Hundreds of American military commanders were summoned from all over the world and ordered to gather in Quantico, Va., on Tuesday to hear what turned out to be insulting and deranged lectures from President Donald Trump and his secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth.
Hegseth, who now styles himself as “the Secretary of War,” took the stage first to rail against woke culture, allegedly undeserved promotions of women and nonwhite officers, facial hair and fat soldiers. He extolled the “warrior ethos” to a room filled with men and women with hundreds of years of combat experience among them, talking down to them as if they were new recruits and he were something more than an ex-Fox News babbler with no qualifications for his present job other than being a former Army National Guard officer.
As bad as Hegseth was, Trump was far worse. He rambled somewhat incoherently and listlessly for more than an hour, airing his usual political gripes and addressing military matters only occasionally. When he did talk about the military, he sounded both deranged and dangerous, suggesting that the U.S. military should “train” in American cities, standing ready to unleash their lethal power on their fellow citizens.
“It seems that the (cities) that are run by the radical left Democrats, what they’ve done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, they’re very unsafe places,” Trump said, wildly exaggerating in his usual manner. “And we’re going to straighten them out one by one, and this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That’s a war too. It’s a war from within.”
Does Trump actually believe that U.S. cities, such as Portland – his latest target for National Guard deployment – are chaotic war zones that require military intervention, or is he looking to set a precedent that will give him the means to employ military force to crush his opponents and maintain his power?
If it is the former, then he is seriously delusional and deceived by conspiracy theories and Fox News hysteria. If it is the latter, then we have genuine reason to fear his anti-democratic intentions.
Our hope may lie in military leaders who have sworn their loyalty to the Constitution, not to the very strange man currently residing in the White House.
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