As a vet, I’ve always hated those who make a pretentious show of “supporting the troops”. That kind of support is a kilometer wide and a millimeter deep.

Pretending that these monuments are somehow the most important thing about the shutdown is especially vile considering that the November disabled vet checks probably won’t go out on time any more than the WIC payments or the other things that will hurt many anonymous people across the nation thanks only to greed.

Kipling was a strange man himself, a good middle class imperialist and poet, but lose his fake accent and read his works in straight English? Aye, then Tommy and Joe and Hans and Ivan and all the rest of the misused soldiers are there in their best light.