“My enlistment came a few years after that world-changing day in September 2001. Instead of expounding on where I was that day—we’ve all heard that story from a million different people a million different times—I’ll just say that I, an impressionable teenager, became swept up in the gross manufactured patriotism that emerged from the rubble and cancerous ashes of those fallen towers. It wasn’t the far-right, red-hat-wearing nationalism that’s disguised as the patriotism we see on television today. It was the red, white, and blue bald eagle Bud Light commercial kind of patriotism. The lifted Chevy Silverado with a yellow Support the Troops magnet and truck nuts kind of patriotism. The please rise from your seats, remove your hat, and place your hand over your heart to recite the National Anthem before you watch young men give each other CTE on the gridiron kind of patriotism. And to quote Lee Greenwood, I was “proud to be an American.” WarMilitaryPatriotism Book:Roadside: My Journey to Iraq and the Long Road Home Source: Roadside: My Journey to Iraq and the Long Road Home