Pete Hegseth spiraled into religious fervor while shouting about killer bots in eye-opening ‘State of the Force’ speech

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L ast year, self-proclaimed lethal war enthusiast and committed Christian Pete Hegseth gathered all the generals in the US military — forcing some to fly from as far afield as South Korea — to call them fat and shout about how much he hates DEI.

Beards were out, “war fighters” were in, AMERICA WAS BACK (to getting itself entrenched into forever wars in the Middle East) and Hegseth got to preen around talking about strength and integrity and all those other things he wouldn’t know if he bumped into them in a dark alley. It was a heck of a speech.

Today, dear reader, he gathered the generals again for another announcement. And he took last year’s teachings even further.

There was, of course, the standard opener about “reviving the warrior ethos,” about making the US military “the most capable, the most focused and the most lethal,” and how “telling someone to lose weight” is “not discrimination, that’s leadership.” There was a truly excellent aside about how there would be no more “drag queen shows,” which made the military under Biden sound a lot more fun than I had presumed. And there was also an incredible claim that there will be “no more gender pronouns,” which is going to make basic communication quite difficult, but screw it: let’s commit to the bit.

No more adjectives! NO MORE VERBS! NO MORE GODDAMNED BASIC GRAMMAR! Let’s take this all the way, boys!

We were treated to Hegseth’s meme-tastic little slogan, exhaustively designed to offend: “No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps and no radicals.” And then we were told that the “delusional media” and “fake news,” which is run by “anti-American losers” and “haters,” is worse than Iranian state propaganda.

“A free press, of course, is important,” he added — deliberately drawing out the word ‘important’ in a sardonic way that seemed to imply he meant simply important in theory — but unfortunately the free press today is “fundamentally anti-American. It’s sick. It’s a national betrayal. It’s treason, actually.”

Here was classic Hegsethean nuance. And look, all of this is obviously fascist-adjacent and weird, but it’s also what you expect from a speech by Pete. What you only sometimes get is a spiral into bizarre religious fervor, and it turned out that that was what was coming today.

“Jesus said do unto others as you have done to yourself,” Hegseth continued, and that is the reason why he is making every unit in the War Department (a Jesus-like name change if ever there was one) into a platoon he would be happy to send his own children to join. Would Jesus send his children to do lethal war-fighting in this platoon?! If the answer is “not just no, the answer is hell no” then something is wrong. And to be fair, when Jesus is involved, isn’t the answer always “hell no”?

As part of this Jesus-like improvements of units, Hegseth has also done away with psychological testing because, the War-not-Defense Secretary claimed, those tests were all just there to get more Black women into the army or something. Instead, they’ll now have a “merit-based assessment” on how to “win on the battlefield,” because screw checking whether or not these kids are psychologically stable before we hand them AR-15’s.

This kind of woke bureaucratic nightmare of psych testing, Hegseth continued, standing in front of a huge digital overlay of an American flag, only happens when your department is being run by “strong patriots and not weak weirdos.” Thank goodness we now have a man who has never once projected ‘weak weirdo’ energy in charge, eh?

There was a further announcement about the military being open for business with “the new, nimble” startups funded by people like Steve Feinberg, “a patriotic billionaire” (and is there any other kind of billionaire?) This will lead to “drone warfare supercharged by SI-enabled functioning,” so essentially killer bots, which by the way won’t be restrained by any “red tape” so they’ll be coming real soon. The term “autonomous war fighters” was thrown around a lot, which isn’t exactly reassuring.

But don’t worry! Hegseth has also announced today that he is launching Project Meridian, an effort led by America’s three “best minds”: Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey, and 83-year-old Newt Gingrich. The room was, of course, military-silent when he said this — one presumes any room would be — so he then had to ask everyone to stand up and applaud. Clap, assorted non-fat, non-woke generals! Clap for the superior intellect of Newt Gingrich!

We will put our lives in the hands of “President Trump, a man that understands leading from the front and also from the edge,” Hegseth added. But wait, what? Which edge? Don’t worry about it, because Hegseth was back on his religiosity kick: he’s bringing Christianity back to killing, he said, because we need fewer “anti-American, DEI-worshipping woke factories” like liberal arts colleges with their “Che Guevara and critical theory,” and we need more students who understand Rome, Philadelphia and Jesus (these were his actual examples.)

So chaplains and churches and “religious support” will become a new priority. No more “political correctness and secular humanism” (perish the thought!) Instead, there will be an Office of Religious Affairs that “will report straight to the top”. (By the top, he means himself, by the way, not to God, and like all Christian groups, “it’s gonna have real teeth”.)

Hegseth then quoted Psalm 33:12, “Blessed is the nation whose god is the Lord. That line of the Bible is specifically referring to Israel, but sure.

“While we wage physical war,” he continued, “we know the real fight is spiritual.” The Book of Isaiah, he said, sees God asking Isaiah who he can send in his name, and Isaiah responding, “Send me.” Hegseth then extended this verse to suggest that Isaiah might also say: “Send me to fight the communists. Send me to fight the Islamists,” before concluding to the generals that “lethality is your calling card and victory your only acceptable end-state.”

What is actually said in the Book of Isaiah is instructive, as the biblical writer in question suggests during these verses that if people are “always hearing, but never understanding” and “ever seeing, but never perceiving,” with “hearts that are calloused,” then they will never truly “see with their eyes,” “hear with their ears,” “understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.”

Oof, how inconvenient for War Daddy Pete! But it doesn’t matter because, as Hegseth rounded off his speech, “We are the War Department and we never back down.” Not in the face of logic, not in the face of real quotes from the Bible, not in the face of people trying to give us college educations!

And then he stalked offstage after giving a couple of stony-faced thumbs-up, ready to lead us all into a bold future. Godspeed, brave companions! And boy oh boy, isn’t Jesus going to be ecstatic that he’s coming back to the US military just in time for the AI-powered killer bots?!

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