It appears self-evident that President-elect Donald Trump’s regular voters cast their ballot with memories of lower grocery prices and, perhaps, feeling better about border stability. That voter almost certainly didn’t choose due to the belief that the military needed to be overhauled and politicized in Donald Trump’s name. Voters weren’t looking for total military fealty to Donald Trump and a procedure to kick out insufficiently loyal officers. The electorate had no reason to sense some impending crisis that would make this all immediate, and in need of sudden – indeed, “Godspeed” attention. Voters didn’t believe a ton needed to happen on day one. And yet that does appear to be what that voter got, like it or not. Most will be in for a rude surprise.
The “average voter” will be shocked. But those steeped in MAGA world know exactly what’s coming and they couldn’t exactly broadcast it from the mountain tops prior to the election. The entire world will change on January 20th because it has to. There is no way the American public would tolerate what is to come in degrees. It includes reorganizing and re-pledging a military in subservience of Donald Trump.
Indeed, under Project 2025, the Trump administration will have already found top MAGA-men who have sat on advisory boards, boards outside of the United States government – a “Warrior’s Board” that has sat down and evaluated officers still in the service. The evaluation is and will be their fitness for promotion. So why a “Warriors’ Board”? After all, the military already knows how to evaluate and promote people. It sounds as though the qualifications for promotion may well have just changed. There may only be one qualification. Swear loyalty to Donald Trump.
The nation that won World War II will – according to the people now implementing this plan, now seek that same mighty military, the one that stormed the beaches of France, as being so political and so small, that it centers around fealty to a person, not the Constitution, not even the nation, but fealty to one 78 year old man – a person, as its guiding principle. It is stunningly small. It is grotesquely disrespectful to all those headstones in France, the Pacific, Arlington – people that died for a nation and freedom, not “one man” nor “for a political movement.”
And yet it is still set to happen. According to Rawstory’s coverage of Project 2025, the movement sets forth its justification as:
“Our goal is to assemble an army of aligned, vetted, trained, and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative State,” a prelude to the handbook states, according to an analysis by the Military Times.
“As commander in chief, Trump can fire any officer at will, but an outside board whose members he appoints would bypass the Pentagon’s regular promotion system, signaling across the military that he intends to purge a number of generals and admirals.”
If that doesn’t stop your heart… Well, it will stop anyone’s heart who is educated and caring enough to see exactly where this is going. It is an essential ingredient of a declared dictatorship.
Clearly, there is no need for a “conservative” military. None. The Marshall Plan was about as liberal an idea ever put together. It was bold, liberal, and right for the time, not conservative. And, quite honestly, if someone put you in charge of the military, would you want some sort of “test” to ensure that liberals rose to the top faster? It would seem that most would take strong steps to ensure that one never, ever, heard anything political from another American in the fox-hole.
And yet that seems to be all they really care about. They want to bypass the Pentagon, to put together “aligned” and already “vetted” conservatives, meaning what? The word “conservative” is merely a placeholder for supporting Donald Trump. Be an incredibly conservative and fiscally restrained Democrat – see where that gets you in this modern fighting force. It is about Trump and Trumpism – aka “MAGA.”
A Wall Street Journal source said it perfectly:
A former senior Pentagon official anticipated what that would look like.
“Do they start wearing MAGA hats in formation to signal who’s where?” the person told the Journal. “The potential for this to go wrong is infinite.”
Maybe. It certainly appears as though anyone left serving in the military by 2026 won’t need a MAGA hat – they wouldn’t still be there if they didn’t support Trump. With respect to “infinite potential to go wrong” – it is already all wrong. The moment that a large number of Americans believed it to be desirable to have a politically charged military, it was already very wrong. Now it just looks so small. Put MAGA hats on the monuments in Washington DC and quickly see how small and grotesque it looks.
It would look even more so on people sitting among the joint chiefs. Or, Donald Trump could be setting in motion the process by which they will all be fired so as to ensure total “loyalty.” Per Max Boot of The Washington Post by way of Rawstory:
“It is, in fact, not hard to imagine Hegseth firing the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff, thereby precipitating the biggest crisis in civil-military relations in U.S. history. Trump seem[s] intent on harnessing the military for his own purposes, such as rounding up millions of undocumented immigrants for deportation or repressing potential protests.”
One man’s purposes. Again, imagine those bodies laying on the beach in France on D-Day (Picture Saving Private Ryan) – put “MAGA” hats on them in order to get an idea as to how disgusting it is to form a military around political beliefs. This is particularly true when it is the strongest most destructive military ever assembled.
It is also worth asking yourself whether you can “support the troops” if those troops don’t support you. If the American military is now somehow beholden to just one political movement and one politician, who do they fight for? Who do they fight? If the U.S. military is composed solely of Trump-supporters to serve Donald Trump, how does that somehow make “America Great Again” – – It will have never looked smaller. Because it never was. At most it would be serving 33$ of America and I think that number is soft. I suspect it would be serving the hardcore “in the know” Trump-supporters, maybe 20% of the American people. Never smaller.
This country is supposed to be so big that it’s bigger than any political movement, bigger than politics – bigger than all but the most encompassing ideas, we take certain truths to be self-evident. Indeed, at every point at which the U.S. was great, including a year ago, five years ago, 50 years ago, the country was always a mix of interests under one timeless ideal – a big, clunky, inefficient, ingloriously-governed, haphazard, mess of people – people all under one ideal, one that remains breathlessly resilient. That is the America big enough to go to the moon, big enough to invade France, defeat communism – twice, invent public colleges, overcome segregation (sort of), develop the net, iPhones, big things for big people from the biggest nation, all under an even better ideal.
Put MAGA hats on the military and it suddenly couldn’t look smaller and thus inherently sadder. Whatever else makes America great, it is likely all those things that make it infinitely bigger than one person or one movement. Our military, those living and those who sacrificed, deserves better than to be pigeon-holed into any finite time or idea.
God Bless: I can be reached at [email protected] and @JasonMiciak
Now where have I heard all of this before???
Oh, yeah…….
“I swear by God this holy oath, that I will render to Adolf Hitler, Führer of the German Reich and People, Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, unconditional obedience, and that I am ready, as a brave soldier, to risk my life at any time for this oath.”
-Wehrmacht oath of loyalty not to the German Constitution, but to Adolph Hitler himself.
Think it could never happen here???
And to think I’ve been accused of tossing around the word ‘nazi’. Sticking your head in the sand is one way to the land of denial. Putting it up your own ass is another.
YES BUT I still like …the Trump is more like STALIN …. piece.
Yep – and the generals all followed his orders. Look at the result:
HITLER LOST THE WAR
“One man’s purposes.” It was NEVER so. Trump is the Trojan Horse, a wooden figurehead, the useful idiot who helped breach the walls ( which, for all sorts of fundamental reasons, were clearly already weak) and has allowed through a focused force of idealogues. Right now the focus is diverted to the Klown Kabinet but underneath and behind them…….? Democrats/Haley Republicans/human and civil rights groups need to coalesce quickly and with moral force round current/26 and 28 opposition else all is lost for a long time.
Come Jan 20th, is democracy really going to be dead?, or have I misunderstood this whole scenario!
Jason, I have a master’s degree and I have worked as a copy editor for a weekly newspaper. I had great difficulty in understanding the first sentence of the fourth paragraph of your column:
The nation that won World War II will – according to the people now implementing this plan, now seek that same mighty military, the one that stormed the beaches of France, as being so political and so small, that it centers around fealty to a person, not the Constitution, not even the nation, but fealty to one 78 year old man – a person, as its guiding principle.
With effort, I rewrote the sentence to try to simplify it. Please let me know if I have misunderstood or omitted anything from your sentence. Thanks, Jason. Here is my version:
According to the people now implementing this plan, they now seek to make the mighty military of the US that stormed the beaches of France and won World War II so political and so small that its guiding principle would center around fealty to a person, one 78-year-old man, not to the Constitution, not even to the nation.