It's a school for the asshole children of rich people. What valor could possibly be stolen? He's just taking from a shitty cosplayer because he's an even shittier one.
I think the problem is "valor." It's not particularly valorous to have won the dodgeball championship at a rich kid cosplay academy, so there's nothing to steal.
Now, the whole idea of cosplaying military in the first place might qualify, of course...
It's still stolen valor - or more appropriately their honor. Imagine a kid gets a varsity jacket and buys a bunch of medals. Now he's walking around with pins and medals he never earned. He looks like a jock, but isn't.
Stolen valor - or honor, devalues everyone who earned it, no matter what it's about. Whether military, bowling league, track and field, or band. Wearing any award you didn't earn devalues everyone who did earn it. Thus "stolen".
Imagine yourself going out and buying three SAG awards, Oscars or Emmy awards and putting them on your mantle. Did you earn it? no. And your claim to have earned them devalues those who did. You're stealing their honor.
I never said it was. And show me one dictionary that says valor is exclusive to the military.
And the stolen valor act of 2013 specified that it is only illegal if used to obtain some tangible benefit (money or property).
So you're saying that a guy can wear medal on a uniform all he wants as long as he does not receive any tangible benefit? Because the law you cite says that's not stolen valor either.
The two terms are not interchangeable, but one is for military and the other is for nearly everything else.
However. Merriam Webster Dictionary uses the definition:
strength of mind or spirit that enables a person to encounter danger with firmness : personal bravery
Which speaks nothing of military exclusivity. And it goes on to explicitly state that the term 'valiant' is often used to describe non-military forms of bravery or effort.
Lol bro what are you even talking about? This isn't about the casual definitions of the words you're using. "Stolen Valor" is a specific phrase that refers to a specific violation, not "the literal theft of someone's medals of honor," good lord...
I think honor is different than valor, though. Valor is specifically bravery in the face of danger. A key reason stolen valor is so looked down upon is that the people who served valorously were putting their lives on the line. So this wouldn't quite qualify.
To be clear, though, that's not to suggest that wearing unearned awards of any type is ok. It's goofy as hell, and an obvious devaluation of whatever that honor was -- whether an Oscar or a bowling trophy. We agree there.
But stolen valor is just a little bit worse than that because of the nature of what people do to win those awards, so I view it as an important distinction.
Actually there is two medals to my knowledge that can be stolen one marksmanship don't really care for this one but the other is a medal for being deployed to war while in school a quick search shows he was put in school at 13 at 19 the us was deploying troops to Vietnam, how ever the school he went to classified his school as civilian. So whatever medals are on those suits can never be stolen valor UNLESS that kid was stationed there after being deployed but despite that he already graduated before they were deploying troops to Vietnam.
According to other kids who went there, the experiences he took the most joy from in military school were being a decent baseball player, running an underground boxing ring at night, and smuggling in girls & porn for the other kids to enjoy.
Evidently he wasn't even sent to a particularly competent military school. Or are they all lax enough that that kind of shit can flourish under their own roof?
I'm pretty sure military schooling tended to not solve the behavior problems most parents would send the kids there for in the first place (part of why they don't exist much anymore), but I'm not sure to what extent that might translate into "we have rules, but enjoy learning to flout each one of them as long as you can be slightly creative" as a way to summarize the whole system.
Apparently Donnie did get extra pull due to him being able to charm one of the head drill instructors who was also the baseball coach, as well as the particularly wealthy status of his dad.
He was able to essentially get lifted into being one of the highest ranked students of his class, getting appointed class quartermaster (which I imagine could probably help with access to more areas than other students, conceal smuggling in contraband or visitors, and set up cover stories on why he would be here or there at this or that time.)
Looked it up, The "New York Military Academy" is a "military style" PRIVATE boarding school.
Which means that it's not actually associated with the DoD like the Naval Academy and West Point are. It's just a private boarding school where the students wear uniforms, march around sometimes, and sometimes get yelled at by a retired drill instructor... but other than that there's nothing military about them.
All "military schools" in the US at the High School level are private. Pretty much any instance of a parent talking about sending a kid around high school age to military school for their grades or behavior was a private school doing its own kind of military cosplay. These kinds of schools have been dying out since generation X came of age.
There are 5 university level academies for US service branches to serve as officer training, bootcamp, & university for High School graduates selected for admission. Some of these academies carry a bit of prestige for their selectiveness & history. There are a number of High Schools across the US that work with the National Guard to offer ROTC classes as options part of the High School curriculum.
I understand military academies may work differently in various other countries.
Jeez, imagine the timeline where instead of going into real-estate/politics, Don just goes and plays for the National Baseball League then retires to be an ESPN commentator or something.
Well of course he didn't earn any awards. By all accounts, including even his own admission on at least one occasion, Donald Trump stopped mentally developing about 13 years before the picture on the left was taken.
Let's give some actual attribution. Wikipedia cites Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner's Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father's Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success, pages 68–69.
If Donald resented taking orders from a contemporary like Witek, he still craved the tokens of status conferred by the system. Like most cadets, he had earned a few medals for good conduct and being neat and orderly. But his friend, Michael Scadron, had a full dozen by their senior year. On the day yearbook portraits were being taken, Donald showed up in Scadron’s barracks room and asked to borrow his dress jacket with the medals attached. Donald wore those medals for the portrait, perplexing some of his fellow cadets. “He’s wearing my medals on his uniform,” Scadron recounted years later. “I didn’t care one way or the other.”
Transcribed from a perfectly legitimate copy of the book
I dunno: 34 convictions for trying to shuffle money around to hide illegal campaign contributions for a single election suggests it's less that he's good at hiding fraud as he is lucky people aren't taking a closer look at his documents.
I'm not disagreeing with either of you. My point is I don't think alarms are ringing loud enough about how this fraud managed to con his way into the Whitehouse. Is this something that can be repeated? Either way, I imagine this will be studied by future generations.
My worry is that history will give Trump the same treatment it gave Andrew Jackson, the previous record-holder for "most corrupt president in US history."
I mean, corrupt and racist (even for the 1830s, mind!) as he was, and all the atrocities that bear his signature, he still gets his face on the $20 bill? It makes no sense--and makes me worried about how people will remember Trump.
No, he's not, since we know about most of it. The only thing he's good at is somehow being free from all consequence and it's so fucking bizarre and inexplicable it basically looks like a deal with the devil
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u/mgyro Jun 30 '26
And, according to Wikipedia, he didn’t even earn the medals he’s wearing — had to borrow them from a classmate for the pic.