How Does It Feel When Your Government Wants to Eradicate You? Read On.

I have served my country in uniform and flown MEDEVAC helicopters to save the lives of people who think I shouldn’t exist. And none of it matters.

Every once a while I encounter a quote that brings me up short and helps reframe how I see the world. Such was the case when I came across this quote by Theodor Adorno as I researched the rise of Nazi Germany and the origins of the Holocaust: “A wrong life cannot be lived rightly.”

Adorno meant it as a critique of life under capitalism, but out of context, I interpreted it to mean that if a person is the wrong sort of life (Jewish, Sinti, disabled), nothing that person can do can grant them the grace of being “one of the good ones,” or being life worthy of life. No matter their character, achievements, or capability, a “wrong life” can have only a negative value to society. The only way to balance the equation is to eliminate that wrong life and bring the sum to zero on both sides.

This thought stopped me in my tracks, and I could hear the paradigm shift without a clutch, because it explained everything I was both feeling and seeing over the past year. It was the grand unification theorem of my inner world and explained what I was seeing that was external to me.

I am wrong life in the United States. And despite my efforts to live rightly, it simply does not matter. Nothing I can do will change the equation, other than my eradication. Internally, this realization is what fuels my anger. I genuinely tried to be a good person and contribute in ways that are lauded in others. I’m angry at the breaking of the American compact that supposedly we should be judged by the content of our character and not by government fiat that people like me are incapable of leading “honorable” or “disciplined” lives. I’m furious at the hypocrisy and having wasted my life trying to earn a place in a country that ultimately decided I must be destroyed.

I’m being kicked out of the National Guard. I can’t legally use a public bathroom on federal property or at most airports. As a veteran, I have a free pass onto national parks that I effectively can never use........

© New Republic