"Donald Trump walked into Quantico Tuesday expecting a rally. He got a funeral.
The generals sat in perfect silence, faces locked in the kind of grim stillness that comes from years of watching idiots talk and choosing not to react. Trump, of course, couldn’t handle it. “I’ve never walked into a room so silent before,” he confessed, his voice trembling somewhere between wounded pride and panic.
Then came the kicker, “If you want to applaud, you applaud.”
This wasn’t leadership. This was a washed-up Vegas act begging the crowd to clap. The Commander-in-Chief turned into the Clapper-in-Chief, reduced to prodding the nation’s top brass like a sad carnival barker who forgot his punchline.
A campaign rally in uniform.
Instead of strategy, Trump delivered his usual medley of grievances: Barack Obama ruined everything, Joe Biden ruined it twice as hard, and only Donald J. Trump, self-proclaimed “two-term, maybe three-term president” could save America. It was less a military briefing than an episode of The Apprentice: Pentagon Edition.
The generals, trained to withstand battlefield chaos, sat stone-faced through the barrage of nonsense. They have endured artillery fire with more enthusiasm.
Enter Pete Hegseth, America’s Pastor-in-Arms. Trump’s “Secretary of War” took the podium with the intensity of a man who thinks Tom Clancy novels are actual military doctrine. He promised “fire and brimstone,” called for purges of “fat generals,” and announced he wants the next war to look exactly like the Gulf War, because apparently it’s still 1991 and CNN is running that same grainy footage of tanks in the desert.
But Hegseth wasn’t done. He led them in prayer. Yes, prayer. The nation’s top generals, summoned by presidential ego, now folded into a forced altar call like extras at a megachurch revival. The separation of church and state? Obliterated. Constitution? Shredded. Jesus, apparently, is now Commander-in-Chief. Trump can play Vice.
Weakness on parade.
Trump likes to brag about firing generals who “aren’t warriors.” But on Tuesday, the real firing squad was silence. Not one clap. Not one cheer. Just the steady hum of contempt vibrating off the brass like feedback from a dead microphone.
These men and women have seen actual combat. They’ve buried soldiers. They’ve lived with the weight of real command. And now they’re expected to cheer for a man who brags about moving “a submarine or two” like it’s a toy in a bathtub, or who lectures about “two N-words” as though nuclear strategy were a stand-up routine.
No wonder they didn’t clap.
The pin-drop presidency.
What happened at Quantico wasn’t just awkward. It was diagnostic. Trump’s presidency is a hollow shell propped up by applause, and when the applause disappears, so does he.
And Hegseth? He’s the zealot-in-chief, delivering sermons about war and Christ in equal measure, a man confusing the Book of Revelation with the Pentagon’s operations manual. Together, they make quite the duo: one desperate for claps, the other desperate for amens.
The generals gave them neither. Instead, they gave silence, the most cutting judgment of all."
I went swimming in the interwebz to see if I could find an author. Many sites have posted this, many have tried to gild the lily (yeah, they failed -ugh did they never learn sometimes less is more?). My point is no one is claiming credit, at least that I could find.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I hope the author remains unknown especially since Trump and Hegseth have not been shy about enacting rules against anyone saying mean things about either of them. I guess their feels get hurt or something.
LOL In my search I found many discussions as to how exactly one would go after an organization like antifa (designated an organization by the Trump regime with it's members slated for extra special prosecution - no due process necessary!) when there are no officers, no address of record, no one pays membership dues. The confounded looks of the youtubers as they realized what sounded awesome as a rally cry is really hard to nail down in reality were priceless.
I'm here for all the unintended consequences as experienced by the "fire first, hire back later because mission critical" crew. It's almost as if they'd no clue as to how or why a government works or exists.
When an opponent makes a critical error make sure to take cover as shrapnel rains down around you. Sun Tzu, supposedly
Whoever sent this to you Shaw is an aware and wise person. They tapped in perfectly to the energies present in that 6,000,000+ price tag conference/leture to America's (now Amerika's) generals at tax payers expense. A conference/lecture that could have been held on line at a miniscule fraction of the cost. But presidential pomp and circumstance and a national audience was important to the FOTUS and his Bible thumping sidekick. No matter the government was shuttered do to no funding by congress. Indeed, idiots at work in the New American Fascist Party, formerly the Republican Party.
ReplyDeleteThe America that accepted the Statue of Liberty, the America that believed in separation of church and state, the America that believed in the rule of law, the America that believed in equal opportunity and fairness, the America that believed in resect for all and decency towards all is on life support. While the Amerika being created by the New Facist Party of Amerika and djt is being juiced with steriods creating explosive energies in support of authoritarian Christian Nationalism.
Wake up America on life support before it's too late. Before death occurs and Amerika becomes the permanent and actual reality. We still have a choice, for now.
But the truth? The FOTUS wanted this shutdown. He relished it. He said as much when he commented with the veiled and meant threat that with the shutdown changes could be made that would be permanent that democrats wouldn't like. Let that sink in. He plans on barreling those changes because it is just one more spoke on in his retribution plan for democrats and Americans who don't worship him.
Freedom and liberties are slowly being pulled from people and it is NOT going to stop unless and until We the Peope now take this country back from the authoritarian fascists now in charge.