Quantico

"Quantico," a corruption of a Doeg Indian word of unknown meaning, may take on the same sort of meeting for modern ears as "Nuremberg" has.

It was in Quantico, Virginia, the home of a large marine Corps base, that Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth addressed the top brass of the Armed Forces and declared that a new era had begun in what Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, now calls the War Department.  Hegseth said that the department had strayed from its military missions and had become too soft - too "woke" and was now planning to turn the service into a lean, mean, fighting machine.  He proclaimed  that "anyone wearing the uniform, " including generals and admirals, would have to take a  take  a physical training test twice a year, and pass not only weight requirements but height requirements as well, so determined is the obscenely tattooed Hegseth to create a superhuman military from the lowest buck private right to the the Chiefs of Staff.

In a move that would have amused Ulysses S. Grant, Hegseth said that beards for flag officers such as generals and admirals would be banned.

However, mustaches are acceptable.

 

Hegseth has made a "warrior ethos" central to his idea of what the military should be, telling the military commanders that their purpose would exclusively be "war fighting," adding: "To ensure peace, we must prepare for war," without having to underline just how Orwellian that is.

Trump, though not expected to speak at a meeting Hegseth called at his own discretion, showed up anyway for no reason other than to hear himself talk - and give the primary reason they had all been  called them all to Quantico on that day, and it was not to reveal the solution to a mystery, like who's in the Epstein files.  Trump announced that the military had a new enemy, an "enemy from within," defined largely as anyone who opposes Trump.  He pledged to have troops in the streets of America's major cities to bring criminals to heel and use such dangerous cities to train the military to fight.

Gee, I feel safer already.

Thankfully, the flag officers gave Trump and Hegseth no more than polite, muted applause.  They clapped their fingers.  They were expected to obey Trump, but given how they love and honor the Constitution, I suspect that the first thing these generals and admirals do when Trump gives any one of them an illegal order is to march into the White House and arrest the bastard.  Then they can dissolve Congress and hold new presidential and congressional elections.  

Or, they could simply, dissolve the Union.  Me, I know I want a divorce.

I assume Trump was speaking off the cuff, as usual.  Oh, by the way, I need to make a clarification/correction regarding his United Nations speech  The TelePrompTer went out before he started speaking, not during his speech, so he ended up winging all of it.  Even more embarrassing than I thought.