ICYMI: I appeared in Tuesday’s Current Affairs newsletter talking about ICE, Portland, and Trump’s attempt to scare us all. You can read that here if you would like to!
The government has officially shut down, which means things are about to get even stupider, somehow. Trump has threatened to cut social programs and fire large swaths of what remains of our civil service. When asked yesterday when that axe would fall, Karoline Leavitt said: “Two days. Imminent. Very soon.” Can they legally do that? Probably not! Will that matter? About as much as it’s mattered for the last several years, probably.
No doubt Stephen Miller, Russ Vought, and the rest of the lads over at Project 2025 have gamed this shutdown scenario out extensively. Whatever happens next will probably be ugly, and it will likely happen fast. The legislative branch hasn’t been very useful lately, but it did at least exist. We are down to two branches of federal government: one completely lost, the other severely compromised.
While we wait for the other jackboot to drop, let’s look at what happened on Tuesday.
As you have likely heard, Hegseth summoned every flag and general officer in the military to leave their posts around the world and convene inside a single auditorium in Quantico, Virginia. The former major then spent 45 minutes harranguing them in front of a neon American flag like a demented Temu Patton. Trump then followed this masturbatory exercise with one of the weirdest and worst speeches of his career.
Hegseth laid out his incredibly stupid vision for a post-woke military. Trump openly talked about deploying the United States military to every American city. Both did a spectacular job of alienating every flag and general officer in the United States Armed Forces. It’s a real mixed bag. Let’s get into it.
Pete Hegseth’s 12-Point Plan to Dewokify the Military
On Tuesday morning, Hegseth stood in front of hundreds of men and women who possess a rank he has neither the patience nor aptitude to reach. His 45-minute speech consisted mostly of self-aggrandizement and culture-war nonsense, but also included some concrete policy changes. Here they are — plus my analysis as a veteran, for whatever that’s worth:
Drop and give me 35(ish)
Historically speaking, the armed forces held women and men to a different physical fitness standard. Hegseth wants to change that. From now on, anyone in a combat arms MOS (job) will need to meet the male standard.
I don’t actually hate this. Physical fitness standards should be tooled to the jobs themselves — either you can do the job or you can’t. That’s why, after years of development by kinesiologists and sports scientists, the Army implemented a sex-neutral, age-neutral physical fitness test for combat arms MOSs four months ago.
Unfortunately for military readiness, this test is way too woke for Hegseth, who is getting rid of gender differences but NOT age differences. In the Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps, 40 year olds will still be held to lower physical standards than 18-year-olds. Hegseth’s policy change is not actually about combat readiness. It is about reducing the number of women in combat arms.BAMF Test:
Combat arms MOSs will also now require a “combat field test” that anyone in combat arms MOSs will have to pass, because nothing says military efficiency like requiring two tests instead of just replacing the old test with the new one.
This second test, Hegseth tells us, will resemble the Army Expert Fitness Test or Marine Corps Combat Fitness Test. For context, here’s the Army Expert Fitness Test:A one-mile run
100-meter sprint
Lift 16 sandbags onto a 66” tall platform
50 meter farmer’s carry with two 40-lb water cans
25 meter high crawl
25 meter three-five second rush
Another 1-mile run
And here’s the Marine Corps Combat Fitness Test:Run 880 yards
Shoulder press with a 30-pound ammo can
A 300-yard shuttle run that involves sprints, an agility course, high crawl, low crawl, body drag, fireman carry, ammo can carry, push-ups, and a grenade throw
I don’t really have a problem with requiring a test like this. Both these tests do a better job of simulating actual combat skills than older physical fitness tests. This is a good change, I’m here for it.
Training Day
From now on, everyone in the armed services has to do PT every duty day. This was already a de facto thing, but making it official did allow Hegseth to say “If the Secretary of War can do regular hard PT, so can every member of our joint force” and then presumably cum in his pants, so hooray I guess.“No Beardos”
That’s a direct quote from Hegseth, and here’s what he’s talking about: some men -- mostly Black men -- get serious skin irritation if they shave every day. In the old, woke days the military used to give out beard profiles that allowed these people to shave less often. No more! Because nothing says military readiness like open sores and/or kicking out a bunch of trained troops who have a skin condition.Bring Back Hazing!
Yes, really. “Nasty bullying and hazing” aren’t allowed, per Hegseth, but the secret second type of bullying and hazing is totally fine. Drill sergeants are allowed to hit recruits again, though no word on whether they’re allowed to beat them until they bleed or stuff them into dryers this time around. Regardless, verbal hazing has the Secretary of War’s fully erect stamp of approval. Because nothing says military readiness like abuse and its consequences.Toxic Waste
No more “toxic leadership” complaints -- or at least, not woke ones. Per Hegseth: “Toxic leadership is promoting destructive ideologies that are an anathema to the constitution and the laws of nature and nature’s God.” Cool! Great! Vindictive and abusive leadership styles that decrease military readiness are fine but God forbid someone be, like. Gay. Or whatever.“No Walking on Eggshells Policy”
Back in the Woke times, troops who felt they’d been wronged or discriminated against in some way could complain anonymously to the Inspector General’s office. Well, those days are over! No more anonymous complaints, so enjoy getting the shit beaten out of you if you claim someone’s abusing you.
If that sounds like carte blanch for officers and NCOs to be racist, sexist, and generally fucked up, don’t worry! According to Hegseth: “Being a racist has been illegal in our formation since 1948. The same goes for sexual harassment.” Apparently this means no enforcement mechanism is necessary. I’m sure all the women and people of color are so relieved. Could be worse, though: Hegseth didn’t even gesture towards prohibitions against descrimination based on sexuality.
Forgive (some of) Us Our Tresspasses
Hegseth also intends to erase records of wrongdoing for “forgivable” infractions. What infractions are forgivable, you might ask? Hegseth didn’t say. He did, however, stress that we need “risktakers and aggressive leaders” who, presumably, aren’t scared to haze people or smack an ass or two.Unaffirming Action
From now on, Hegseth says, our armed services will only promote based on merit. No more quotas, no more affirmative action: all hail the Invisible Hand.
In my shorter version of this list, originally posted to Bluesky and Twitter, I stated that the military never had quotas or affirmative action. I was half right: quotas have never been a thing. Affirmative action, on the other hand, did exist. Here’s a document from the extremely woke year of 1990 — a year Hegseth explicitly wants to Retvrn to, by the way. From his speech:
“The 1990 test is simple. What were the military standards in 1990? And if they have changed, tell me why. Was it a necessary change based on the evolving landscape of combat? Or was the change do to a softening, weakening or gender-based pursuit of other priorities? 1990 seems to be as good a place to start as any.”
ANYWAY: back in the unwoke year of 1990, when men were men and women were women and hair metal ruled the world, the Army implemented an affirmative action plan that explicitly banned quotas and was basically like “hey, how can we make sure that women and people of color are getting treated fairly?” Which actually seems like a really important component of military readiness, since it’s vital to unit cohesion, getting people to reenlist, and expanding the recruitment pool to include more quality recruits. That’s not some lefty extremist opinion either. In 2023, our very own conservative Supreme Court carved out an exception for military academies when they banned affirmative action in higher education.
Anyway, those days are over. Gone are the days when women and people of color got fast-tracked up the promotion ladder! Not sure when those days were — certainly not 2005-2010 when I was in — but whatever. Finally, white men have a fair shot in our armed forces.The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves
Hegseth endorsed already-enacted policies that ban bitching on social media. This is, in a way, very funny, since if we are Retvrning to Tradition, bitching and moaning is about as traditional as it gets. Somehow, though, I doubt that’s what Hegseth means. I suspect he’s more interested in quashing any anti-MAGA sentiment online. After all, it’s a lot harder to pretend the military is rabidly pro-Trump when they’re out here, like. Talking. In public.No More Death By Powerpoint
Hegseth wants fewer mandatory powerpoint trainings, and honestly that’s pretty solid. Yes, he probably means anti-sexual-harassment and anti-racism training, and the implications of that are bad. Also, though, those training are performative nonsense that don’t do anything, so whatever. Fine. Plenty of worse things on this list to be upset about, like…Fuck the Geneva Convention
I would expect nothing less from the man who convinced Trump to pardon war criminals during his first term. “No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement. Just common sense, maximum lethality, and authority for war fighters,” he told the assembled generals. Bomb random boats. Stab a captive teenager. Maximize lethality! It’s what Jesus would do.
Hegseth finished up by telling the officers that his ongoing purge of top brass was nothing to worry about — that is, unless you’re one of the wokies who made rank by being all woke and shit. Anyone who disagrees his 12-point plan to dewokify the military, he said, should retire immediately.
And that was it — this was the speech these generals travelled halfway around the world (in some cases) to hear. They stood silently at attention as this ridiculous peacock of a man left the stage and the band began to play an incongruously chipper military march.
But if these generals and admirals thought their suffering was over, they were sorely mistaken.
Old Man Yells At Generals
Trump spoke to his captive audience for 73 excruciating minutes. He covered a lot of ground. Let’s start with the worst of it.
You have heard, I assume, about Trump’s most godawful quotes from Tuesday. In case you haven’t, here they are:
“We’re under invasion from Within! No different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways because they don’t wear uniforms. At least when they’re wearing a uniform, you can take them out. These people don’t have uniforms. But we are under Invasion From Within. We’re stopping it very quickly.”
Everyone in this room just got done fighting two very long wars where enemy combatants somewhat infamously did not wear uniforms, but who cares; there’s a new Enemy in town, and that Enemy is Within.
“Democrats — what they’ve done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, they’re very unsafe places, 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…I told Pete: we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military. National Guard, but military.”
And then, a bit later:
“Last month I signed an executive order to provide training for [a] quick reaction force that can help quell civil disturbances. This is going to be a big thing for the people in this room, because it’s the Enemy from Within. And we have to handle it before it gets out of control. It won’t get out of control. Once you get involved, they’ll joke —they say oh, this is not good!”
It’s not surprising that Trump would so openly talk about using the military to crush dissent, since almost all the pieces he needs for a full authoritarian crackdown have fallen into place.
At time of writing, a modern-day Gestapo is openly violating the rights of undocumented people, legal immigrants, and United States citizens alike. They shot a CBS journalist while she sat in her car and attempted to abduct a bicyclist for yelling “Fuck Trump” at them. When a 79-year old man (who is a US citizen) begged ICE not to abduct his employee, they slammed him into the pavement and abducted him as well. Last night, armed snipers dropped from helicopters — that’s Air Assault, by the way, the thing the 101st Airborne Division does, the thing that makes them special — and abducted 37 people from a Chicago apartment complex. Elsewhere in Chicago, Kristi Noem dressed up in her best and tightest military costume and personally headed up an ICE raid that captured dozens more people without a warrant.
An ABC article about the raid quoted a neighbor, Eboni Watson, as saying:
“They was terrified. The kids was crying. People was screaming. They looked very distraught. I was out there crying when I seen the little girl come around the corner, because they was bringing the kids down, too, had them zip tied to each other,” Watson said. “That’s all I kept asking. What is the morality? Where’s the human? One of them literally laughed. He was standing right here. He said, ‘f*** them kids.’”
A lot of the people arrested last night were US citizens, which will likely happen in a more systematic fashion very soon. A recent National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM-7), first reported by Ken Klippenstein, has explicitly classified the following beliefs as “indica of violence” in organizations, groups, and individuals:
anti-Americanism,
anti-capitalism,
anti-Christianity,
support for the overthrow of the United States Government,
extremism on migration,
extremism on race,
extremism on gender
hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family,
hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on religion, and
hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on morality.
NSPM-7, which is not a suggestion or statement of intent but an authoritative policy priority for intellience, law enforcement, and national defense, mandates a “a national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts.” Read that again: if your publicly-held beliefs fall into any of these extremely broad, infinitely elastic categories, you are subject to arrest before you commit any kind of crime. So, like. Right now. Today.
The Trump Administration has spent weeks laying rhetorical groundwork to use NSPM-7 to crush the Democratic party, with efforts ramping up significantly over the past week and a half. An official White House release explicitly linked acts of violence against ICE — something they’ve previously described as terrorism — to “unhinged Democrats inciting rhetoric and lies,” including but not limited to: Hakeem Jeffries, Tim Walz, AOC, and Bernie Sanders.
At 12:01 AM on Tuesday morning, the government officially shut down. Republicans spent all day yesterday loudly blaming Democrats for the impasse while gleefully rushing to cut programs and fire civil servants. When that pain hits their own constituents, they’ll blame Democrats for that too. That obstructionist party of “domestic extremism.” The Enemy Within. The signs all point in same direction, and time is running out.
But there’s some good news here. Despite Hegseth’s ongoing purges, the military is still run by the same hidebound traditionalists who have always run it. And I could not, in a thousand years, think of a better way to persuade those traditionalists to defy Donald Trump than by forcing them to listen to the speech he gave yesterday.
As you read these quotes, keep in mind that every single person in this audience is a hard-charging, ambitious workaholic, a driven political animal who manages thousands of testosterone-poisoned teenagers and dysfunctional alcoholics for a living. These people are beyond busy, they have ten thousand things to do every day, and instead of doing any of them, they are sitting in an auditorium listening to…this:
“This was during Biden’s four years. The auto pen, I call him. The auto pen. That’s — how would you like to have your things signed by an auto pen? You know, when I have a general and I have to sign for a general, because we have beautiful paper, the gorgeous paper, I said to her: a little more gold on it. They deserve it. Give me — 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 want to use the real gold writing.”
Trump is so used to talking to sycophants that he does not realize how stupid he sounds to people who know anything about anything. These generals and admirals know damn well Trump didn’t stop “8 wars in 8 months.” They know Washington DC wasn’t less safe than Afghanistan — something Trump actually said to them with his whole chest — because a good portion of that audience has actually been to Afghanistan. Fought a whole war there. Watched people die there.
We cannot know if the generals spent all 73 minutes of that speech thinking “Jesus Christ, this man has the nuclear codes,” but Trump did his best to put that thought into their heads by bringing up nuclear war an uncomfortable amount throughout the speech. Here’s a brief excerpt, which I promise you is transcribed correctly:
“II call it the N word. There were two N words and you can’t use either of them” [pauses for laugh; room is silent]. “Can’t use either of them, and frankly, if it does get to use, we have more than anybody else. We have better. We have newer. But it’s something we don’t ever want to even have to think about. But when someone mentions that, the submarine started immediately thereafter. And it’s just lurking. But I’m sure we’re not going to have to use it.”
The submarine Trump is talking about is likely one of the “nuclear submarines” he recently sent to menace Russia. Whether he meant a submarine with nukes or a nuclear-powered submarine remains unclear, but no matter: so does everything else he’s saying.
This speech went on for 73 minutes, and the majority was just like this. All that time, all that expense, for a deranged two-hour rally.
I don’t know what the military will do if and when Trump orders it to attack the American people. All I know for sure is that Trump did himself no favors on Tuesday. If Hegseth’s goal was to get America’s top brass on his side, it’s safe to say he did what he does best: fail catastrophically.
Greetings from the hell hole, war zone, that is Portland. Not that this shit wasn’t real before, but it hits home when it plays in a theater near you. We knew Trump was nuts, we knew his acolytes were ideological wackjobs…..but my god, this reporting has me thinking that there is, given the wrong deranged move by Trump, a very tiny but growing chance of military resistance against orders of the unhinged. I know this sounds daft, but with the right spark…..I could see the Oath come in conflict with the Order……land the Oath winning.