"Alexander Vindman, Donald Trump, and how the loyalty of Eastern European Jews, even decorated veterans, is viewed as suspect." “We Soviet immigrant kids had different ways of immersing ourselves in America, of losing ourselves in its powerful tides of assimilation. This, clearly, was Vindman's. The tragedy of it is watching our parents, who brought us from a place that never fully accepted us as citizens to a place they really believed would never flash these ancient anti-Semitic tropes at us. Maybe they’d never fully assimilate—they came here when they were too old—but we, their children, surely would. We would be such fervent Americans, they hoped, that Americans would never tell the difference. And when it came to officially sponsored anti-Semitism, they were right, at least for a few decades. Then 2016 came around, bringing to power a set of people all too eager to remind us of a thought we’d left in the old country: No matter what you do for this country, even if you give it your life and limb, you will always be foreign, suspect. And if, like Alexander Vindman, you dare to flag the president’s deeply problematic behavior and talk about it to congressional Democrats trying to impeach him, none of your service to your country will matter. There will be an effort to discredit you—you won’t be suspected of being secretly loyal to Israel, as your parents once were in the Soviet Union, but to Ukraine—any country but the one you actually serve.”