Yes, we’re just a few days past the 2025 Academy Awards, but let’s reveal the plot for the Best Picture winner of 2036.

The title could be something like “Lost Valor” or “Following Orders.” It takes place in the dark times of the mid to late 2020s and is about a sergeant first class in the U.S. Army. We’ll call him Chad.

After graduating from high school in Missouri, Chad enlists to get the kind of technical training the military provides. His parents also believe it might shape him up after he occasionally got into trouble hanging out with the guys and gals.

Chad likes the Army and his fellow soldiers. He figures maybe two two-year tours and he’ll be in position to get a better paying job in or near his hometown.

But then, Donald Trump decides to war on Iran.

Chad is a good soldier. He carries out orders from superiors to perfection and receives commendations throughout his tour. And when he gets the word to carry out an attack on an Iranian position, he doesn’t question the order, he does what he’s told.

So when it’s discovered that one of the attacks he launched ended up killing 125 Iranian civilians, including children, Chad initially shrugs it off as an accident of war. Some of his fellow soldiers are a little more troubled by what happens – they’re out-and-out angry, and there starts to be discord in the unit.

Months later, Chad is on leave. When he gets to St. Louis in his uniform, he’s notices 175,000 people in the streets protesting the very war he’s been risking his life fighting. He’s disgusted – until he notices a girl he dated briefly in high school. He thinks they parted on good terms, but when he goes up to say hello, she looks at his uniform and snarls.

He responds angrily and is soon met with contempt by other protesters. They call him a baby killer. A St. Louis police officer needs to get him away to avoid a physical altercation.

Chad goes back to his hometown and is shocked to see that the people there are nearly as angry. Gasoline is $6 a gallon, local farmers can’t sell their corn in foreign markets and several local businesses are boarded up. 

He remembers seeing people paying for soldiers’ meals at the local lunch spot. He remembers old guys buying a round for hometown military personnel. 

None of that happens. Even his parents look at him warily. Instead of being a local hero, Chad is a pariah.

He’s heard something about this. During and after the Vietnam War, veterans were treated with contempt for “losing” to the Communists. They couldn’t find jobs or even a sympathetic ear – they were considered deranged or warped. That’s how Rambo got to be Rambo.

Chad is relieved to return to the Middle East, to his barracks. But his compatriots got the same treatment in towns from Augusta, Maine to Pismo Beach, California, from Fort Pierce, Florida to Lihue, Hawaii.

“We just did what we were told to do,” the men tell each other. They’re shaken and disgusted. The MAGA types among them say the news media is to blame, reporting only when bad things happen. 

But Chad isn’t so sure. The girl in St. Louis, the guys at Susan’s Restaurant, his own mother – all of them can’t be brainwashed propaganda victims of whatever is left of liberal news media.

The movie ends with a ceremony at the base. Pete Hegseth is there to give out special medals with the image of Trump flanked by eagles with spears in their talons. The official medal of Operation Epic Fury – the idiotic name for this mess.

When it’s time for Chad to get his medal, he walks up to Hegseth, lets him pin the tacky looking medal on his chest – and spits in Hegseth’s face.

— 

All that is a long way of saying this: There is no honor in this war for American soldiers who choose to participate. 

It’s worse than Vietnam. In Vietnam, veterans were badly treated because it was considered the first U.S. loss. But the American people changed their mind about Vietnam as the war progressed – they realized they had been deceived by America’s leaders. Most prominently, Lyndon Johnson. So it was unfair to blame the soldiers when the attitude shifted.

The Iraq War was another stupid mistake. But except when soldiers committed atrocities, such as at Abu Ghraib, veterans returning from that war and from Afghanistan were not faced with recriminations.

That’s going to change here.

The American people have never supported this war. And soldiers were warned – Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, who served with far more honor than anyone in this clown show of an administration, reminded soldiers before this and the Venezuela adventure that they are not obliged to carry out illegal or immoral orders.

And that’s what Iran is.

So when the kid from “Hamnet” wins Best Actor by perfecting his Missouri accent, as British actors are wont to do, he’ll be recreating a scene that’s bound to happen a lot from now until this nightmare ends.

It’s a terrible thing Trump, Hegseth and the rest of these yutzes have done to dishonor young people who believe in serving their country. People with honorable intentions shouldn’t be forced to weigh the morality of their service.

They’re clearly not the biggest victims of this mess. But their struggle will be Oscar bait.