The Valor Mirage: JD Vance, Ron DeSantis, and the Politics of Pretend Patriotism

James Donald Bowman — who today goes by his gender-affirming chosen name “JD Vance,” after discarding his second name, James David Hamel — has spent much of his political career mythologizing his brief time in the U.S. Marines. His service, largely administrative and journalistic in nature, has become the keystone of a manufactured image of rugged patriotism and stoic masculinity.

Like Al Gore before him, Vance served as a military journalist for roughly six months overseas. But unlike Gore — who volunteered for service in Vietnam despite opposing the war and survived attacks on bases where he was stationed — Vance’s deployment was uneventful. His uniform may have carried the same insignia, but his service did not bear the same risk.

This pattern — the polishing and inflation of a résumé built from proximity to conflict rather than participation in it — has become a familiar trope in American politics. The invocation of military service has long functioned as a moral credential in the national imagination, a shortcut to legitimacy in a country that still fetishizes war even as it forgets its veterans. Yet for many modern politicians, “service” has become less an act of sacrifice than a brand — a costume to be worn when convenient.

Take Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, another man who has built an empire on the illusion of valor. DeSantis served as a Navy JAG officer assigned to advise detainees at Guantánamo Bay — a posting that should have demanded the highest ethical rigor.

Instead, reports and witness statements have alleged that he eagerly volunteered to oversee, and in some cases participate in, the torture of prisoners.

Despite this grim record, DeSantis repeatedly recast himself as a combat warrior, even suggesting he had experience as a fighter pilot — a lie so grotesque it was publicly debunked by veterans’ organizations and investigative journalists. His “stolen valor” became part of a broader political strategy: to merge cruelty with masculinity, and authoritarianism with patriotism.

DeSantis’ widely-panned “Top Gun” ad portraying him as a fighter pilot.

Both Vance and DeSantis embody a cultural shift in which the aesthetics of military service — the posture, the uniform, the slogan — are deployed as political armor by men who have never faced true danger. They are not the first to do so. Of the fifty vice presidents in American history, twenty-three have held military records — yet seven of those never saw combat. For every war hero, there have been others who borrowed the glory of service without enduring its cost.

The mythology of American military service as political capital stretches back generations. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s rise to the presidency was built on genuine heroism — the strategic brilliance that ended World War II in Europe. But after Eisenhower, the line between military service and political performance began to blur. John F. Kennedy’s story of survival aboard PT-109 was real, but his campaign’s retelling — dramatized, cinematic, almost mythic — helped define the modern image of the “war hero” politician.

Then came the fractures.

Lyndon Johnson’s early military claims were quietly walked back when records showed he’d seen almost no combat. Richard Nixon, who served honorably in the Navy’s logistics corps, weaponized anti-war sentiment for political gain. By the time George W. Bush ascended to power — buoyed by a controversial stint in the Texas Air National Guard during Vietnam, where he was accused of receiving preferential treatment — the concept of “service” had been fully commodified. The military wasn’t just an experience anymore; it was a credential, a marketing point, a bullet on the résumé of power.

And then came Donald Trump, the draft-dodger-in-chief, who mocked prisoners of war and belittled the dead as “suckers” and “losers.” Trump’s disdain for actual service was matched only by his willingness to exploit its imagery — posing with generals, hosting military parades, and turning soldiers into props for a political theater of strength. His movement replaced valor with vanity, courage with cruelty, and patriotism with idolatry.

The lineage from Trump to DeSantis to Vance is clear. Each inherited the illusion that masculinity and legitimacy can be performed through the symbols of war — without ever enduring its consequences. The medals, the uniforms, the slogans, even the trauma — all reduced to stagecraft.

And yet, not all leaders chose the easy path. Hubert Humphrey, for instance, tried three times to enlist during World War II, rejected each time for being colorblind. Denied the chance to fight, he instead fought for civil rights, for labor, for humanity itself. Humphrey never wore a uniform in combat, but he waged moral wars that changed the nation. He didn’t need to prove his courage; he lived it.

That’s the divide in American politics today — between those who wear the uniform as a duty, and those who wear it as a disguise. Between those who understand that service means sacrifice, and those who think service means self-promotion.

The great irony is that the real test of courage — the defense of democracy, of truth, of humanity — is happening now, not on a battlefield abroad, but in the civic arena at home. And once again, the men wrapped in the rhetoric of war are running from the fight.

For years, I’ve written about how truth — especially data and fact — becomes malleable in the hands of power. The mythmaking around “military valor” is no different from the mythmaking around “economic strength,” “law and order,” or “freedom.” It’s all narrative architecture, built to justify hierarchy and hide contradiction.

When politicians like Vance or DeSantis weaponize their shallow proximity to war, they’re not honoring service — they’re rewriting it. They’re manufacturing legitimacy the same way corrupt officials manufacture statistics: by stripping context, inflating numbers, and counting on the public to never look too closely.

But truth is its own kind of service. It demands courage. It risks retaliation. And it’s the only defense left against the growing army of mythmakers rewriting not just their pasts, but our collective future.