true patriots

I once had a lengthy back-and-forth with a troop supporter who, after having defended every U.S. military action of the past century, took offense at my using the term "pro-war" to describe his position. Then this morning came a flashback when I saw this from an onliner who goes by the tag "Support our troops or get the f--k out": 

What do you do when your intellectual adversary has already self-reduced to absurdity, already brazenly claimed that A is not A?

Well, the contradiction isn't clear if you've been properly patriotized. All the terms have different meanings to a patriot. "Guns" refers to inanimate guns in a gun case, "people that don't value human life" means bad guys (aka, them), and "kill people" refers to killing good guys (aka, us). Translated, we have:

Guns in gun cases don't kill people. Bad guys kill good guys.

True, yes? So just as it's too simple to say that Obama lacks empathy when he clearly has it for wife and kids and pro athletes and fellow rulers, it's inaccurate to say that true patriots lack cognitive dissonance. Instead, I'd say that all the parts of the puzzle have been rearranged and marked up (or however distorted) and the true patriot has neither the intellectual skills to work through it nor the emotional makeup to find sufficient reward in accurate puzzle solving to outweigh the pain of rejection by internalized authority figures.