Politics & Power Quote by David Cross

Cross lands the punch where American piety is softest: the reflexive slogan "support the troops". He treats it less like a moral stance than a consumer brand, something you can perform with a bumper sticker, a stadium ovation, a "thank you for your service" while voting for the very policymakers most likely to deploy those troops into open-ended wars. The joke works because it flips the expected political alignment. "Support the troops" is coded, in U.S. culture, as conservative territory; Cross yanks it back into policy, where support means fewer unnecessary deployments, better VA care, and an actual plan for what happens after the photo-op.

The line's engine is the word "besides". It signals impatience with sanctimony, the comedian's eye-roll translated into syntax. He's not patiently debating; he's puncturing a ritual. The subtext is that troop-support rhetoric often functions as a shield: it preempts criticism of war by conflating dissent with disrespect, and it lets politicians outsource patriotism to people in uniform. By insisting the only "real" support is a vote, Cross drags sentiment into accountability: if you claim you care, prove it where it counts.

Context matters: Cross came up in the post-9/11 era, when opposition to the Iraq War could be framed as betrayal, and "troops" became a rhetorical hostage. His provocation is deliberately blunt, even reductive, because the target isn't nuanced ideology; it's hypocrisy dressed up as reverence. The laugh is the sound of a sacred cow realizing it's been branded.