The ‘Great Spiritizing’ of the top brass  

“Today we end the War on Warriors,” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, author of the book The War On Warriors, tweeted this morning. Today was the day that Hegseth really became Secretary of War, addressing, along with President Trump, a full gathering of top military brass in Quantico, Virginia. 

“This is only an esprit de corps,” the President said, as he set sail from the White House for the event. “Do you know what that is, an esprit de corps? This is only a spirit. These are our generals, our admirals, our leaders, and it’s a good thing, a thing like this has never been done before, because they came from all over the world. And there’s a little bit of expense, not much, but there’s a little expense to that. We don’t like to waste it. We’d rather spend it on bullets and rockets, frankly. But this was the one time we had to do a great spiritizing.”

The Great Spiritizing began with remarks from Hegseth saying that he had spent his early days at the War Department rooting out “toxic ideological garbage” of DEI and diversity. “We are done with that shit,” he said. “I’ve made it my mission to uproot the obvious distractions that made us less capable and less lethal.”

From now on, Hegseth said, all military personnel would have to pass a twice-yearly “male-level” fitness test. “Frankly, it’s tiring to look at combat formations or really any formation and see fat troops. Likewise, it’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon and leading commands around the country and the world. It’s a bad look. It is bad, and it’s not who we are.”

Hegseth, who has either not seen or disagrees with Stanley Kubrick’s Vietnam film Full Metal Jacket, said basic training will be “scary, tough, and disciplined.” Drill sergeants can instill fear in new soldiers. “They can toss bunks, they can swear – and yes, they can put their hands on recruits.”

Sir, yes sir!

And now it was time to hear from the President of the United States, who doesn’t have to pass a twice-yearly military fitness test. Trump got to play good cop today, providing a warm fatherly contrast to Hegseth’s frightening telesoldier persona.

“I’ve never walked into a room so silent before,” Trump said.

“Just have a good time. And if you want to applaud, you applaud. And if you don’t like what I’m saying, you can leave the room. Because there goes your rank, there goes your future.”

No one left the room. They spent most of their time sitting attentively, unemotive, ramrod-straight, as per their training. But why would you leave the show of a lifetime? Trump decided to use this moment to break the news that because he had felt a “little bit threatened” by Russia, he’d decided to deploy a nuclear submarine, “the most lethal weapon ever made”, off the coast of Russia. “I call it the ‘N-word,’” he said. “There are two ‘N-words,’ and you can’t use either of them.”

Trump spent 72 minutes praising “the strongest military in the history of the world,” which is something, he said, his predecessor Joe Biden, “the autopen,” never said. Actually, “he never said anything,” Trump said. While addressing the Department of War – “I love the name, I think it’s gonna stop wars” – Trump also advocated for his newly-formed Board of Peace. If his Gaza peace plan works out, that would be the eighth war ended in eight months. “That’s pretty good,” he said. “Nobody’s ever done that.”

“Will you get the Nobel Prize? Absolutely not. They’ll give it to some guy that didn’t do a damn thing. They’ll give it to a guy that wrote a book about the mind of Donald Trump… We’ll see what happens, but it would be a big insult to our country. I will tell you that. I don’t want it. I want the country to get it.” And one of the ways Trump said he’s going to win the Nobel Peace Prize is by killing foreign drug traffickers. “If you try to poison our people,” he said, “we will blow you out of existence.”

But today wasn’t about Donald Trump, even though of course it was. It was about the Armed Forces. “Everybody wants to be in the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines, the Coast Guard, and our Space Force, our beautiful Space Force. A year ago you would have thought it wouldn’t have been possible. They were talking about making it smaller. Now we’re talking about making it larger. And that’s a beautiful thing. Everybody wants to be doing what you’re doing now. What a difference a Presidential election can make.”

Then it was back to the teleprompter, as Trump said, “From Sparta to Rome, from the British Empire to the United States of America, history has shown that military supremacy has never been simply a matter of money or manpower. At the end of the day it is the culture, the spirit of our military that truly sets us apart from any other nation. Our ultimate strength will always come from the fierce people, people with such pride, the unbending will that has made us the most unstoppable force ever to walk the face of the Earth.

“You’re great warriors, you know that? Or you wouldn’t be in this room. You’re the best of the best… nobody does it like you. Now we are discovering American muscle, reasserting American might, and writing the next chapter of American military legends, and…” Trump’s lip dropped ominously, “LORE. That’s L O R E. It is lore. When it comes to defending our way of life, nothing will stop us. No enemy will slow us. They cannot stop us. And no adversary will stand in our way. We don’t want them to stand in our way… because we are the United States Military. The best, the boldest, the bravest, that the world has ever seen, that the world has ever known.” The U.S.A. will vanquish every threat for every generation to come, Trump said, “because we will fight, fight, fight and we will win, win, win.”

Thus Spiritized, America’s top military brass set forth. They had their marching orders, to fight wars and also to not fight wars. Either way, the goal was the same. As Ricky Bobby once said, if you’re not first, you’re last.