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 patri…