Could you live forever?
Could you see the day
Could you feel your whole world fall apart and fade away?
– Steely Dan, “Kid Charlemagne”
Right now the big story from Washington is Donald Trump’s second Shithole Shutdown, where allegedly the impasse is because the Democrats are holding out. But really, everyone knew Trump wanted a shutdown because he was the one who refused to negotiate until the very last day before the budget ran out. The bigger story and one with long-term political implications for the Project 2025 government was the command meeting by Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Bombing Venezuelan Fishing Boats.
Actually, Kegsbreath and his boss insist on calling the Defense Department the “Department of War”, as it was before 1946. On one hand, this is one of those things like rump renaming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America”, as though he were a God with the magic power to change the fundamental aspects of the world just by changing the labels. On the other hand, this is actually one of those things where in principle I’d agree with the Trump agenda. Our military is not very “defense.” Our “defense” is bombing the shit out of everything. It makes sense to call your military a department of defense when you’re a small country that can’t do much more than defend itself. If you’re Croatia, Austria, even Japan, it makes sense to call your military a defense force. Us? No.
Plus, the postwar renaming is exactly the sort of thing that inspired George Orwell’s world in Nineteen Eighty-Four, where destructive government agencies are sold as the opposite of what they actually are. I think Trump and Hegseth are just being honest. Would that they extended this policy and renamed the Department of Homeland Security the Department of Justifying Paranoia and Repression and the Department of Justice the Department of Railroading Trump’s Enemies.
But in September, Secretary Hegseth announced that all the commanders were ordered to attend a meeting at Quantico, in person, with all of the costs involved, and requiring them all to leave their posts no matter where they were in the world. This led to all sorts of speculation about whether sinister motives were involved. Like if Pete wanted to make all our generals take some Fuhrer Oath to Our Lord and Savior. Well, the meeting happened September 30, and while the general tone might have set the stage for a later Commissar Order against civilians, Hegseth just brought the top commanders all in one room just to review his already established political agenda for the military, in a speech that lasted maybe 30 minutes, and pacing the stage as he spoke, like a televangelist or time-share salesman. He said America must not only be able to win any war that is thrust upon us but “any war we choose”. He said while the military should not have “nasty bullying and hazing” he would do a “review of the department’s definitions of so-called toxic leadership, bullying, and hazing, to empower leaders to enforce standards without fear of retribution or second-guessing.”
He said he was going to enforce uniform standards of appearance, including getting rid of “beardos.” He said that all servicemen, of all ranks, had to do PT (physical training) twice a year. Because apparently Hegseth was sick of seeing “fat generals and admirals” in the halls of the Pentagon.
He said this prior to introducing Donald Trump, who is looking more and more like he swallowed the orange version of that gum Violet Beauregard ate in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
You know, when the Oompa-Loompas had to roll her away because she no longer had legs, she was just a ball with a head on it? That’s where we are now.
The fact that both rump and Kegsbreath seemed to think the goal was to get a bunch of applause moments on camera was clear when Trump told the crowd that he’d never seen a room so quiet before. And he joked that anyone could leave, but “there goes your rank, there goes your future.” And unlike Hegseth, he was not brief and on point. He went on for over an hour, apparently to demonstrate he has stamina in at least one endeavor. Mostly it was the same wheezy, whiny airing of the grievances that we got at his last UN speech, but he also said that this country faces a “war from within” and lamented the fact that the enemy are civilians who don’t wear uniforms, and that he told Hegseth that he should “use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.” Which should give some indication of what Hegseth means by dedicating the military to a “warrior ethos” where soldiers and commanders can act “without fear of retribution or second-guessing.”
Now, supposedly the fact that there was little reaction (other than laughter at Trump’s humor) was because the military, especially the higher ranks, are supposed to be professional and non-partisan. But the body language was telling. The audience was more stone-faced than Easter Island. I’m sure the fact that Little Boy and Fat Man brought them there just to be insulted and coerced didn’t help staff morale. But Hegseth could have told me to come in from halfway around the world to announce we were getting free hookers and blow, and I’d still ask “Why couldn’t we have done this over Zoom?” But then again, we know why Pete can’t secure a virtual chat meeting.
Even so, security was the exact opposite of the point. The point was to summon all the command staff of our military for an on-camera event to be props in Pete’s propaganda exercise announcing his “paradigm shift” for a “warrior ethos” Pentagon that would ignore liberal standards against hazing and “toxic leadership”. Odd given that he disdains beards as being for a bunch of “Nordic pagans”, if acting like a Viking is apparently regulation now. Especially since his own tattoos indicate being a fellow traveler with Nordic identity groups.
And if you’re asking why I’m focusing on this rather than Trump’s (latest) Shithole Shutdown, one, it’s not like we’re not going to have a government shutdown every year if Republicans have anything to do with it, and two, the results of Tuesday’s publicity stunt are more directly embarrassing to Trump and his Party in the short term, and imply the potential results of Trump’s shutdown publicity stunt in the long term.
As The Fucking News points out, while Russell Vought, Project 2025 architect and incidental head of the OMB, is withholding funds already allocated from Democrat states, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (‘O BuBBA’), without concessions to the Democrats, is going to take away even more money from Republican-voting states, because O BuBBA causes the Affordable Care Act subsidies to expire, which would cause insurance premiums in Alaska to go up 346 percent and Mississippi 314 percent, to give just two examples.
Cuts also include supports to first-responder and counterterrorism efforts. (‘a massive bailout for Antifa and Black Lives Matter‘)
Given that the public is largely blaming Republicans for this, the Church of Trump’s Society for the Propagation of the Faith is pushing the dogma that the main reason Democrats are holding out is because they want healthcare services to go towards illegal immigrants. Wednesday this was mostly the line of JD Vance. (Trump has apparently been posting on social media but hasn’t made any public appearances since the Hegseth meeting. Apparently the most macho Olympian demigod president ever is a bit tuckered out.)
This is of course raging bullshit, but when Trump debated Harris, he wailed, “They’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats!” And that was even more raging bullshit, but who’s president now?
Democrats are once again being outmaneuvered by The Trump Party on the shutdown. The latest Big Lie is that Democrats started this cause they won’t accept a budget that doesn’t give healthcare to illegals. And Democrats keep going, “But it’s already against the law to give federal healthcare to the undocumented!” You don’t respond to the lie. That keeps it in public consciousness. It’s like responding to “Have you stopped beating your wife?” Instead, point out that Moscow Mike Johnson (the Hero-General of Avdiivka) wouldn’t even let the House debate a bill during the last day of September, instead choosing to close the chamber early. The Trump Party WANTS this, because they want a government that doesn’t fund anything (including soldiers’ pay) other than the security state and Trump’s personal priorities. Y’know, what they wanted to do anyway. What point is there in negotiating with that?
Like I say, fascism is evil and horrible even when it works. But this is not working. This is worse than fascism. At least Hitler had an infrastructure program. This is just looting the candy store until it goes bankrupt, and expecting someone else to hold the bag. Basically, what Trump did to Atlantic City, only applied to the largest, most powerful and most influential government on Earth.
The Trump Party isn’t negotiating with the Democrats or the rest of the country, because they don’t want to. The goal is not to preserve the congressional system of funding and legislation, the goal is to destroy it so that Our President can run everything by fiat, hopefully forever.
The goal is to treat the entire population (including Trump supporters and rich people who don’t goosestep in line) like the peasants in the French Revolution, blanking out what happened to the aristocrats in the French Revolution.
And to do this, Trump and his “War” Secretary need the support of the armed institution whose members were just ordered to make a wasteful, expensive, global security-threatening and completely unnecessary trip to one location, like their subordinate status made them magic genies to be summoned with a rub of the lamp, just to tell them that they’re fatsos who need a shave.
Anybody else see the flaw with this strategy?
Cause I don’t think Trump does.
Well, that’s it for this post. But before I go, here it is, Your Moment of Zen: