Hegseth puts on the “full armor of God” and sets up a sacred “direct line” - Salon.com
Hegseth has announced the creation of “The Office Of Religious Affairs” that reports directly to him, and not very subtly promote his version of Right Wing Christianity.
" The office will also oversee the Armed Forces Chaplains Board and advocate for funding for religious programs across the military. The Pentagon memo establishing the office says it cannot “compel religious participation” or diminish the rights of service members, civilian employees or family members “of any faith or no faith. But Hegseth introduced the ostensibly inclusive office using explicitly Christian language once again.
“Our department is, you might say, putting on the full armor of God because while we wage physical war, we all know the real battle is spiritual,” Hegseth said. “God is good. Evil is not. And America’s military must understand the difference.” he claims that less than 5% of service members identify as non-religious, therefore, and I quote, “So 95% of our force recognizes an Almighty God”.
The question isn’t “What is the correct information about his claims?” because that is already stated in the article.
The question is “What can be done about this shit?”.
The references to war and weapons were actually metaphorical. The early Christians really did turn the other cheek. They fought with the sword of truth and the shield of faith. It took centuries, but they did get what they wanted from Rome that way.
Once they had political power, it was all downhill from there. A few centuries later, we had the crusades, the inquisitions, and witch trials. Separation of church and state has pretty well kept things under control. A few centuries after that, we seem to be forgetting.
Since the unquestioning support of the military will be essential to the administration if they are going to attempt to subvert the constitution (by declaring some kind of emergency, by declaring that voting is unreliable so elections have to be postponed, by ignoring rulings of the supreme court, or whatever) I see this sort of thing as part of that continuing effort. Among other things, they will know who in the armed forces is properly religious (i.e. follows their line) and who is not.
I think Hegseth is positioning himself to be, if not the figurehead leader of the state after the coup, then the bully-boy who has all the real power in such a regime.
How to stop it? As long as Trump supports these efforts, then only the removal of Trump and the inauguration of a new non-compliant President will make any changes possible.
But neglects (ignorantly, since I doubt keghead actually reads the Bible) critical context in the immediate following verse:
“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood”… In other words, not armor for a battle with literal material opponents. Armor for a spiritual battle, both figuratively and in the sense of opposing literal evil spirits.
Even within its own specific context, he’s doing it wrong.
If the votes were to exist in the Senate, I think impeachment and removal of Hegseth would be more likely to work here than would installing JD Vance in the White House.
Now I’m reading a biography of Juan Perón. Looked at from the standpoint of how to prevent takeover by JD Perón, excuse me, Vance, Hegseth may be more dangerous than a MAGA president because Trump never gets involved in the great majority of general officer appointments.
But if Hegseth is wasting time with chaplains, maybe that’s a good sign. When Trump calls Hegseth to block President-elect Ossoff or AOC from White House access, it is going to take the loyalty of real troops, not their spiritual advisors.
Hegseth realizes that a lot of the members of the armed forces are going to have moral questions about some of the orders they’ll be given in the next two years. He’s making sure that when they seek moral guidance, they’ll be getting it from the counselors he selected.
Yes, that’s why Hegseth is creating a military of True Believers,
Hegseth said. “God is good. Evil is not. And America’s military must understand the difference.” {…} “So 95% of our force recognizes an Almighty God”.
Considering all of these things together… we should be very scared. Hegseth wants a military that only answers to his god. Fuck the “clowns” and their rules.
His god, that has no qualms about ordering genocide, Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass. 1 Samuel 15:3 KJV
Yep. Exactly. The leaders are the mind, the chaplains (and lawyers) are the conscience, and the lower officers and troops are the muscle.
First he replaced the leadership with psychopathic religious extremists and/or toady lickspittles. Then he replaces the conscience with the same, or at least willing followers of psychopathic religious extremists & toady lickspittles. Meanwhile recruitment of troops is running the same direction.
The end result if not reversed soon will be a DoD we don’t recognize, but that the e.g. Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps - Wikipedia certainly would feel kinship with. Despite obeying a different god and a different earthy despot.
I wonder what God think of him and trump, the Warner Bros. of snuff films, using our military to produce them. When people list the crimes of trump and Kegbreath, they always seem to forget the Caribbean summary executions.
But Trump was also a clown and an idiot (and arguably still is) yet got elected twice and has done more damage to this nation than possibly any other president in its history.
We should be wary of these people despite their obvious shortcomings.