The extent of the danger created by forgetting, ignoring or denying history cannot be overemphasized. There are already legions of Holocaust deniers who disavow the hard evidence and the testimony of the few remaining survivors. And with the aging and inevitable passing of the generation of people who lived through the years of World War II and witnessed its horrors, we are more at risk than ever of being unable to identify the warning signs of creeping fascism.

But the signs are already here.

And they’ve never been more clear than they were this morning at Marine Base Quantico in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., when Donald Trump and self-styled “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth addressed a mandatory gathering of some 800 top-ranking military officers for an “urgent” meeting that could (and should) have been handled remotely.

Dragging the heads of military commands away from their assigned posts around the world — at taxpayer expense, of course — accomplished two things: First, it left those vital posts, for about three days including travel time, in a condition of vulnerability in the absence of their top brass. And second, by gathering in one place 800 of our military’s upper echelon, together with the head of the Defense Department and the occupant of the Oval Office, it created a doomsday scenario — the perfect target for terrorists and other would-be mass murderers.

Oh, and I did mention those tax dollars stolen from essential programs to finance this little pep rally, didn’t I?

But did anything substantive come out of this all-important briefing of our most experienced warriors by a draft-dodger and a failed TV personality?

Well, there was Trump’s puzzling revelation — apparently just tossed into the mix for no particular reason — that:

“I’m very careful when I walk down stairs, like I’m on stairs … I walk very slowly. Nobody has to set a record. Just try not to fall because it doesn’t work out well.” [Rex Huppke, USA Today, September 30, 2025.]

I’m sure all of the Generals and Admirals in the audience appreciated receiving that bit of intelligence: Trump is an old man who tends to lose his balance.

But then he got into his favorite topic: the “decriminalization” of the country:

“We’re under invasion from within. No different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways because they don’t wear uniforms. At least when they’re wearing a uniform you can take them out.” [Id.]

“Taking them out” seems to be his newest delight: immigrants, alleged Venezuelan drug runners, anyone who looks suspicious. It doesn’t seem to matter.

And he added that he had told Hegseth:

“We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military, National Guard, but military. Because we’re going into Chicago and it’s a big city with an incompetent governor, stupid governor.” [Id.]

As always unable to resist a good campaign moment, he then took the opportunity to try — for the zillionth time — exorcising his greatest demon, former President Joe Biden:

“You’ll never see four years like we had with Biden and that group of incompetent people that ran this country.” [Id.]

The man is possessed.

Finally, Trump yielded the floor to Hegseth, who can’t seem to forget that he is no longer a TV personality, and launched into the importance of optics above all else:

“Frankly, it’s tiring to look out 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.” [Id.]

I wonder — did he ever suggest to Trump that his medically-diagnosed obesity is also a “bad look”? Somehow, I doubt it.

Because Trump then followed up on the whole “let’s pretty up” theme with this:

“I am a very aesthetic person. I don’t like some of the ships you’re doing aesthetically. They say, ‘Oh, it’s stealth.’ … That’s not stealth. An ugly ship is not necessary in order to say you’re stealth.” [Id.]

Right — let’s gold-plate all those warships and planes, hang a few gilt-framed portraits of Trump and some crystal chandeliers in prominent spaces, and make ours the most aesthetically-pleasing military in the world.

*. *. *

But embarrassing stupidity aside, the underlying message of the day was this: We’re going to be using our American cities as training grounds for the military, thus killing two birds with one stone . . . the second bird being the American public itself, as it becomes accustomed to living under martial law.

You see, folks . . . the signs are already there.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
9/30/25