Graham Platner Betrayed Veterans And A Sacred Oath

“Semper Fidelis” (always faithful) is the motto of the U.S. Marine Corps. Held to this standard, Graham Platner should have his ribbons revoked. He sent sexually explicit text messages to other women during his marriage, demonstrating disloyalty to his wife. His chest is emblazoned with a Nazi tattoo, demonstrating disloyalty to his country. His social media and Reddit track record certainly deems him disloyal to the public trust he is seeking.

All of this has been covered ad nauseam throughout Platner’s bid to take Susan Collins’s seat in the Senate, an effort he just ended amid rape allegations. The breadcrumbs in the trail that is Graham Platner’s life are rotten and moldy, with the distinguishing characteristic of disloyalty.

But what hasn’t been covered enough is his disloyalty to our country’s veterans. The men and women he served with. And I’m not even referring to his comments about Army Pfc. Ted Daniels (a Purple Heart recipient), whom Platner called a “Dumb motherf*cker who didn’t deserve to live.” I’m talking about Platner’s representation of veterans suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

About 7% of all U.S. veterans will experience PTSD at some point in their lives. That’s roughly 1.1 million veterans out of today’s veteran population of about 16 million. Platner has repeatedly cited his struggles with PTSD to explain much of the conduct that engulfed his campaign, particularly his online commentary. In one notable Reddit post, he mentions having to masturbate every time he sits in a porta-potty because “that blue water smell conditioned me.”

I personally know many veterans who suffer from PTSD. Not one has been accused of rape, lent allegiance to Hitler, or pleasured themselves in dirty outdoor boxes. While PTSD affects individuals in a myriad of ways, very few individuals become violent or engage in criminal behavior. Most often, the suffering is inward-facing: fear, avoidance, depression, and anxiety. Many resort to substance abuse.

In Platner’s case, PTSD has become the umbrella explanation after controversies have piled up. It should be noted that he got his infamous tattoo just a couple of years into his service, long before he most likely developed PTSD. Regardless, one diagnosis cannot become the universal answer for every bad decision someone has ever made.

The real damage isn’t what Platner says about himself. It’s what his explanation teaches the public to believe about PTSD and the damage it does to decades of progress. Veterans have fought for years to convince Americans that PTSD is treatable, survivable, and not a character defect. Our country spends over $300 billion annually on PTSD. We don’t do this to keep our veterans out of jail. We do it to repay the debt we owe them for their service to us.

We often hear about our veterans when something goes wrong. But many of them are raising kids and serving their communities while carrying a burden that most citizens will never understand. The individuals living in this shadow are the ones who are forgotten whenever PTSD becomes shorthand for moral failure.

I think about the Marine quietly awaiting counseling. The little league coach fearing a flashback at the crack of a bat. The combat veteran worried about disclosing his diagnosis to an employer. And every time PTSD is portrayed as synonymous with moral collapse, this stigma only grows. But no one ever says, “My anxiety caused me to steal,” or “My depression is why I abuse my wife.” Rational people would reject this reasoning. Mental disease deserves our compassion, but it doesn’t eliminate responsibility.

We judge a group by its norms, not by its outliers. There are bad cops, lazy teachers, and abusive parents. But the majority are none of those things, which is why we celebrate these vocations. Every profession, diagnosis, and community has exceptions. The damage occurs when we allow the exception to redefine the whole.

The norms among veterans with PTSD are resilience, treatment, and carrying the burden of it while carrying out their lives. The exception…is Graham Platner.

Americans owe veterans compassion for the wounds they didn’t choose. But it also owes them something else: refusing to reinforce the false stereotype that PTSD inevitably leads to moral failure. Millions of veterans prove every day that trauma can shape a person without defining them.

“Always faithful” wasn’t a promise that Marines would never struggle. It was a promise to remain faithful to them even when they struggle. When Platner uses PTSD as a blanket explanation for misconduct, the people who pay the price are the countless veterans quietly living with it. Is that being faithful to your fellow Marines? The easy thing is to explain away our failures. The harder thing — the more faithful thing — is to own them. Semper Fidelis.

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Gates Garcia is the host of the YouTube show and podcast “We The People.” Follow him on Instagram and X @GatesGarciaFL.