On Thursday evening, Tucker Carlson—whose combat experience seems to be limited to that time he was kicked out of an elite Swiss boarding school—decided it would be great to go after Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley. Carlson declared that the general was “a pig” and “stupid” and “not brave,” all because Milley had the gall to say that understanding the history of racism is not a bad thing. This comes a month after Carlson and other right-wing pundits launched a series of tirades about how the military had become “woke” and after Fox News played up a Russian commercial as showing that America is “doomed.” 

This follows the years of Donald Trump in which Gold Star families were treated as traitors, military prisoners gathered scorn because Trump “liked people who weren’t captured,” and Americans who died in battle were either “losers” or “suckers,” take your pick. Trump called John McCain a “loser” for being a prisoner in Vietnam. He also called George H. W. Bush a “loser” for being shot down in World War II. He lined up a whole stack of generals to give his White House some semblance of credibility, then threw them out one by one when they refused to go along with his degradations of democracy. Oh, and when Trump was looking for some place to get funds for building his “wall,” he took the money that had been dedicated to building homes, schools, and hospitals for military families.

A proper modern Republican hates the generals, hates the troops, hates the veterans, hates their families, and hates their survivors. Those same Republicans are, of course, extremely pro-military. 

All of this is just one example of how Republicans are drawing a heavy line between what they think of as Real America™ and real America. In one of these, Republicans are the brave upholders of a stainless Anglo-Saxon tradition that has brought light to the savages and represents the last best home of civilization. In the other, they are building on top of a racist foundation with blocks of ignorance that are actively working to make the lives of every individual in the nation worse while deliberately risking the sustainability of the republic. Guess which one is which?

When they claim to be pro-military, Trump, Carlson, Fox News, and the rest don’t mean the actual military. They certainly don’t mean the thousands of officers and enlisted who have served with Milley around the world. Or the thousands of sailors who served under Navy Captain Brett Crozier before he was removed for actually trying to protect his crew.

Republicans don’t support that military, They support the Real Military™. The animated G.I. Joe military. The John Wayne military. The fictional military that exists only to provide drama and color for a world full of guys who feel their time at fake military prep schools is more than adequate to educate them well above those who had to face enemy fire in the field. The military that is made up only of scrappy white kids who love their nation so much that they would happily pitch in to overthrow democracy whenever the Real President™ asks.

Even Republicans who were in the real military feel obliged to play up the Real Military™. Just ask former Marine J.D. Vance, who wrote a whole book about how his fellow recruits were “Black, white, and Hispanic” and how many of his fellow Marines were “staunch liberals.” That was then. Now Vance is out there slugging away with claims about how Southern, rural, white conservatives are carrying all the burdens of the nation. For the sake of a little untrademarked reality, California is the biggest source of military recruits; Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans all serve at a higher level, than their percentage in the population; though the upper ranks are “disproportionally white”; it’s true that the state with the highest percentage of military recruits is a red state; but it’s also true that the state with the lowest percentage of military recruits is a red state.

Republican claims to be pro-military are all part of their broader claim to be the party of patriots. It’s what The Washington Post described as the “shadow reality world” in which the Republican Party is fighting against a series of imagined threats to protect Real America™.

It’s the reality that’s presented in low-budget films by Dinesh D’Souza, Mike Lindell, and Overstock.com Chief Executive Patrick Byrne. All of them are selling an expanded version of the QAnon mythology, in which Donald Trump is a Christ-like figure at the center of a fight against the semi-infinite forces of darkness. It’s the reality in which OAN can suggest that tens of thousands of Americans spread across a half dozen states, many of them Republican officials, were united in a secret conspiracy to throw the election—and follow up by suggesting that those tens of thousands of Americans need to be executed.

It’s a world in which “conspiracy theories that grow more dizzyingly complex by the day” and where Donald Trump will be back in March, make that August, make that September, and remember …  the Storm is coming!

For white supremacists, it’s a pleasant fantasy world in which their every failing is the fault of radical Marxists, AOC’s fashion choices, and critical race theory. Ultimate redemption is always right around the corner, right around the corner, right around the … anyway, it’s never more than a Friedman Unit before Hillary will finally go to jail. It’s a world where the most abhorrent thoughts about torture and murder are welcome, and where the most outlandish theories get praise. One where expertise and experience are to be disdained.

“They have their own version of YouTube, their own message groups. They have their own whole set of publications … You have to wonder what percent of America is even aware of this shadow reality world,” said elections expert Harri Hursti.  Unfortunately, the answer is nearly 100%. Because while Republicans may be living in Real America™, their actions are impacting real Americans.

Now, let’s all go watch a movie about a sniper who shoots down brown-skinned terrorists from miles away and never misses while coming home to his hawt blond wife and driving a pickup on weekends. The military. We love those guys.