Democrats are ambivalent about the military, something clear from their approach to the inauguration.  The Democrats summoned 26,000 National Guard troops to D.C., purportedly to protect Joe Biden from rioters.  They then accused those same troops of being potentially dangerous white supremacists.  Many of the troops responded — not by being dangerous, because they're patriotic, constitutionally guided Americans, but by apparently turning their backs on Joe Biden.

National Guard Troops turn their backs.

Sure, some have argued that the backward-facing troops were providing operational security, protecting the president from attacks from beyond as his motorcade drove by.  But a look at the video shows that only some units have some troops facing Biden and others looking backward.  Many units show that all troops gave their backs to Biden — not a good look for a president's first day in office.

Beginning with the Vietnam War, the Democrats' basic principle has been to dislike the military.  For example, as recently as 2009, Obama vividly described American troops as a people who are busy "air-raiding villages and killing civilians."

While he was in the White House, Obama worked hard to reshape the military into a more Democrat-friendly organization.  At the officer level, the administration purged the old guard, making way for a horde of college-educated, hard-left politicians in uniform.  At the rank-and-file level, the administration worked its social justice wiles on the troops.

The most visible and extreme example of the new social justice policies happened with the LGBTQ policies.  "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" gave way to openly homosexual troops, which gave way to drag queens in the Navy.  This was taking Churchill's remark about the Navy being the home to "rum, buggery, and the lash" to a whole new level.

The Obama administration also welcomed so-called "transgender" people into the military.  These are people with severe body dysmorphia who believe themselves to be the opposite of their genetic sex.  They are tragic people, and the statistics show that they are emotionally unstable.

Even in transgender-friendly Sweden, and even after cosmetic surgery that makes their bodies comport somewhat more with their self-image, they have inordinately high suicide rates.  The smart money is on keeping these damaged people away from military life.

Because of the problems associated with the so-called "transgender" phenomenon, Trump reinstated the ban on allowing them to serve.  This decision, incidentally, saved taxpayers from being forced to pay for "sex change" surgery for "transgender" troops.  Biden, however, has promised to reverse the Trump ban and reinstate in our military people who have inordinately high rates of suicide and other mental instability.

It turns out that leftists also like the military, not as a force against America's foreign enemies, but as a force against Americans.  That's why the Democrats, working with their allies in the Pentagon, placed 26,000 National Guard troops in D.C. as part of Biden's decidedly weird inauguration.  Instead of crowds of excited Americans, Biden would take the oath of office behind massive fences, surrounded by phalanxes of National Guard troops.

Democrats were still worried.  While the officer corps is strongly allied with the Democrats, the troops still lean conservative.  Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) said what all the Democrats were thinking:

I was reading about this on my Twitter account, I guess, and people were reminding people of Anwar Sadat and Indira Gandhi who were killed by their own people. I was thinking, the guard is 90 some odd percent, I believe, male.

Only about 20 percent of white males voted for Biden. You have got to figure that the guard, which is predominantly more conservative and I see that on my social media, and we know it, they are probably 25 percent of the people that are there protecting us who voted for Biden.

The other 75 percent are in the class that would be the large class of folks who might want to do something. And there were military people and police who took oath to defend the Constitution and to protect and defend who didn't do it who were in the insurrection. So it does concern me. But the vetting at the last minute —

The FBI — another Democrat institution — therefore investigated the National Guard troops for ideological purity.  It's reasonable to believe that those who passed the test were nevertheless offended that their loyalty to American norms was being questioned.  Many of them revealed that sentiment by turning their backs on the Biden motorcade, in much the same way that the New York Police Department earlier turned their backs on New York's cop-hating mayor, Bill de Blasio:

Here's a word of advice to the Biden administration: if you're relying on armed American troops to protect you, not from foreign enemies, but from the American public, treat them well.  It's really tacky to question their loyalty.

Image: National Guard troops turn their backs on Biden.  YouTube screen grab.