You may have heard something recently about the Trump administration sending U.S. troops—the “citizen-soldiers” of the Oregon National Guard—to establish order in Portland, and a judge stepping in to say the plan seemed illegal, and the Trump administration then trying to sneak around her restraining order by mustering troops from other states, and then the same judge saying that maneuver, a “direct contravention” of her order, also seemed illegal. (At press time, an appeals court was reviewing the matter.)

In this legalistic telling, however, the actual people who make up the guard are rendered as little more than political pawns. In reality, the Oregon National Guard comprises thousands of individuals who signed up for a variety of reasons. Among them: tuition, training, a desire to ser

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