When I had no personal knowledge or experiences with the military, I will admit I felt that conservatives had some ownership of it. Military pride and support oozes from the right, and in many ways, I felt that on the inside as well. I will never forget when I attended my first military ball with my husband for the Nevada National Guard in 2013. During the formal ceremony, there was a formulaic and required toast to our president, Barack Obama, and a drunk and rowdy table of enlisted soldiers heckled and booed. They were not disciplined, despite the disrespect being clear misconduct.

When my husband later went to Army JAG in 2016, I had an open mind — until there was an actual lesson in JAG school training, with a PowerPoint, materials and homework, on your spouse’s duties and role in your career advancement. I learned quickly that I will never win a military spouse award. My husband then received active duty orders to locate at a remote Army base where there was no option but to live on base. Entering this new world, I was constantly surprised. I was surprised to learn that we would live in neighborhoods on base by rank, and that families within those neighborhoods would pay different prices for the same house, also based on rank — those who earn more, pay more. That principle would hold true for many things, including military hotel rooms and tickets to events. And every time, I would wait for someone to decry the socialism as unfair. No one ever did.

Donald Trump’s incompetence made life harder. Right away, his administrative blunders led to grocery stores and day care centers shutting down even where they were the only such services available to people. Funding was cut or miscommunicated; on base housing projects stalled. It was only off the base that outsiders gushed about how much Trump was doing for our troops.

In 2017, Trump tweeted that all transgender individuals would be banned from serving in the military in any capacity. As the national debate was occurring, I was on a small, isolated military base with a good number of transgender soldiers — where I didn’t hear a single member of the community share the president’s sentiments. What I heard from service members is that they respected the choice to serve, and that there was no difference between signing up while motivated in part by college tuition assistance, or signing up motivated in part by the insurance for the health care expenses. It was the old sentiment that you’re still running laps around those sitting on the couch (like the draft dodger in chief, I’ll add).

That was an eye-opening experience for me. When I actually stepped back and looked at this imperfect community, I realized it was the most diverse community that I had ever been a part of. I grew up in Reno. I went to a private university, and then to law school. It wasn’t until living on an Army base that I experienced substantial diversity of all kinds: LGBTQ, racial, economic, cultural, religious, geographic, you name it. When we talk about pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, we don’t explicitly talk about the black and brown kids that had military recruiters come into their low-income high schools and offer them financial security and stability when they didn’t have the same options I had. There’s a lot to unpack, there, but you have to commend the choices they made.

That’s part of why I was so heartbroken when President Trump used the military to attack peaceful protesters this summer on his way to a morally devoid photo op. The soldiers in those uniforms are America. They come from every state, every background and economic class, and like America, that means a disproportionate amount of them were low-income, struggling kids, many of whom have shared lived experiences with those outraged over the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and others.

We completed four years active duty and moved home in the middle of a pandemic. There were many moments throughout the experience where I held my breath. When the request came for JAGs that would be willing to go to the U.S.-Mexico border to help separate children from their families, I was relieved that no one I knew considered it. 

Over the years, I also met many phenomenal female leaders bold enough to use their exceptionalism to serve within what is traditionally a good old boy’s club. I met many military families who went above and beyond to provide support to strangers upon each arrival to a place where they didn’t know anyone. 

Today, we have come full circle. My husband is on Nevada National Guard orders to Washington, D.C. to protect our democracy from domestic terrorism and to ensure a peaceful transfer of power, orders he received within 24 hours of last week’s attack on the Capitol. (There haven’t been COVID tests or any mention of vaccinating the soldiers.)

I can only speak for myself, because my husband believes deeply in his oath and the Constitution. I didn’t have the words to explain to my daughter where her dad is when she asked. This is a new military experience for me. This month will be hard — though not nearly as hard as the much longer stretches of deployment for neighbors I’ve met along the way, such as the mom we lived next door to at the beginning of the pandemic with four children, one struggling with epilepsy, whose husband’s deployment location couldn’t be disclosed.

An enemy has been bred by the president of the United States and unleashed on our soil with the intention of unraveling the fabric of our democracy. This is home-grown terrorism. And the sedition, vitriol, and racism that it is spewing is antithetical to the service members that make up the U.S. military. Tens of thousands of service members are away from their families and risking their lives in America, because of Americans, for America.

No one gets to claim the military as a facet of their political party. If you support the troops, you must also support the rule of law, support the peaceful transition of power, and denounce those who would sow seeds of doubt in our democracy for personal political gain. As one of my favorite captains says whenever people thank him for his service, “just keep paying your taxes.”   

Bailey Bortolin, Esq. is the Statewide Policy Director for the Nevada Coalition of Legal Service Providers. In this role she advocates for low-income and vulnerable Nevadans in the state law making process.  She received her bachelors degree from American University, School of Public Affairs in 2012, and her juris doctor from UNLV Boyd of School of Law in 2015. She is a member of the State Bar of Nevada and the District of Columbia Bar.