Hillbilly Elegy

classmate with a hideous beard spouted
off about the Iraq war. He explained that
those fighting the war were typically
less intelligent than those (like him) who
immediately went to college. It showed,
he argued, in the wanton way soldiers
butchered and disrespected Iraqi
civilians. It was an objectively terrible
opinion—my friends from the Marine
Corps spanned the political spectrum
and held nearly every conceivable
opinion about the war. Many of my
Marine Corps friends were staunch
liberals who had no love for our
commander in chief—then George W.
Bush—and felt that we had sacrificed
too much for too little gain. But none of