Four years ago, I joined with a handful of Redditors to curate a list documenting the poor treatment of servicemembers and veterans by the Trump administration. Based on Pew Research data, we shouldn’t have stopped sharing this list simply because Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. In honor of the original posts by victorvictor1, I revived and updated the most recent version which is posted in the comments below due to character restrictions.

This is the version I’m going to work to keep updated. Most recent date and the pastebin link are at the top of the comment.

I’ve been in since Obama Was President so serving under Trump is nothing new. What is new is his vision and fervent desire to get revenge on his opponents. I’m not a grunt so obviously I won’t be directly called to hold a gun on a kid who had no choice on where they were born. My concern is I think more general. Like what if we do get an order to stop advocating for vaccine usage or I’m having to support an internment camp? Do I refuse ? Obviously the simple answer is resign my commission, but it’s not that simple. Do I continue to do my job because I can be a light in the darkness? Do I hold out in the hope that four years is only four years and eventually things will return to normal?

I just need some peace on this matter. We don’t talk about this in the workspace for obvious reasons. I think the general consensus at work is that we took an oath to the constitution and to obey the orders of those appointed over us, but who determines if a lawful order violates the constitution? If I’m told to assist with deporting naturalized citizens, that seems to violate the fourteenth amendment, but in no lawyer.

I've read that DOGE is coming to end medicare/medicaid, social security, and VA benefits. The era of government entitlement programs might be coming to a close.

Hey! My husband had a friend who is running around telling people he was a military sniper. Not specifying branch or MOS. My husband has known this guy since he was in his early 20s and I have known him for easily 17 years. He has never mentioned military service to me or my husband in all that time. You would think that he would want to chat about our service. Anyways, my husband obviously is going to cut him out of his life for this. I cut his wife out after she ruined about $400 worth of clothes and replaced with a half ass quilt. My husband wants to call him out in from of his co-workers. Should he and if he does what specifics should he ask for? Look I will be honest with you. I dont even like calling myself a veteran… but I am sure as hell not going to lie about my service. People who do this make me feel gross.

From Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions- “I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month. It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind. Armistice Day has become Veterans’ Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans’ Day is not. So I will throw Veterans’ Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don’t want to throw away any sacred things.”

I no longer recognize the country I signed up to defend and never know how to respond when someone says "thank you for your service".

Even though a part of me knew how this election would turn out, seeing so many ascribe to hatred and fear has chipped away any hope I had left that we would be able to turn things around.

Being in the south doesn't help because everyone expects me to be part of the conservative machine simply because I'm a veteran and when I point out how truly disgusting their chosen leader and polical ideation has been towards the military and veterans, it's as if a wall appears out of nowhere, blocking out any semblance of truth.

I have no idea how to fight that and to be honest I'm just exhausted. I can't imagine how women, BIPOC immigrants, LGBTQ, and countless others must feel living in a country where their very existence is questioned and ridiculed.

I am not sure even if I had a point to this post but I know others out there must feel the same. I don't know how to use my privilege to actually work towards change and it breaks my heart.

Over the last 33 years since my EAS from the USMC, this numbness about my services has increased. I keep trying to find ways to feel proud of my military service but I can't. This year especially.

Perhaps it's come full circle. When I enlisted during the Reagan administration, I was a teenager from a very small Texas town. I was ate up with fascism but didn't even know it. Over the course of my four year enlistment, I began to feel more and more uneasy about the cult of conservatism which is expressed in its purist form in the Corps. Towards the last few months of my enlistment as we counted down our deployment to Desert Storm, the brass held an all-hands muster for a briefing about the combat theater. They started a slide show of the mutilated, burned, and dismembered bodies of Iraqis. The room erupted in "oo-rah!" and general cheers. I realize they were just trying to toughen us up a bit and mentally prepare us for the realities of combat but the celebratory bloodlust was a bridge too far for me. Those were human beings and they were now some grotesque display for these guys to jerk off to. The world felt upside down.

It was a mental crisis for me--my entire identity was shaped by my belonging to the Corps (they make sure of that in bootcamp) but now I was disassociating and feeling lost. Until this point, my plan was to retire from the USMC but now I couldn't get out fast enough.

Since 1991, I've moved steadily to the left every year. After the election, I'm feeling the same disassociation but with a country that is showing itself as the true ultra right fascist state it is. Just like my experience with my enlistment, I feel stupid for ever believing it was something different than what it was. I feel like I served for nothing.

Any left friendly fla or ranges in Georgia?

So I am a volunteer at a local zoo. I am a keeper. But we are dependent on volunteers. A lot of those volunteers openly and with more excitement than necessary to vote for he who shall not be named. These people seemed like people I would want to associate and be friends with until I found who they really are. But now I am angry! I don’t want to even speak to them, but I have to because of my position.

How do I reconcile with this? Have you found a way?

*pic of cute animal to hopefully brighten your day! 🥰 Did you know female lions can grow a mane?

I recently graduated with my masters and moved to a new state. I couldn’t find a job elsewhere so I signed up for AmeriCorps as a housing navigator working with homeless veterans. I’m a leftist who opposes imperialism but I also understand that really messed up circumstances often lead people to joining the military in the first place. Especially the population I am serving.

Is this a conflict of interest here? It is looking like my job prospects, for now, will involve helping veterans for a little while before I can pivot to say senior care and/or trauma survivors (I usually prefer to work with SA/DV victims). Has anyone else been in this situation?

My apologies if this isn’t allowed here, I was just looking for a place with folks with the lived experience to understand.

Edit: I just want to say wow these comments were so helpful. Thank you to everyone who chimed in!!

Hi! I first want to say that I am so thankful this Reddit exists. I know this has been discussed already and I skimmed the discussion on Project 2025 and the risk to our benefits and pay. I am going to be honest. I am kind of spiraling after yesterday’s results. I am a woman, veteran, and mother to a gay daughter. I don’t know what I am really looking for. Maybe someone to tell me it won’t happen. Maybe someone to tell me that it won’t be as bad as it looks. I can’t support my daughter without that pay. We will lose everything! I am talking homeless. It’s not like I can go get a job that will that will pay me what the VA does (I am TDIU). How could our brothers and sisters vote for him? How could everyone that is always complaining this country doesn’t do enough for us vote for him? I don’t get it. Please tell me it will be ok!

I thought that I wouldn’t really care who won the election, had the idea that the candidates are just basically different sides of the same coin. But after being surrounded by co-workers that expressed support for Trump, it’s just exhausting. The amount of complicit supporters of unapologetic fascism is mildly annoying. I used the word “annoying” because I have the expectation that the United States is fascist, but I suppose seeing the anecdotal extent is eye opening. I just want my ETS date to be now. So far to get my mind off this disturbance, I am just looking at mutual aid organizations that I’ll be donating to.

I EAS’d from the USMC in 2020 and had a couple friends but mostly acquaintances. After the election, it seems like 90% of the people I served with support trump and just weren’t “out” for a lack of a better term. Like closet trump supporters. The people who are now feel emboldened are now just blatantly and openly racist, homophobic etc… (This isn’t only with vets obviously, I have some fair wether “friends” that have started acting like this seemingly overnight).

I feel like i’m one of a couple rare leftists within my immediate USMC/vet community sphere and have good reason to be upset and anxious with Trump being elected as I wouldn’t benefit from him at all. But to my knowledge most of them wouldn’t benefit either.

I feel lost and alone, like I don’t really have any community that I identify with. These aren’t people who care about facts and made an emotional decision in order to “own the libs” (most common meme shared by far). Where do I find more likeminded people? I am in school for biology in a conservative area.

Essentially the title. Just looking to get some like minded perspectives of what life is/was like in SF from a social, political, and personal perspective. Really, I just want to hear what you folks have to say. I've always held the Green Berets in a pretty high regard, and even as a leftist, think that a lot of what they do is valuable and generally good. (could just be the propaganda talking)