Published on May 25th, just in time for Monday’s Memorial Day, comic book fans can morn the fundamental transformation of another decades-old symbolic hero in Captain America: Steve Rogers #1. It turns out that even a fictional hero of Americana on paper isn’t safe — even when he’s a super-soldier patriot wearing a uniform of stars and stripes. In this latest version, Steve Rogers still wears the traditional red, white and blue garb, of course, but he’s really an agent of Hydra (an authoritarian terrorist-criminal-paramilitary organization bent on world domination) and has been since childhood. Of this big reveal, Marvel Executive Editor Tom Brevoort stated, “[He’s] the real Steve Rogers [and not] some clone, shapeshifting Skrull, Life Model Decoy or a Cap from an alternate universe.” (Well, isn’t that reassuring?) So, he didn’t fight Nazis in WWII — as the original tale goes — he was one!

Steve Rogers survived many hardships like medical experimentation and an iceberg’s suspended animation freeze. Yet, he was no match for an artist’s appropriation of his myth — thereby proving the pen really is mightier than the sword. This comic book debacle is an eerie parallel to current political events unfolding in Japan also related to WWII. Specifically, another representative of America, a global apologist “double agent,” is currently cooling his heels in Hiroshima (site of the world’s first atomic strike). He also wears the traditional “uniform” of the West — sharp business suits and that ever-present American flag lapel pin — but, like Steve Rogers, he’s not what he appears to be either. So, if Captain America is really a fascist, what does that say about the powers-that-be who have mismanaged the country over the last almost eight years?

Recall that General George Washington was many things including first president and commander-in-chief. Therefore, since the country’s inception, the military has been intimately associated with the office. Beyond the fact that candidate Obama ran successfully on an anti-war platform, the reality remains that as president he has kept the United States embroiled in very costly Middle Eastern conflicts exactly as his Republican predecessor did. (Incidentally, he also criticized George W. Bush’s deficit spending as unpatriotic, then literally doubled down on the practice by spending twice as much.) If that’s not enough insult to injury, Mr. Obama has simultaneously slashed the military. But, the rot — and the dysfunction — is more pervasive than is generally realized: American military culture, itself, is under a constant, multilevel leftist assault.

As demonstrated, this is seen in popular culture via fiction with now anti-hero Steve Rogers. It can similarly be witnessed in real-life Mr. Obama who pursues a dogged “weakness through capitulation” strategy; the opposite of Ronald Reagan’s highly successful “peace through strength.” Yet, the attack isn’t only top-down, this corrosion is also in the process of eradicating the roots of the tree. Specifically, it is the misuse of law to undermine the long-established practices of one of America’s oldest military colleges, South Carolina’s almost 175-year-old The Citadel. Earlier this month, the institution rightfully refused to permit a Muslim student’s request to wear a hijab — a headscarf demonstrating her faith — in addition to the school’s required uniform. So, what is more important here, seven generations of tradition or the tyranny of one individual’s right to self-expression? Well, that girl’s parents aren’t taking their daughter’s rejected request lying down — they are in the process of considering “all legal options.” (Well, bully for them!) Naturally, the propagandist MSM is busy spinning yet another frivolous demand into a political tempest in a teapot. All in the name of “religious freedom and inclusiveness,” of course.

That’s quite an interesting liberal perspective. So, under this given circumstance, one girl’s right “for comfort” at The Citadel is suddenly an absolute. What happened to that same consideration — the comfort level and rights of biological girls (plural) — that this same crowd expects to share any school facility, locker room, shower area or bathroom with an outwardly presenting transgender male (or any mischievously adventurous teenage boy willing to fake it)? Sounds like a spirited game of South Carolina philosophical “Twister.” Soup to nuts, Orwellian nonsense.

All of these changes — bastardizing Captain America’s image, an ideologue president’s longstanding hard left polices, and in contrived school-based grievances — are smoke screens for something far more insidious. Specifically, these acidic actions are water droplets slowly, incrementally wearing away the bedrock that is American culture. It is about the creation of artificial crises (or in Mr. Obama’s case a world traveling reminder of America’s “sins” as with his current Japan visit) in order to justify rabid, homegrown anti-Americanism. Progressives are cowardly parasites. To maintain a stranglehold on political power, they corrupt and exploit every good thing that is America — even going so far as to demonize her most popular box office hero.

David L. Hunter is on Twitter and blogs at davidlhunter.blogspot.com. He is published in The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Patriot Post, FrontPage Mag, and extensively in Canada Free Press and American Thinker.