We don’t hear much about Richard Nixon’s military service, presumably because he didn’t do combat fighting. But he was stationed at Guadalcanal during World War Two, where he “prepared manifests and flight plans for C-47 operations and supervised the loading and unloading of the cargo aircraft.” It’s not much compared to Eisenhower’s job as Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, but Nixon did his part. So did Gerald Ford who fought across the Pacific Ocean on the light aircraft carrier, USS Monterey, and ultimately helped liberate the Philippines from Japanese domination.

We’re more familiar with the military exploits of George H.W. Bush, who has awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross after he was forced to make a water landing during the Mariana and Palau Islands campaign, and Bob Dole who was permanently disfigured by a Nazi shell while fighting up the boot of Italy.

This kind of service record was the norm for a president or presidential nominee during the latter half of the 20th-Century. John F. Kennedy was a war hero. George McGovern flew 35 combat missions over Italy as the pilot of a B-24 Liberator. As a Lieutenant in the Navy in the early 1950’s, Jimmy Carter helped “in the design and development of nuclear propulsion plants for naval vessels.”

Whether these men became Republican or Democratic politicians, they had once served together against a common enemy. They’d seen parts of the world that most present-day Americans never see. These common experiences helped bind the country together.

They also produced several political dynasties, most notably the Kennedys and the Bushes. This gave America a bipartisan commitment to internationalism, which obviously delivered both good and bad results for the country and the world. As David Siders of Politico reports, Trump’s brand of conservatism came to bury this impulse in the Republican Party, along with all rival dynasties.

Whether it’s the Cheneys, the Bushes or the lesser bloodlines — such as the Romneys or the Murkowskis — Trump has been relentless in his efforts to force them to bend the knee. Even Cindy McCain, the widow of the late Sen. John McCain — who herself has never run for office — has been knocked down, censured by Trump allies who run the state Republican Party in Arizona.

It’s the clearest sign that the modern Republican Party hasn’t just broken with its traditionalist past. It’s shredding every vestige of it.

Obviously, the tradition of honorable military service in our leaders broke down a bit near the end of the 20th-Century, beginning with Ronald Reagan and continuing with Vietnam War evaders Bill Clinton, Dan Quayle, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Trump, like Cheney, received five deferments from that conflict. The last one, infamously relied on a dubious diagnosis of bone spurs in his feet. While they pursued their educations, John McCain was rotting in captivity, a prisoner of the North Vietnamese.

I don’t bring this up to fetishize military service, to defend political dynasties or to unreservedly praise the record of the political Establishment in this country. There are many ways in which the Establishment had it coming when it comes to Donald Trump. But when he we look at the political fragmentization of the country and the severe polarization between the two major parties, it’s clear that we owed a lot to the camaraderie and good will that came out of our leaders common experiences during the 20th Century.

As to the Republican Party specifically, they understood the value of international institutions because of all they sacrificed to win World War Two and to combat the rise of totalitarianism. Having a strong military as a deterrent was a core Republican value, and conservative suspicions about multinational organizations like the United Nations and NATO was kept under control.

Trump is replacing both the good and the bad, but it’s the good that should concern us. I don’t mind seeing every vestige of the Bush dynasty shredded, but that’s in large part because George W. Bush tarnished that brand by doing things like recess-appointing John Bolton to serve as ambassador to the United Nations, and institution he wanted to destroy. We needed the pendulum to swing back towards his father rather than in the direction of Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un.

At this point, there’s really no common bond between red and blue America. There’s not much that binds us to each other. In the past, our bonds gave us the strength to weather even our worst Establishment mistakes. Now we can’t even produce a peaceful transition of power.

Trump has exacerbated this problem at every opportunity, and now he’s laying waste to what little remained of value on the American right. It’s for this reason that I can’t enjoy watching him purge the GOP of all its historical leaders and potential dynastic rivals.