Just in time for Memorial Day, some MSNBC drone named Chris Hayes has lit up the internet with his confession that dead American troops don’t quite measure up to his exacting standards for what qualifies as a “hero.” Memo to Chris: they are heroes, and you don’t get a vote.

Though he may be shocked to hear it, America’s fighting men and women don’t care whether Chris Hayes considers their fallen comrades heroes or not. First, there’s the practical matter that almost no one – in uniform or out – watches MSNBC or the roster of progressive meat puppets that fill the short stretches between endless reruns of “Lock Up.”

Care about Chris Hayes’s comfort level? They don’t even know this leftist twerp exists.

But on a deeper level, our troops don’t do what they do to impress the likes of Chris Hayes – though he is perfectly willing to make his living in the shadow of their sacrifice. In the scheme of things, Chris Hayes’s views are important only as an object lesson in what our progressive elites really think about our military. And it’s not much.

So what did he say? Mediaite provides a transcript of his weaselly insights:

I feel… uncomfortable, about the word because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war. Um, and, I don’t want to obviously desecrate or disrespect memory of anyone that’s fallen, and obviously there are individual circumstances in which there is genuine, tremendous heroism, you know, hail of gunfire, rescuing fellow soldiers, and things like that. But it seems to me that we marshal this word in a way that is problematic. But maybe I’m wrong about that.

No maybe about it, Chris. I love the “rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war” part – he sounds like one of my commie grad students trying to impress credulous freshman girls after a choom session in the quad. But Chris Hayes seems to cultivate a more hipster vibe – no ponytail for him, but I’ll bet that lurking under his blazer is a really cool tat that signals to the world he’s edgy.

And what’s edgier than taking on our troops? After all, at least until the next election, they are “our” troops. Even most progressives – quite willing to diss our troops before while Bush was president — are on message these days. After all, it’s kinda hard to shout about warmongering, baby-killing imperialists when the guy commanding them is your own guy.

I greatly enjoy watching progressives seethe as they are forced, for the sake of appearances, to pretend to support our troops. You know it’s killing them.

But it’s the progressives’ own doing – their sickening performance following the Vietnam War, when they figuratively and literally spit on our troops – so disgusted decent Americans of all political stripes that to do anything but treat our troops with the utmost respect is to draw near-universal contempt and scorn from across the mainstream political spectrum.

So, the real problem for Chris Hayes is that he actually said what he thinks. He thinks our soldiers are suckers and fools at best, brutal sociopaths at worst. At a minimum, he feels that honoring those who died for this country might encourage people to see that actually defending our country is a good thing. He’s not quite ready to make that leap; after all, most progressives are ambivalent about this whole “America” concept, if not actively opposed to it.

Patriotism may be the last refuge of a scoundrel, but when progressives attempt it, it’s comedy gold.

So, like so many other useless progressive fops who glide from cocktail party to panel discussion, Chris Hayes continues to push his progressive vision of collectivist serfdom from behind the unbreachable wall of American warriors. He has not stood with them and, in fact, is unworthy of doing so. He is a parasite taking sustenance from the exertions of better men and women.

And even if those men and women know who Chris Hayes is, they wouldn’t give a half damn about what he thinks. They don’t do it for him.

UPDATE: Hayes offers a written apology for his comments.