It's the Republican problem because they don't want constitutional You might recognize that dude's name because he's the guy who's been accused recently of stolen valor for misrepresenting his service record.

So according to Erin's bio, she was a nurse in the army in Iraq, but Alex is absolutely making up that she has a Purple Heart. That's a specific medal that's awarded for people who are wounded or killed in service, and Alex giving her one in his imagination is kind of stolen valor by proxy. Alex has absolutely zero respect for the armed services. He just makes up stuff like this when he needs to make a weirdo anti-vax nurse sound more credible.

The story that Joanne is telling indicates a lack of awareness of how the military works, a lack of awareness that Captain isn't the same rank in the Army and the Navy, and a lack of awareness that there's literally no proof that Mark was even ever in the Army or in Vietnam. Right. Military records do exist that show that Mark's dad, Ellis, or the Dutchman, joined the Air Force in 1942. Military records also show that he was involved in four plane crashes during his enlistment between 1943 and 1952. I'll read to you from the report about his 1952 crash. Bad pilot. Boo. Quote, the wings were shed on initial impact with the dike. The canopy exploded off, but not by the pilot, and the tail section broke off at the turbine wheel section. The cockpit section remained intact very well. The pilot's head was dragged along the ground, inflicting many deep cuts and a brain concussion, also breaking his neck. This plane crash led to Ellis leaving the service and to him being partially paralyzed. Newspaper articles about Mark's arrest and trial include quotes from Ellis, and they all mention that he was disabled, which makes it very unlikely that he was going on space battles after 1952, or that he was fighting in the Dulcy Base battle years later, as Mark has said. Ellis died before Joanne ever met Mark, so all she really knows about him is what he's told her. That's true. So she can believe all this bullshit about Dulcy-based battles with aliens when his dad was partially paralyzed. Right. Well, I mean, that can be faked, though. Like, remember when Willy Wonka came out at the beginning and he was walking on his cane and then he did a somersault? That's not. That's Ellis. That's the Dutchman. All right. That's not. It's not. He was in a bad plane crash. It does sound like he was in a bad plane crash. Mark is almost certainly making up his military service. He claims that he served in Vietnam, but Saigon fell in April 1975, and Mark graduated from Dominican College with a history degree in 1976. He was born in 1953, so being 22 or 23 at the time of graduating from an undergraduate program is right on schedule. And in 1973, he was arrested for insurance fraud, and though the charges were eventually dropped, it's pretty strong proof that he wasn't in Vietnam at the time. There's literally no proof that Mark was ever enlisted. No documentation, no pictures of him in uniform, no medals or stripes. Short of some sort of bombshell that they're just not showing anybody for some reason, it's pretty easy to see that this is a case of stolen valor on Mark's part.