America likes to pretend it’s draped in courage.
That its flag stands for grit and resolve.
But that’s just a story.
A myth weaved by those who mistake volume for virtue.
When you look at the ledger of real history—unfiltered, unsanitized, and unhinged from fourth-grade fairytales—you find a different story.

These colors do run.

The War We Couldn’t Dodge

World War II wasn’t America’s moment of moral clarity. It was a war we were dragged into—kicking, screaming, and isolationist to the bitter end. Not out of a love for justice. Not out of some shining democratic beacon. But because Pearl Harbor forced our hand.

FDR had to twist a nation of armchair fascists and boardroom Nazi sympathizers into action.

Let’s not forget: Republicans of the time didn’t want to intervene. Hell, plenty of them admired Hitler—an orderly strongman who broke unions, crushed communists, and restored “national pride.” The American right saw a mirror in the Führer. The America First Committee was real. Prescott Bush’s Nazi bank ties were real. Lindbergh’s Nazi sympathies were real. That wasn’t fringe—it was mainstream.

What stopped them? A united Democratic government. Roosevelt’s spine. A Democratic House. A Democratic Senate. And a vision that didn’t flinch at blood. That’s what it took to break the axis of evil. Not empty slogans. Not flag pins. Action. Sacrifice. And a thousand contradictions.

The Wars We Started—And Fled

Then came Korea. Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan.
Blood deserts where the red, white, and blue bled out in silence.

These weren’t wars of necessity. They were misadventures in hubris, often ignited by Republican firebrands foaming at the mouth about dominoes, oil, or vengeance.

  • Vietnam: A Republican mess Eisenhower helped fertilize. Kennedy escalated. But it was Nixon—oh yes, the “law and order” avatar—who dropped more bombs on Southeast Asia than all of World War II combined, then scurried out the back door.

  • Iraq: Bush Senior dipped a toe in for oil. Bush Junior dove headfirst, dragged by neocons whispering fantasies of democracy at gunpoint. It was never about WMDs. It was about empire. About profit. About control.

  • Afghanistan: Started with bipartisan horror after 9/11. But 20 years later, it was just another graveyard of empires. America left it like it leaves everything: unfinished, unlearned, unmoved.

Each time, the flag waved high on entry and slunk low on exit. Nothing gained but body bags, PTSD, and military-industrial profit margins.

These colors do run.
But only after they’ve painted enough villages red.

The Rot in the Spine

The American right fetishizes strength, yet recoils from sacrifice.
They invoke warriors but gut the VA.
They worship the military as an abstraction, but not the soldiers who come home broken, haunted, addicted.

They scream “support the troops!” while sending them into endless wars with no exit strategy and no national interest.
It’s cosplay patriotism. Camouflage as lifestyle branding. No risk. No accountability.

What do they actually stand for?
Tax cuts. Corporations. Culture wars.
Christian nationalism with fascist flair.

America hasn’t “fought for freedom” in 80 years.
It fights for markets. For influence.
For military contracts and campaign donors.
And when it stops being easy, it runs.

Democrats are no saints either.
But at least the last time America fought a war for something real,
it was because Democrats had the whole house of power
and the gall to use it.

The Flag Is Not Sacred

You can love a country and still rip its delusions apart.
You can honor the dead by refusing to lie about why they died.

The American flag isn’t stained because people protest it.
It’s stained because people died under it for lies.

If you want to talk about valor,
talk about the medics who carried shattered friends across minefields.
Talk about the translators left behind.
Talk about the 20-year-old kid with no legs who now begs a system for scraps.

Don’t you dare talk about it in the same breath as lobbyists and think tanks.

Conclusion: Nothing Noble, Just Noise

The truth is, America doesn’t fight evil.
It manufactures it.
Then monetizes the cleanup.
And when the fire spreads too far, it blames the match.

Maybe World War II was the last war worth winning.
Maybe that was the last time the arc bent toward justice, not profit.

Since then?
It’s been shadows and sales pitches.
Power for its own sake.
Rage without meaning.
Death without reflection.

These colors do run.
Not because Americans are cowards.
But because somewhere along the way,
we started saluting the wrong things.