They stormed the Capitol, tried to overturn democracy, and now get folded flags and bugles. Next up: Benedict Arnold Day, with free hot dogs and fireworks.
The U.S. Air Force has apparently decided that storming the Capitol in the service of a petulant conman is now the moral equivalent of storming Omaha Beach. Ashli Babbitt, Air Force veteran turned insurrectionist, is being given full military funeral honors. Not because she died defending the republic, but because she died trying to smash it. If that isn’t the most grotesque parody of patriotism since Benedict Arnold asked for back pay, I don’t know what is.
Let’s be clear: Babbitt wasn’t some passive bystander. She wasn’t sipping tea on the Capitol lawn. She was actively trying to climb through a broken window toward the Speaker’s Lobby, wrapped in a Trump flag like some tacky superhero cape. And she died in the very act of breaking the law. That’s the kind of martyrdom Republicans now peddle: cosplay patriots who confuse sedition with service.
This isn’t about honoring veterans; it’s about laundering treason. Trump and his cronies are still desperate to rewrite January 6 as a patriotic jamboree—like the Boston Tea Party, but with more selfies and worse dental care. The Air Force has now obligingly joined the fiction, granting the aura of sacrifice to a woman who was part of an assault that left police officers battered, windows shattered, and democracy itself on the line.
And for what? So Donald J. Trump can keep hawking the Big Lie like a late-night infomercial host. “Act now and you too can overturn an election with just three easy payments of $19.99!”
There was a time—not so long ago—when insurrectionists met firing squads. The Republicans who now whine about “law and order” used to idolize the Founders, men who wrote sedition laws precisely to prevent mob lunacy. The Confederates, when they rose against the Union, at least wore uniforms and declared war. These January 6 rioters wrapped themselves in QAnon memes and looted the Speaker’s office. Yet now, thanks to political cowardice and military timidity, they’re handed the folded flag of legitimacy.
It is insulting—not only to the Constitution but to every soldier buried at Arlington who actually died in defense of the nation, not in service to a tantrum. To put Babbitt on the same ceremonial plane as those who fought at Anzio or Khe Sanh is to desecrate memory itself.
Republicans love to bellow about gun rights, about using force to defend their freedoms. Well, on January 6, the guns were pointed at the mob, and perhaps they should have barked a little louder. Instead of heroes, we got hooligans. Instead of patriots, we got putschists. And instead of shame, we now have sanctification.
This funeral is not closure; it’s propaganda. It’s the Air Force bending to a political narrative that says loyalty to Trump outweighs loyalty to the republic. If Ashli Babbitt is a martyr, then the word “martyr” has been stripped of all meaning, just as “patriot” was stripped the moment Proud Boys put it on their T-shirts.
What makes this grotesque charade possible is the same thing that has hollowed out so many of our institutions: cowardice disguised as reconciliation. The Air Force should have remembered that military honors are not a participation trophy. They are meant for those who fought for the country—not those who tried to burn its capital down.
If treason now earns a 21-gun salute, then the republic is saluting its own decline.
