers correcting the record on a vile slander beyond the pale. Civilian politicians aren’t due respect by virtue of their position. Kelly spoke powerfully about what it is like to not only being a military commander dealing with the human costs of his orders but as the father of a young officer killed in combat.

Rubin’s position is not only stupid but illegal. Congress can’t bar American citizens from serving in the White House. It can and does require that active duty general officers receive Senate approval before changing assignments but Congress attempting to regulate the hiring of the Executive Office of the President is blatantly unconstitutional. Moreover, it is cheap bigotry that is a slap in the face of every man and woman serving in uniform today. She is saying that by virtue of reaching the pinnacle of the profession of arms and retiring you are barred from serving the President of the United States.

She should be ashamed and if she had anything like a conscience or intelligence she’d find the next speeding Amtrak train and toss her worthless carcass in front of it to atone for this crap.