Staff Sgt. Jason Rivera, 26, a Marine recruiter in Pittsburgh, went to the home of a high school student who had expressed interest in joining the Marine Reserve to talk to his parents.

It was a large home in a well-to-do suburb north of the city. Two American flags adorned the yard. The prospect’s mom greeted him wearing an American flag T-shirt.

“I want you to know we support you,” she gushed.

Rivera soon reached the limits of her support.

“Military service isn’t for our son. It isn’t for our kind of people,” she told him.

Speaking of chickenhawks (and specifically, Ben the Virgin, a wanker in more ways than one), Sadly, No nails the issue:

This is the old “We’re at war!/ Well, it’s not like an actual war-war, exactly” trick in action. We’ll explore this trick in greater detail anon, but suffice to say that as soon as any notion of ‘sacrifice’ comes into things, the stick-wavers and scaremongers go stampeding for the exits, pleading personal choice and individual freedom, and forgetting all about the gigantic global emergency they were yelling about just two seconds before.

They do it literally every time. One moment, the War on Terror is like the fight against Hitler. The next, they’re all like, “I don’t see what my enlisting would accomplish,” and treating it like a televised sporting event where a citizen’s sole duty is to root for the home team. Then before you know it, they’re back to yelling that America is under attack, and we’re all literally going to die if we don’t boldly face the enemy.

Yup.