This is an opinion column.

I did not serve in the military. I cannot give you a specific reason why.

By 1974, when I turned 18, the draft lottery — launched in 1969 to tab young men to serve in the Vietnam War — was still a thing. Of a sort. Lotteries were conducted between 1971 and 1975, but by then the call was only to take the physical, not enlist.

I watched my lottery unfold on TV, like a game show you didn’t exactly want to win. My birthday, March 19, was the 197th date drawn. Off I went to college.

Like almost all Americans, though, I am related to and know plenty of people who served. To all who either wore or still wear the uniform, I am boundlessly grateful. For your decision. For your risk. For your sacrifice.

With all my sincerity: thank you.

I respect your training and the discipline it instills. Last week during the warmup for my workout, a new young trainer announced: “I’m Air Force, so I believe in counting out our jumping jacks. If you’re not loud enough, we’ll start over.” We were loud enough.

I pray that our veterans receive all of the medical and mental health treatment they deserve, knowing they do not.

I’ve walked through Arlington National and other cemeteries where patriots are resting — true patriots.

Now, I’m not sure when that word — patriot — got hijacked and gutted. When what it means to be a loyal American was twisted and tortured until in the minds of many it fit only a narrow elucidation crafted by, of course, the twisted torturers.

When did protesting injustice, for instance, become unpatriotic? Weren’t our nation’s founders protesting injustice?

When did expressing an opinion contrary to those of the twisted torturers and their minions make one less a patriot?

I don’t know exactly when being a patriot began to mean only when you are patriotic to me.

I do know what true patriotism looks like. What a patriot looks like.

Like Air Force Gen. Charles Q Brown, Jr., Coast Guard Adm. Lisa Franchetti and Air Force Gen. Jim Slife.

They are among our best — our most highly trained, vastly experienced, battle-tested and among the most resoundingly respected military leaders.

Yet in yet another weak-kneed late-Friday purge by the Trump administration, they are no longer leading.

Brown, a four-star Air Force General with four decades of combat duty, was fired last week as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff where he’d served as the highest-ranking military officer in the nation since October 2023.

Franchetti, chief of naval operations and a four-star admiral who led the US. 6th Fleet and U.S. Naval Forces in Korea and commanded a naval destroyer and twice served as an aircraft carrier strike group commander, was fired, too. She was the first woman to helm naval operations, and the first woman on the Joint Chiefs.

Fired, too, was Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Slife, an Auburn grad with extensive deployment service whose nomination to the post in September 2023 was choked for months by Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s stone-headed hold on confirmations.

Forget DOGE and its senseless bloodletting of federal workers — civil servants caught in a tsunami of incivility — without any assessment of their value or proof of the so-called “fraud and waste” Elon Musk claims to be rooting out. These firings weren’t about efficiency, but ego.

Not about keeping America safe but making us look silly.

Not about patriotism but pettiness.

Brown was reportedly fired because he dared express his feelings, as an African American Air Force pilot, about the 2020 murder of George Floyd beneath the knee of a Minneapolis police officer in an emotional four-minute video.

No justifiable reasons were given for the firings of Franchetti or Slife, only hints that they dared to value diversity in military leadership.

“I think that we’re strongest and most effective as a force when we build strong, inclusive, connected teams,” said Franchetti last year at a convening of the National Naval Officers Association and The Association of Naval Services Officers. “That’s how we deliver a war-fighting advantage every day. And that’s what leadership is all about: creating the most qualified, combat-ready, team possible.”

Slife, also in the aftermath of Floyd’s murder, reportedly wrote that as a reflection of the nation, the Air Force should not ignore racial realities. “We’d be naive to think issues of institutional racism and unconscious bias don’t affect us,” he said. “We can’t ignore it. We have to face it. And to face it, we have to talk about it.”

While the firings were clearly Trump’s doings, they were executed by new Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, a TV host and former major in the Army Reserve. Be it noted that Hegseth last year questioned Brown’s qualifications and promotion in a book he wrote, wielding the all-too-familiar “race card” retort of those too insecure to engage in an honest conversation about race.

Of those who — quoting one of my favorite military movie scenes — “can’t handle the truth.”

He wrote: “Was [Brown’s promotion] because of his skin color? Or his skill? We’ll never know, but always doubt — which on its face seems unfair to C.Q. But since he has made the race card one of his biggest calling cards, it doesn’t really much matter.”

Trump, Musk and their chainsaw oligarchy have made deleting us their calling card. Diminishing and deleting all who don’t show fealty to them.

Diminishing and deleting our best – our patriots. In the military and beyond.

Let’s be better tomorrow than we are today. My column appears on AL.com, and digital editions of The Birmingham News, Huntsville Times, and Mobile Press-Register. Tell me what you think at [email protected], and follow me at twitter.com/roysj, Instagram @roysj and BlueSky.