Bias Busters’ Joe Grimm on: What are the top things veterans want us to know?

April 13, 2025 by Leave a Comment

What are veterans biggest needs?

We’ve got a book of 100 Questions—that veterans helped us to answer!

By JOE GRIMM
Founder of the MSU School of Journalism Bias Busters project

U.S. military veterans are chafing under federal layoffs, health-care reductions and cutbacks in their benefits.

Click the cover to visit Amazon.

Some have another worry: They can be deported.

How do people who have served in the U.S. military get deported?

The armed forces enlist immigrants with the understanding that this can be a path to permanent residency with a “green card” and citizenship. The Immigration and Nationality Act lays out the path. Fight for the country and you can become a citizen.

About 94,000 veterans are immigrants, according to the National Immigration Forum.

All veterans face a labyrinth to obtain health benefits. The process can worsen service-related conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury and mental health challenges.

The federal Commission on Criminal Justice reports that these conditions lead veterans into the criminal justice system. More than a third of veterans report having been arrested. This is a higher arrest rate than for nonveterans, and they receive longer sentences.

A criminal record can lead to deportation. However, we are seeing people get deported for less than that, including lawful protests and traffic tickets.

How many veterans has the U.S. deported? We don’t know. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) does not report on the military status of the people it deports.

But individual cases are showing up in the news.

Jose Barco, a U.S. Army veteran whose father brought him to the United States from Venezuela 35 years ago as a 4-year-old, is stateless. He served in Iraq, where he received the Purple Heart for wounds and traumatic brain injuries.

Barco was convicted of two counts of attempted murder and jailed for 15 years. He was paroled on Jan. 21, the day after Inauguration Day. NPR reports he walked out of prison in Colorado, expecting to reunite in Florida with his American-born wife, 15-year-old daughter and mother. Instead, ICE immediately detained him. He was deported to Venezuela. It did not accept him. Barco waits in a Texas jail cell.

The next morning in Arizona, ICE agents in detained Marlon Parris, a six-year Iraq War veteran. The Arizona Republic reports he was near his home. In 2011, Parris, who is from the Caribbean, pleaded guilty to a nonviolent drug offense. He got out of prison in 2016. He completed his probation in 2021. He said ICE had previously written him a letter saying he would not be deported for his crime.

The path to U.S. citizenship is not a smooth one for any immigrant. But veterans’ applications are rejected at a higher rate than civilian ones, despite the Immigration and Naturalization Act. Some veterans are ruled to be ineligible. Others do not try.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office has reported that “bureaucratic and logistical obstacles” hinder some. Barco’s commanding officer said his citizenship application has been lost somewhere.

Alex Murillo is one veteran who made it back to the Unted States. He writes, “After years of applications, lawyers, and waiting, I was able to return home to Arizona, and I am now receiving treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.”

Murillo, born in Mexico, was a jet mechanic with the U.S. Navy during the Iraq War. Afterward, he was deported to Mexico for a nonviolent offense. He writes that he struggled “with the challenges many veterans face when transitioning back to civilian life.”

Murillo wrote, “Deporting those who served isn’t just un-American; it’s a stain on our national conscience.”

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Care to read more?

The Michigan State University School of Journalism’s Bias Busters series covers a wide array of cultural, racial, religious and professional groups. On this Amazon page, you can see the many opportunities we provide to learn more about our friends, neighbors and co-workers.

 

 

 

 

A great way to observe Black History Month is to visit a Black church in your area

February 3, 2025 by

Click on this detail from the cover to visit the book’s Amazon page.

In visiting a Black church, you may discover many “churches” within those hallowed walls

“No pillar of the African American community has been more central to its history, identity and social justice vision than the Black Church.”
Henry Louis Gates Jr.

By JOE GRIMM
Founder of the MSU School of Journalism Bias Busters

The Black Church really is comprised of many “churches” that do many things. Depending on the size of the community, the walls of a Black Church may be home to congregations that provide job training, child care and schooling, community building, financial help, civic activism and more.

Historically, one primary role has been as a sanctuary. This occurs in times of war and, quite recently, some congregations in the United States have opened their doors to immigrants. But these are not their primary purposes.

Since the beginning of the Black Church—shortly before the formation of the U.S. in 17776—the purpose has always been to freely connect congregants to God, to praise Jesus and to allow for worship—prayer, music and preaching—in beloved styles with a long history in African American communities. Major themes emphasized in Black churches are drawn from Bible stories about God’s defense of the vulnerable, including in the Exodus that led Hebrew slaves to freedom as they left Egypt.

Professor, author and minister Michael Eric Dyson, has called the Black Church “our refuge. It’s our sanctuary, literally. The very nature of the Black Church is what makes it so powerful and yet so vulnerable at the same time.”

Dyson and other leading figures in the Black Church helped our Michigan State University School of Journalism Bias Busters students to research, write and publish 100 Questions and Answers about the Black Church. That book is just one of two-dozen Bias Busters books that help Americans understand more about our neighbors of various ethnicities, races, and religions. We even publish books to help us understand people in often-misunderstood professions, such as police officers and those who have served in our armed forces.

Want to visit a Black Church?

Black History Month is an ideal time to visit a Black Church in your area. Assuming you are respectful in your visit, you will find yourself warmly welcomed. In fact, that’s a Q-and-A in our book:

Q: What is the etiquette for visiting a Black Church?

A: Expect to be approached and to be welcomed. Dress codes vary according to the church, the region and the type of service. It is best to stay on the “Sunday-best” side with women in dresses and men in business or business casual, especially on the first Sunday of the month. Some church websites might give you an idea of how people dress. Non-members are welcome to participate. However, just observe during communion, healings or altar calls, in which congregants come forward and ask God for help.

‘Changing the world for the better’

Click the cover to visit the book’s Amazon page.

The Black Church is a pillar of community values for millions of Americans. In our book, the Rev. Dr.  Charles Christian Adams writes that leaders of the Black Church “have changed the world for the better and helped humanity to morally progress in labor relations, distribution of resources, education, health care, equal protection under the law, access to opportunity, housing, economic development and social activism.”

Adams endorses this Bias Busters guide as “concise but in no way superfluous. So when you encounter the efficacy of the African American worship tradition or if you seek it out, you will be well prepared. Even if you just want to know enough to increase your understanding, you will enjoy this offering.”

Care to read more about the Black Church’s involvement in community development? To mark Black History Month 2025, we also are publishing a historical column, headlined, Black History Month highlight: The Heart of the African-American Labor Movement Beat in a Landmark Detroit Church

Religious makeup of Congress in 2025 still holds more ‘Christians’ than America itself

January 6, 2025 by

To explore the Pew report in depth, please click on this chart.

By JOE GRIMM
Founder of the MSU School of Journalism Bias Busters

Congressional elections have made the U.S. Congress slightly more diverse religiously and a little less Christian, according to the Pew Research Center’s biennial analysis.

Let’s start with Christians, who make up 87% of the new Congress, down from 88% in the previous Congress. Although that contingent has dropped from 92% a decade ago, it remains far ahead of the nation’s makeup where 62% of adults are Christian.

The largest groups of Christians in the 119th Congress are Protestants, at 55.5% and Catholics at 28.2%, up from 148 members to 150. Breaking down Protestants in Congress, the largest groups are Baptists, 14.1%, who grew by eight seats; Methodists and Presbyterians at 4.9% each; Anglican/Episcopal, 4.1% and Lutherans, 3.6%. Each of those groups is larger in Congress than among U.S. adults.

Jewish members were down by one member, to 32, for 6% of Congress compared to 2% of the adult population.

The group that is least represented, compared to its number in the electorate, are religiously unaffiliated people. This group has been growing in the nation, but not in Congress. Among U.S. adults, it has grown from 16% in 2007 to 28% today, according to Pew polling. However, in the combined U.S. Senate and House, just three seats of 523 are held by people who said they are unaffiliated. Three seats are also open for now.

In a Michigan State University guide, 100 Questions and Answers About the Religiously Unaffiliated, people reported reluctance to self-identify as unaffiliated because of stigma. They said the stigma is diminishing, however. People are becoming more comfortable to come out as non-religious. Apparently, that might not be the case in Congress. Twenty-one members declined to answer or could not be reached with the questionnaire. The report suggests more members are being less specific about their religion

Three religions that are big globally but small in the United States grew by a member or two. Hindu members doubled to four. The four Muslims and three Buddhists are increases of one each. Each of these religions is less than 1% of Congress, which is roughly their percentage in the country.

Long-Term Trends

The overall picture is this: Congress is continuing a long trend toward fewer Christians, more people of other religions and more people who will say they are religiously unaffiliated.

In its 2014 Religious Landscape Survey, Pew found that Millennials were twice as likely as Boomers, 35% to 17%, to say they are religiously unaffiliated. As members of Congress retire—the average age is above 60—and are overtaken by younger generations, major changes might be a continuing downturn among Christians and an increase among religiously unaffiliated

We might also expect most of the changes to occur in the U.S. House with its district so much smaller than the statewide dynamics of Senate seats.

Care to Learn More?

Politics and voting are covered in faith-related guides in the Bias Busters series. Guides include the religiously unaffiliated, Muslims, Jews, Latter-day Saints, Chaldeans, Sikhs and the Black Church with more on the way. There is also a guide about Millennials and Gen X. All are on Amazon.

What did this election show us? We all need to learn more about our neighbors’ diverse gifts.

November 17, 2024 by

Diversity was a decisive factor in sometimes surprising ways

We are continuing to help all Americans learn about our neighbors’ distinctive cultures and contributions

By JOE GRIMM
Founder of the MSU School of Journalism Bias Busters project

The 2024 election showed how campaigns are paying more attention to the influence religious and ethnic groups can have on the course of the country. This time, Republicans won all seven swing states and their 93 electoral votes, far exceeding the 270 needed to win the White House.

But here’s a startling fact emerging in the post-election analysis: If just 130,000 voters in three of these battleground states had changed sides their 44 electoral votes would have changed the outcome.

Where were diversity issues decisive in this election?

Analysis of this election will continue for years—but here are a few emerging snapshots that illustrate the crucial importance of diversity issues:

Michigan: With more Arabs, Muslims and Palestinians than any other state, this multicultural and multi-faith group coalition protested the Biden White House’s support and funding for Israel’s war in Gaza. Listen to Michigan reports that 100,000 people responded to a call to vote “uncommitted.” Others threw their votes toward the Green Party.

In 2016, Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in Michigan by 10,674 votes out of almost 4.8 million. Democrats countered in 2020 with more advertising and visits. Michigan flipped, giving Joe Biden a margin of 154,000 votes.

This time, in the face of active Republican outreach and the uncommitted vote campaign, Kamala Harris lost Michigan by 80,618 votes.

Michael Traugott, research professor at the University of Michigan’s Center for Political Studies, explained the results on The Conversation.  He wrote, “In 2020, the Biden-Harris team had won almost 69% of the vote in Dearborn. In 2024, Harris got just 36% – with Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, taking 18%.”

Pennsylvania: This state has more Anabaptists, primarily Mennonites and the Amish, than any other. However, because Anabaptists traditionally have concentrated more on the heavenly kingdom rather than earthly governance, turnout is lower than for other citizens. But this year, according to Anabaptist World, “Media outlets reported Amish people registered to vote in unprecedented numbers after state agriculture officials executed a search warrant … to investigate if sales of raw dairy products produced there caused E. coli illnesses in Michigan and New York. Regulations ban the sale of raw dairy in other states. The newsletter said Mennonites and the Amish found shared values with the GOP and government overreach.”

Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016, Biden took it back in 2020. Trump won by 146,554 this year in a margin larger than his 2016 win.

Wisconsin: This swing state has 30,000 Hmong people, more than any states other than California and Minnesota. Few Hmong people lived in the United States until they were airlifted out of Southeast Asia, where they had fought in the CIA’s Secret War during the Vietnam War. Hmong people have a very high rate of citizenship. Their power at the polls is growing.

In July, before Harris replaced Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket, her husband, Douglas Emhoff, visited a Hmong festival in central Wisconsin.

According to the New York Post,  Emhoff told festival-goers: “This community right here could decide the election in this state, which could decide the entire election. You have the power right here.”

But campaigning hard at a cultural and social event honoring Hmong veterans may have backfired.

The Post reported that State Sen. Cory Tomczyk, working a Republican booth at the Wausau festival, said people were unhappy “with the chaos and campaign paraphernalia Emhoff brought to the event.”

Wisconsin helped put the GOP over the top and Tomczyk signaled the party will do more in the future. “It’s our fault we’ve been absent from this festival.” He said family values in the Hmong community “align with Republican values.”

The Michigan State University School of Journalism’s Bias Busters series has “100-question-and-answer guides” on Arab, Muslims and Hmong people. A guide about Anabaptists is almost out.

Whatever your perspective on the election is—the outcome makes it clear that all Americans will want to learn more about the distinctive cultures and contributions of our neighbors.

Joe Grimm’s review of Detroit Free Press veteran John Gallagher’s memoir, ‘Rust Belt Reporter’

October 6, 2024 by

Stories from a Journalist Looking for Signs of Detroit’s Comeback

Review by JOE GRIMM
Founder of the MSU School of Journalism Bias Busters project

Click on the cover to visit the book’s Amazon page.

John Gallagher went off in search of good stories and found some great ones.

In his memoir, Rust Belt Reporter, Gallagher shares a lot of his best ones about Detroit and the Detroit Free Press, where he wrote them.

Gallagher accepted a reporting gig at the newspaper in 1987, attracted by the gritty charm he saw in Detroit and wanting to indulge his passion for urban affairs. The city and the “characters” in the newsroom intrigued him. While he was never what one would call a character himself, Gallagher was a wry observer of what went on around him. I worked with him at the Free Press from his arrival until I left in 2008. Gallagher’s modus operandi was to punch out solid, insightful copy without drama.

That same talent makes Rust Belt Reporter a fun, informative read.

Gallagher writes that, when he started at the Free Press, the newsroom had a payroll of 320. When he retired in late 2019, the staff had been hollowed out to fewer than 100. Readers—and the ad dollars they attract—had fled to the web.

The Free Press seemed like a small reflection of the City of Detroit, which hit a high-water census tally of 1.85 million residents in 1950 and fell to 640,000 in 2020.

While it took the city 70 years to lose nearly two thirds of its population, newsroom staffing at the paper fell further and twice as fast. It shrank by more than two-thirds in Gallagher’s 32-year tenure. People with institutional knowledge were bought out, laid off or fled. Departments once deemed essential for quality journalism were cut or outsourced. The traditional business model of great newspapers was trashed.

As this happened to them, Gallagher and his colleagues chronicled the siphoning of jobs and wealth from Detroit to the suburbs, the South and overseas. They detailed the disintegration of city services and education, drug wars, auto company bailouts, the imprisonment of a corrupt mayor and the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history. Houses, stores and factories were abandoned and razed. Once-grand schools, the largest department store in the world and a hospital were left open to scrappers and demolished.

The details of the Free Press’ swoon were no less dramatic. It shackled itself to its former rival, The Detroit News, in the nation’s largest Joint Operating Agreement. The newspapers combined most departments while insisting they were still competitors. The arrangement contributed to a grinding 19-month strike. Gallagher walked the picket line with colleagues from both newspapers and was later talked into being union president. The papers’ landmark buildings were sold, and workers shuffled off to ever-smaller rented quarters. Their industry-leading owners, Gannett and Knight Ridder, swapped papers with each other and eventually, to save money, stopped delivering the paper daily.

Gallagher wrote books about architecture and how Detroit and other cites could be—had to be—reimagined on a smaller scale. Visitors seeking photos of Detroit’s infamous “ruin porn” asked him for tour tips.

Gallagher kept picking away at the rust. And eventually, he wrote, “in my daily work covering the city I saw more and more encouraging signs. And these disparate elements would set the stage for what the world finally noticed was a remarkable urban turnaround.”

This year, reports by other journalists say Detroit is showing its first population growth since the 1950s. Positive signs are shining through in many places. “Detroit” and “comeback” are showing up together in headlines, though many end with question marks.

The Free Press, struggling with industry-wide challenges, has not yet had a turnaround moment. Early in 2024, the Free Press and News newsrooms moved to smaller quarters in their rented building. On Oct. 1, the Free Press reported that the newsrooms must move again this year. They will be in another space in 2025, the year their Joint Operating Agreement is scheduled to end.

Gallagher and I overlapped at the Free Press for almost 20 years. His workmanlike professionalism and quality surprised me so often that I remember asking him how he did it.

He shares his secrets as a journalist and author in this book. One Gallagher habit that stumped me was that no matter how difficult or intricate his assignment was, he always seemed to make deadline and be out the newsroom door at a reasonable time. He addresses that in his book: “…the first draft? Blast through that. That’s where you’ll save a boatload of time. Your editors will think it’s spooky. And your dinner will still be warm when you get home.”

The Rev. Dr. Ryan Burge, an expert in ‘The Great Dechurching’ of America, closes down his own church

September 8, 2024 by

By JOE GRIMM
Director of the Bias Busters project at MSU School of Journalism

As Ryan Burge tells his story: It wasn’t supposed to go this way!

Want to learn more about those folks who are leaving churches? Click on this cover to visit the book’s Amazon page.

Burge is a nationally recognized expert on why people are leaving church—and he also was supposed to be an expert on what churches could do to bring people back into the fold. That’s the pitch for his new Zondervan book, The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back

However, that cultural, social and religious tidal wave was just too powerful for Burge and his small circle of members to save their aging, shrinking congregation knocking around in a big old building that once housed a thriving community.

When Burge announced publicly that he was helping to close down his own church—the news of their dilemma went viral.

In a version of his story that was published by the Utah-based Deseret News—Burge admitted:

I researched the decline of organized religion while having a front-row view of the change in my own life. What’s happened at my own church is especially poignant since in my day job I research trends in American religion. And when I first became a pastor, right out of college, there were ominous signs, but I did not foresee how quickly the end would come, hastened by a pandemic.

Who is Ryan Burge?

One of his online bios explains: “Ryan Burge is an associate professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, where also serves as the graduate coordinator. He has authored over 30 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters alongside four books about religion and politics in the United States. He written for the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. 60 Minutes has called him, “one of the country’s leading data analysts on religion and politics.”

And here’s another twist in this tale:

There is a lot of good news in this story, despite its ironic conclusion.

On balance, the many years that Burge and these families devoted to their First Baptist Church of Mount Vernon, Illinois, were a powerful, inspirational force in their lives that continues to shape the world.

Bob Smietana, a reporter for Religion News Service, attended Burge’s last sermon and wrote a column titled In Small-Town Illinois, a Little Church Says Goodbye. Smietana reported that the congregation’s embrace of a Brown Bag Program in 2008 had renewed Burge’s faith. Over 15 years, the church’s small number of elderly members packed nearly 55,000 lunches.

Over the years, Burge worked hard at shoring up the congregation. At one point, Burge tried to find a buyer for the church. In 2017, the church was transferred to a Christian school as a last-ditch move to preserve the building’s Christ-centered mission. The deal meant the congregation could continue worshiping there on weekends, but it was no longer their building.

However—transferring the church to the school was never more than a short-term fix. Burge wrote, “every six or eight months, we would lose a key member, then another, then another. That two dozen became 15, then 12, then 10.”

On July 21, 2024, Burge wrote, “I stood behind the pulpit of First Baptist Church for the last time.” He walked out the doors, uncertain what the future holds for him and pessimistic about the future for organized religion.

Pessimistic about religious change?

Well, one place to start lifting your spirits in a practical way is with the Michigan State University School of Journalism Bias Busters book series.

For more than a decade, the guiding force behind this project has been helping Americans understand each other—especially those “others” who somehow seem different than “us.” We do this in our MSU team by “answering questions everybody’s asking but nobody’s answering.” We want our readers not to fear their neighbors.

That includes those millions of “religiously unaffiliated” Americans living all around us—in our families, our places of work, schools and communities.

Burge’s news story “went viral” because of its ironic hook—a nationally known expert seeming to fail in his own area of expertise—but that’s not a complete summary of this story, as Bob Smietana indicated in his reporting. Burge and his friends in Illinois found themselves caught up in a historic tidal wave—which should prompt our curiosity about how those same waters are moving through our communities.

That’s really the message summed up in the little quote from a church member that closes Bob Smietana’s story: “We are not done with each other.”

And, frankly, that’s also a pretty good tagline for our MSU Bias Busters series.

Instead of walking away from our neighbors in fear, anger and exhaustion—our students who produce these books keep rolling up their sleeves each year, ready to explore yet another corner of our communities.

Why do they do this?

Because, in our vision of America: We’re not done with each other.

 

MSU Bias Busters have a book to help as military culture collides with political posturing

August 19, 2024 by

In the field of military service, civilians can muddle the terms and concepts

By JOE GRIMM
Director of the MSU School of Journalism Bias Busters project

Click the cover to visit Amazon.

The rare occurrence of two veterans as vice presidential candidates on the major party tickets could have been a wonderful opportunity to celebrate all that our nation’s millions of veterans have contributed—but, given the often toxic tone of our political divisions, this is turning into an opportunity for political partisans to snipe at the candidates’ military records.

Since Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was named as the Democratic vice presidential candidate, squaring off opposite Republican Sen. J.D. Vance, hundreds of news stories, blog posts, commentaries and op-ed pieces have reflected on these issues. And, unfortunately, as journalism professionals, we often find ourselves shaking our heads wearily at obvious confusion about the terms and concepts involved in military service and in the lives of veterans and their families.

Responsible journalists need to help sort out the often skewed claims and counter claims. And, some of us have done so: Four examples of solid journalistic analysis have been published by Snopes.com, The Washington Post Fact Checker, POLITICO and FactCheck.org.

But the debate continues, the sniping continues and more questions and claims keep unfolding.

Would you like some help in sorting out this moment of national confusion?

At the Michigan State University School of Journalism Bias Busters project—we have a book for that!

It’s part of our award-winning Bias Busters series, a volume called 100 Questions and Answers About Veterans: A Guide for Civilians.

How rare is this matchup?

Curiously, a lot of the coverage of this veterans’ match up call it “rare,” but then the writers don’t detail when such a matchup last occurred.

Digging into the history of veterans and presidential campaigns pretty quickly surfaces every-four-year disputes over whether presidential and vice presidential candidates did—or did not—serve. The further we dig into the past, we eventually bump into quadrennial debates about how candidates responded—or didn’t—to the Vietnam War in particular. So, there is nothing “rare” about political posturing over military service every four years.

What is rare is a matchup of veterans as vice presidential candidates. The last time this happened was 1992, when Al Gore (Bill Clinton’s VP choice) had been an Army veteran, Dan Quayle (George H.W. Bush’s pick) had served in the national guard—and Medal of Honor winner James Stockdale made a third-party bid as the potential VP with Ross Perot.

So, yes, since this hasn’t happened in more than 30 years, it’s accurate to call this Walz-Vance matchup of vets something “rare” on the national political stage.

Fact or Myth? There aren’t many veterans in national office.

Here’s a great example of the confusion: The truth of the above headline depends on your point of view—but Pew Research documents specifically the declining numbers of veterans in Congress, which roughly mirrors the decline across all levels of national leadership. Pew was able to assemble this chart, because—after every round of Congressional elections—the nation’s main veterans groups all publish fresh analyses of these numbers. This data is vital in their ongoing lobbying efforts to push for policies of interest to those currently serving our nation and those who are vets.

So, the truth of this headline depends on your definition of “many.” Generally the word means “a large but indefinite number,” which could be accurate for 17 senators and 50 representatives for a total of 67 people. However, Merriam-Webster says one meaning of the word “many” could be “the great majority of people” so then that headline isn’t accurate.

What we do know is that Pew’s headline is true: “Share of members in Congress who are veterans has fallen in recent decades.” And that declining portion of veterans among national leadership concerns all of the millions of Americans who care about our military families. The declining share of veterans in Congress means fewer American leaders understand, first hand, military and veteran issues.

And that was one reason our MSU Bias Busters team decided to work with veterans groups to publish our book.

Case in point in this election cycle: What is ‘deployment’?

It is no surprise that military language, dragged into politics, can be distorted. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2022, just 6.2% of the U.S. population 18 and older are military veterans. So, most of the country is unfamiliar with military-speak and might misuse or misunderstand it.

In his POLITICO analysis that is linked above, Ben Kesling wrote, “Just as people might not fully recognize the subtlety of a foreign language’s words and phrases, civilians frequently miss—or misinterpret—the language service members use to talk about the nature and scope of their service.”

One example is “deployment.” Kesling wrote, “Simply put, a combat deployment is when someone is sent to a place where troops are engaging in operations.”

That’s operations. Deployment does not connote combat.

Our book explains this term with an example. The question in our book is, “Has everyone deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan been in combat?” The answer: “Not all. Many were physicians, mechanics, or information technology specialists, for instance, or served in support positions away from combat areas. Some may have engaged in combat remotely as drone pilots or from vessels at sea.”

What is ‘Stolen Valor’?

First, it’s a serious charge that can, in some circumstances, be illegal under the Stolen Valor Act of 2013. For service members, veterans and their families especially, “stolen valor” refers to an even broader range of grave offenses involving claims of military service.

In one passage of our book, we explain to readers: “The Stolen Valor Act outlaws false claims of having received certain military decorations if done with the intent of financial gain. Some interpret the idea more broadly and object to any false claim or exaggeration of military service.”

It is the “more broadly” that leads to trouble. Candidates sometimes get in trouble, for example, when making off-the-cuff references to their military service—or because of memorabilia that supporters give them and encourage them to display. During his term in the White House, Donald Trump was accused of “blurring the lines” with his personal collection of “challenge coins,” which have a long tradition in military culture dating back to the Roman Empire.

Similarly, over the past decade, hats—especially baseball-style caps—have been at issue.

After wading through a number of potentially swampy issues, Kesling’s POLITICO conclusion is: “What shouldn’t be lost in the conversation is that both Vance and Walz served their country honorably and had no marks against their records when they were in uniform.”

Learn about military terminology and traditions in 100 Questions and Answers About Veterans: A Guide for Civilians.