"All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal." John Steinbeck
"In war, truth is the first casualty." Aeschylus
We no longer have a figurative war on democracy. It is a real war that is waging on United States citizens and beyond.
We've turned another dark corner, my fellow Americans.
"The Enemy Within"
It was a scary meeting at Quantico, where top brass from all branches of the military left their posts around the globe and convened at the request of Whiskey Pete.
Nine months in, and we're headlong into an authoritarian regime. It just keeps getting worse. This one meeting will be its own chapter in the history books. It was that dark and disturbing. They all but said outright, "Good morning, generals. We are now running a dictatorship. We plan a military coup and we insist that you fall in line."
Hennessey Hegseth performed a disturbing and insulting one-man show to the generals and admirals in the audience.
Hey, Geneva Convention! Suck ma dick!
Geez, laws are just so overbearing!
Hegseth: "We unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy. We also don't fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement."
Hegseth: "Should our enemies choose foolishly to challenge us, they will be crushed by the violence, precision, and ferocity of the War Department. To our enemies, FAFO."
Hegseth: "As history teaches us, the only people who actually deserve peace and those who are willing to wage war to defend it. That's why pacifism is so naive and dangerous."
Hegseth: "A few months ago I was at the White House when President Trump announced his liberation day for America's trade policy. It was a landmark day. Well, today is another liberation day. The liberation of America's warriors ... you kill people and break things for a living."
Hegseth: "When it comes to any job that requires physical power to perform in combat, those standards must be high and gender neutral. If women can make it, excellent. If not, it is what it is. If that means no women for some combat jobs, so be it."
Hegseth: "Any place where tried & true physical standards were altered, especially since 15 when combat arms standards were changed to ensure females could qualify, must be returned to their original standard. Other standards have been manipulated to hit racial quotas, which is just as unacceptable"
He lambasted "fat" generals and admirals and railed against "beardos." He outlined a hypermasculine fighting force as the ideal, effectively insulting and diminishing our fighting forces. I'm not exactly sure what his goal was, other than perhaps setting the stage to return to the dark days of disallowing LGBTQ people and women from joining.
That doesn't make America great.
Women.
I don't need to remind my readers that women soldiers and sailors have contributed immeasurably to the defense of our nation. Fuck this asshole who diminishes their contributions.
If anyone needs a refresher on the history of women in the United States military, here's a start.
This jackass needs to resign.
A prayer.
Hello! First Amendement!?
And a threat.
Hegseth: "If the words I'm speaking today are making your heart sink, they you should do the honorable thing and resign."
The Commander-in-Cheat's speech was more unhinged. He brought out his usual laundry-list of grievances, because he just cannot vary from them. But he also spewed some disturbing dark rhetoric.
Because the military is supposed to be non-partisan, the esteemed audience of top military leaders, brought from thousands of miles away, sat stoically and listened. There was no applause, or really any response. When there was a smattering of laughter early on, he shushed them. "You're not allowed to do that."
And so, they sat quietly. No applause, no cheers, no laughs, no groans, nothing.
Makes sense. They have been trained to be stoic and neutral in the face of their superiors, and holy cow! in the face of battle, from day one of boot camp (or, in most of their cases, day one of the Academy). And given their respect for non-partisanship, their adherence to calm and quiet made sense.
Cadet Bonespurs is their Commander-in-Beef after all, so decorum wins, as befitting a soldier.
Trumplethinskin could not stand that they did not applaud when he entered. Surely he expected cheers, yells of "War! Fuck yeah!" and clamors to grab their rifles? After all, Piña Colada Pete got them all warmed up for him.
In short, the meeting showcased a small, pale, deranged little strongman facing a sea of great, decorated, controlled, strong men and women.
Here are a few clips of him sleepwalking through the remarks. These clips are not in order, there's a lot of them, and it's hard to watch, but it's important to witness. His whole speech can be found here.
Desperation.
Please like me! Please!
And if you don't, watch your back.
Trump to a room of generals: "I've never walked into a room so silent before. Just have a good time. And if you want to applaud, you applaud."
He has redefined America's enemies to his perceived enemies. Anyone who disagrees with him is fair game. And he is priming his generals to carry out his desire to kill (cuz that is what the military is designed to do!) dissenters. It's as simple as that.
The following clips are not-at-all-veiled threats to any dissenting voice.
(I apologize for repeats. They don't show in my draft version! I can't figure it out)
Trump to generals: "America is under invasion from within. We're under invasion from within. No different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in any ways because they don't wear uniforms. At least when they're wearing a uniform you can take them out."
Trump: "The ones that are run by radical left Democrats -- what they've done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles. They're very unsafe places & we're gonna straighten them out one by one. This is gonna be a major part for some people in this room. That's a war too. It's war from within"
Trump wraps up a speech to military leaders that represented a major escalation of his effort to weaponize the armed forces into a tool he can use to violently quash domestic dissent. Hard to imagine how anyone with a shred of dignity can keep serving after this, which of course is the point.
Trump declares war on Americans: "Our history is filled with military heroes who took on all enemies foreign and domestic. That's what the oath says -- foreign and domestic. Well we also have domestic."
Trump to generals: "Last month, I signed an executive order to provide training for a quick reaction force that can help quell civil disturbances. This is gonna be a big thing for the people in this room, because it's the enemy from within & we have to handle it before it gets out of control"
Trump to top military officials: "I told Pete, we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military. National Guard, but our military. Because we're going into Chicago very soon. That's a big city with an incompetent governor. Stupid governor."
Though this language mirrors other authoritarians – and even a casual student of history recognizes "the enemy within" as one of Adolph Hitler's talking points – our body of military leaders is decidedly not like the military leaders under other dictators. In Hitler's case, the social milieu of antisemitism ran deep and wide and permeated the military. Hitler's officers were mostly from the aristocracy and had been informed by the brutalities of WWI.
Our leaders, in contrast, were wrought under the promise of the freedoms afforded by the Constitution. They are ordinary citizens, with the common bond of loving the United States and all her warts, and swearing a sacred oath to protect the United States Constitution.
Though our military leaders' careers and life purpose is to prepare for war, I am confident that 99% of them do not want war. With anyone, let alone with the citizens of their own country. Most of them have seen battle. They know war is ugly. They do not relish "killing people and breaking things."
They know that they must not follow illegal orders, and they wouldn't have all those stripes, stars, bars, and ribbons if they were not disciplined, moral Americans. They are truly the best of us.
These leaders have served and led troops through Biden years, Orange years, Obama years, Bush years. And they'll be here when the last of the orange stain is being scrubbed off the sheets in the Lincoln bedroom.
Sure, some are conservative, and some may love their Commander-in-Grief. I don't think even those folks would go rogue and order some illegal shit. I hope I'm not wrong! And I hope we can keep them.
Other Bonkers Stuff. Cuz there's always Bonkers Stuff
Traitor Tot's speech was chock-full of the usual self-aggrandizement, lies, victimhood, and moments of dementia.
Just glue some gold leaf to the bow.
Trump: I am a very aesthetic person. I don't like some of the ships you are doing aesthetically. They say it is stealth. That's not stealth. An ugly ship is not necessary in order to say you are stealth.
Fuckin' Obama. He can't even walk down the stairs right!
The Radical Left stair-walkers are out to get you, I say!
Add to the Dementia Files. He was obviously told this by his team or his doctor or his wife to Go slow, donnie, go real slow! If the suggestion was just before this meeting, his brain may have held on to it and worked its way weirdly in to his remarks.
Trump: "I'm very careful when I walk down stairs, like I'm on stairs, I walk very slowly. Nobody has to set a record. Just try not to fall because it doesn't work out well."
Trump to generals: "We won every swing state, we won the popular vote. We won everything. You have to take a look at the map. It's almost entirely red excerpt there's a little blue line on each coast. And I think that's gonna disappears too."
Trump to generals: "We have beautiful paper, the gorgeous paper. I said, 'throw a little more gold on it, they deserve it. I want the A paper not the D paper.' We used to sign a piece of garbage ... I want to use the big beautiful firm paper."
I deserve the Nobel Prize for ending eight wars in eight months!
Sure you do, Donnie. Now let's get you back to your room for a snack and a rest.
Trump to generals: "Will you get the Nobel Prize? Absolutely not. They'll give it to some guy that didn't do a damn thing ... it would be a big insult to country, I will tell you that. I don't want it, I want the country to get it. We should get it."
"Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience." Thomas Merton
I think all of us, regardless of party, hold the members of the military in highest regard. Theirsacrifices are great. They defend and stay strong. They don't go looking for fights; they look to end them. What they are being asked to do goes against what they have dedicated their lives too.
Backing up a little to before his speech to the military leaders. While in the Oval Office with the press a few days before the meeting, Teddy Dozevelt was asked bout the upcoming meeting, and it was obvious that he had no idea what the reporter was talking about. None.
Had he been told and just forgot? Or had he been simply kept in the dark, while the nefarious characters worked in the background, pulling the levers as they prop up their beloved figurehead?
He thought they were talking about foreign military leaders. It was obvious he was confused and tried to cover. Finally, JD Divan-ce helped out (with a lie). Couchfuck McGee laughed off the silly rabbit reporters wondering why they cared about such a commonplace occurrence. We care because in reality, it is extremelyunusual for a meeting of this nature to be convened.
The First Tests
"Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime." Ernest Hemingway
The Felon has "joked" that fisherman should not dare to go out. The reality is that people have been murdered, and some of them may have been completely innocent bystanders.
Again, criminals and drug runners are not a foreign enemy that we can declare war upon. (Who, exactly are you naming we are in a war with?)
Nor should we. It is so dumb to have to point out that we have due process for criminals which doesn't include killing them before any investigation, evidence, or trial.
It literally keeps me up at night that SCOTUS has okayed illegal acts if they fall under color of the president's authority. HE IS MURDERING PEOPLE IN COLD BLOOD. This must not stand!!
"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people." Howard Zinn
Portland.
Troops have been sent to Portland in the name of some imaginary uprising. Vladimir Gluten has called the city "War ravaged."
There has been speculation that Napoleon Bone-Aspur saw some old footage of riots in Portland from years past on Faux News and he conflated that with the current situation in the city, where everything is Situation: Normal.
In an NBC interview, he seemed to confirm that when he said, "I spoke to the governor, she was very nice. But I said, 'Well wait a minute, am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening? My people tell me different.' They are literally attacking and there are fires all over the place…it looks like terrible."
Can we please get a president who doesn't get his daily briefings from his own propaganda mouthpiece? It's a möbius strip of lies and misinformation.
In his head, Portland is a teeming cesspool of Antifa soldiers, masked and armed with sticks and bats, ready to take over coffee shacks, vegan food trucks, and donut stores at will.
State and city officials were caught off guard by the announcement and have pushed back.
Satire
Is it just me, or does it seem we are at the point that satire seems superfluous, inadequate, too close to the truth, I dunno... all the things.
But we must try to find the absurdity and keep laughing.
Help us, Satirists. You're our only hope.
Perhaps the only way to stomach Hegseth's speech is through this one. This is his real voice and his real words. AI babies to the rescue.
A news digest will come, most likely after my short camping trip. By then, the news may be old, and new bright and shiny distractions will have emerged. But I'll be at it, documenting our time in history.
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