This story is about the obsession with grooming standards of some officers in the army. The obsession dates back decades, and it has a history that echoes the history of this country.

Because I reported a day late to the Infantry Officer Basic Course at Fort Benning, Georgia, in August of 1969, my assigned place in the alphabetically arranged company formation was to the left of a classmate of mine, Alex Zupsich, the last man in the last rank of the company. I didn’t know Alex at West Point; he was in another regiment and lived all the way across the area of barracks from where I lived.

I had heard of Zupsich, however. He was tall and gangly and was said to have been “blue-darted” by upperclassmen during our Plebe Year. Blue darting was when a group of cadets decided run a cadet out of the academy by ranking him at the bottom of the company in “aptitude for the service” using special, optional evaluations, the form for which was printed on light blue paper.

Zupsich survived an officers’ board that heard his case, and four years later graduated in the top half of the class academically. Standing next to Zupsich in ranks and marching next to him to class and training exercises, I quickly got to know him. He was jovial and kind of goofy and not terribly well turned out militarily. His uniforms didn’t fit him very well, and he marched with an awkward, halting gait.

During his leave after graduation, Zupsich had married a girl back home in Illinois. I say “girl,” because she was 18 and just out of high school. He told me he was very happy having found someone to marry, because he hadn’t gone on many dates as a cadet. Incredibly, he attributed his increased attractiveness to the opposite sex to the mustache he had begun to grow the day after we graduated in June.

Zupsich was one of those guys with what they call a thick beard. As a cadet, he had to shave twice a day to avoid getting written up for demerits for having failed to shave. His mustache grew quickly. By August, it was a luxuriant thing on his upper lip, black and thick and shiny in the sunlight. He was very proud of his mustache and said his new wife loved it.

I was standing next to Zupsich during our formation before dismissal for the day when two captains assigned to be our “platoon advisers” approached him. One of them pointed a finger at his mustache and gave Zupsich an order to cut it off by first formation the next morning. The two captains walked away. Zup, as we called him, said he had looked it up in the regulations and found that soldiers in the army were allowed to have a mustache so long as it did not extend past the corners of the mouth. Zup’s didn’t, but because he had a wide upper lip, the thing looked enormous. He asked me what I would do, if I were him. I told him that he had the legal right to a mustache, and if he liked it, he should keep it.

The next morning, the two captains showed up and confronted Zup and asked why he hadn’t shaved his mustache. Zup told them the regulations allowed mustaches, and his wasn’t wider than the corners of his mouth, so it was legal. They ordered him to cut it off anyway. When Zupsich refused, they told him he was assigned as student platoon leader, and he would be marching the platoon to class.

Zup wasn’t very good at giving commands when marching. His voice was high-pitched and his commands were not well timed and executed, causing the platoon to overshoot tight turns on sidewalks and often come to a halt in the wrong position. The captains hazed him mercilessly that first day. During a break between classes that morning, they ordered Zup to face a big tree and practice giving marching commands at top volume to the tree. They did it again that afternoon and made him stay after close of business and practice giving commands to a wall of the barracks. All of this in front of the whole company.

That evening, I was having a beer after work with another of my classmates, Rob Leslie, and we were talking about what a couple of assholes the captains were. With a smile, Leslie began caressing his upper lip and said, “You know what, Truscott? My upper lip is feeling a little chilly. Do you think a mustache would warm it up?” I laughed and told him my naked upper lip was cold, too. The next morning, each of us shaved our faces except for our upper lips and began the process of growing our own mustaches. During lunch that day, as Zup gave commands to a nearby tree on orders from the captain, we told some of the other guys that we were growing mustaches in solidarity with him.

The word spread. By the end of the week, most of the guys in the company were sporting nascent growths above their lips. A few days later, every guy in the company had begun growing a mustache.

The two captains relieved Zup of his platoon leader duties and assigned me the job. To their disappointment, I was better at marching the platoon than Zup had been, and I began to make up marching cadences that I called out as we marched to every class, with the platoon loudly singing out the refrains. The cadences were about mustaches, every one of them. Then I added in the captains by name:

Captain [Smith] his momma said

Ain’t got no ‘stache, his lip is dead

He drinks his beer with his left hand

That’s why he ain’t in our band

Left right, left right, say it again!

Captain [Smith] ain’t got no friends!

And so forth with more cadences using the other captain’s name. They couldn’t order me to stop, because there has long been a tradition of troops making up cadences at the expense of their superiors, who are expected to take the joke and play along.

Boy, did the captains hate that. A few weeks went by, and the captains managed to find some reason to level a disciplinary charge against Zupsich. I think they determined that he was late to physical training one morning, something like that. Zupsich was ordered to report to the battalion commander, who handed him a written order disallowing him from residing off-post, where he lived with his wife in an apartment. The order commanded him to move into the Bachelor Officer’s Quarters on the post, which would put an end to the housing allowance part of his pay that was paying for the apartment off post. The order was signed by the battalion commander.

Zup knew his mustache was behind the move. Everyone knew it. He was given to the end of the week to move. When he asked what he was supposed to tell his wife, the colonel told him to tell her move back home with her mother and father.

Zupsich went home and told his wife what had happened. She was, shall we say, a spirited young woman. She had volunteered to write and mimeograph a little newsletter for the battalion officers’ wives club, which was chaired by the battalion commander’s wife. She had produced her first newsletter, and the plan was for her to distribute it to the rest of the wives at a club tea that was to be held the next day at the officers’ club. Zup’s wife got herself decked out in an outfit proper for the tea, which in those days included gloves and a hat. The next day, she walked up to the colonel’s wife and told her that the colonel had ordered Zupsich to send her back to live with her mother and father. She rolled up newsletter and handed it to the colonel’s wife and said, “You can tell your husband I said to go to hell, and you can shove this fucking newsletter up your ass.” With that, she walked out the door.

The next morning, Zupsich was called in by the company commander and told to report to the Fort Benning commanding general because of his wife’s “behavior.” Zup knew the whole thing was about his mustache, but how could he tell that to the commanding general and make him understand what was really going on? Leslie and I told him that it wasn’t about his mustache now, it was about his wife’s right to free speech. The army might be able to tell him what he could say and what he couldn’t say in certain circumstances, but his wife wasn’t in the army, and they couldn’t punish him, or her, for what she said to another man’s wife.

That afternoon, Zupsich reported to the commanding general. He told the whole story, about being ordered to cut off his mustache, being made to give commands to a tree and a wall and a lamp post. He said his wife was outraged that the battalion commander had told him to send her home to her parents, so she did what she did. She was a citizen, not a soldier. She wasn’t under anyone’s command.

Amazingly, the general rescinded the order and suggested that Zupsich tell his wife to be more respectful when she talked to the wives of senior officers. Zup saluted and left the general’s office. That afternoon, he invited me over to their apartment for dinner.

The story of what had happened with Zup and his wife spread around the company. There was a lot of back slapping and congratulations, all of it witnessed by the two captains who had started the whole thing. After work a day or so later, the two captains ordered me to follow them into the barracks. They led me to a supply room on the first floor and closed the door.

I remember that room like it was yesterday. There were shelves of equipment and cleaning supplies and the like, and the overhead light was off. A shaft of late-afternoon sun shone through a window at the end of the room illuminating dust mites in the air.

One of the captains ordered me to stand at attention. He told me if I agreed to cut my mustache, everyone would cut theirs off, and the whole thing would be behind us, with no more trouble for anyone. I refused. The other captain moved close, he was inches away from my face. “Don’t you know what’s going on here, lieutenant?” he asked. I told him no, I didn’t know what was going on, knowing that he would answer his own question.

“It’s about the niggers,” he said. “That’s why they got the mustache regulation. The niggers like to grow them thin little mustaches because it makes their women happy when they eat their nigger pussies.”

I looked from one captain to the other, taking a beat. I told them that I had a photo taken by my mother of my father holding me in his arms shortly after I was born in Japan. He was a first lieutenant, just over a year out of the Infantry School. He had a mustache. I told the two captains that if I ever heard either of them use the word “nigger” again, I would file a report with the Fort Benning inspector general for racial discrimination. Then I told them never to speak to me or be in my presence again. They knew if I filed that IG report, their careers would be over. They just stood there watching as I walked out of the storeroom.

A few weeks later, just before we graduated from the Infantry School, we were given our class standing for the course, with individual rankings for physical training, academics, field exercises, and leadership. The two captains had ranked me at the bottom of the class in leadership.

Every lieutenant in the company who walked across the stage at our Infantry School graduation ceremony had a mustache.

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In an Extremely Unusual Move, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth Convened Hundreds of Commanders and Decried Diversity in the Military’s Ranks.

In an extremely unusual move, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth called hundreds of generals and admirals stationed from around the world to convene in Virginia on Tuesday — with about a week’s notice. He announced 10 new directives that would shift the military’s culture away from what he called “woke garbage” and toward a “warrior ethos.”

“This administration has done a great deal since Day 1 to remove the social justice, politically-correct, toxic ideological garbage that had infected our department,” Hegseth said. “No more identity months, DEI offices or dudes in dresses. No more climate change worship. No more division, distraction of gender delusions. No more debris. As I’ve said before and will say, we are done with that shit.”

The secretary largely covered old ground during his 45-minute address to an audience that he has been reshaping. The commanders were already predominantly White men, and there were even fewer women in those ranks for today’s speech than there were when Hegseth took office.

He abruptly fired Gen. CQ Brown Jr., the second Black man to serve as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Adm. Lisa Franchetti and Adm. Linda Fagan — two of the highest-ranking women in the Armed Forces — were also ousted. Franchetti was the first woman to lead the Navy and the first woman to serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Fagan led the Coast Guard and was the first woman to lead a branch of the military.

Hegseth eliminated DEI programs on his first day on the job, later saying that “Our diversity is our strength” was the “single dumbest phrase in military history.”

Hegseth on Tuesday said that he has made it his mission to “uproot the obvious distractions that made us less capable and less lethal.”

“The new War Department golden rule is this: Do unto your unit as you would have done unto your own child’s unit,” Hegseth said, using the Trump administration’s preferred title for the department, though it has yet to be changed by Congress. “Would you want him serving with fat or unfit or undertrained troops? Or alongside people who can’t meet basic standards? Or where leaders were promoted for reasons other than merit, performance and war fighting?”

Military experts and researchers have repeatedly voiced concern with the premise of Hegseth’s argument that the military has become less successful since it embraced diversity; that standards were lowered to include women in combat roles; and that diverse leaders did not have merit.

What Hegseth said about women in combat roles and gender-neutral standards

“Today at our direction, we’re ensuring that every service, every unit, every school house and every form of professional military education conducts an immediate review of their standards — any place where tried and true physical standards were altered, especially since 2015 when combat arms were changed to ensure females could qualify,” Hegseth said. “They must be returned to their original standard.”

Hegseth announced that every service fitness test will now be gender-neutral and age-neutral, and returned to the “highest male standard only” in an effort to “restore a ruthless, dispassionate and common sense application of standards.”

“I urge you to use the 1990 test, which is simple: Ask ‘What were the military standards in 1990?” Hegseth said. “And if they have changed, tell me why. Was it a necessary change based on the evolving landscape of combat or was the change due to a softening, weakening or gender-based pursuit of other priorities?”

“I want to be very clear about this, this is not about preventing women from serving,” Hegseth said. He later added, “Physical standards must be high and gender neutral. If women can make it, excellent. If not, it is what it is.”

Every member of the joint force at every rank — from new privates to four-star generals — is required to meet the height and weight standards and pass physical training tests twice a year. He acknowledged that this change might disqualify some men, too.

“It all starts with physical fitness and appearance,” Hegseth said. “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. It is bad, and it’s not who we are.”

More context:

Despite Hegseth’s remarks, it is against the law to lower standards for women when compared with men in the same role. The National Defense Authorization Act of 1994 established that every occupation in the military — from medics to Catholic priests to people in combat — there are standards that must be gender neutral.

Hegseth has long argued — without substantive evidence — that women’s participation in the military has weakened the country’s war-fighting capabilities. He published a book in 2024 called, “The War on Warriors,” in which he argued women in combat roles made the country less effective and less lethal and more complicated. Women veterans, national security organizations and military historians have pushed back and argued that the future of national security calls for more technological skillsets.

What Hegseth said about diversity quotas and promotions

“For too long we’ve promoted too many uniformed leaders for the wrong reasons — based on their race, based on gender quotas, based on so-called firsts,” Hegseth said.

Hegseth acknowledged that he fired several military leaders — including people of color and women — as part of his first actions as secretary. His decision making was “more of an art than a science,” he added but his rationale in ousting those leaders was because it’s “nearly impossible to change a culture with the same people who helped create or even benefited from that culture.”

“An entire generation of generals and admirals were told that they must parrot the insane fallacy that ‘Our diversity is our strength,’” Hegseth said. “Of course, we know our unity is our strength. They had to put out dizzying DEI and LGBTQI+ statements. They were told females and males are the same thing, or that males who think they’re females are totally normal.”

Hegseth announced that from now on, the entire promotion process is being thoroughly examined and promotions will only go to top-performing officers, regardless of race and gender.

“My job has been to determine which leaders simply did what they must to answer the prerogatives of civilian leadership and which leaders are truly invested in the ‘woke department’ and therefore are incapable of embracing the War Department and executing new, lawful orders,” Hegseth said. “More leadership changes will be made.”

More context:

There is no “gender quota, goal or ceiling” in the infantry or at the military academies, as established by law in the National Defense Authorization Act of 1994. In fact, it was the opposite for years when there was a cap on how many women could be allowed in certain roles (Women could only account for 2 percent or less among generals and admirals in the force before 1967).

What Hegseth said about woke culture and ‘toxic leadership’

“Foolish and reckless political leaders set the wrong compass heading, and we lost our way,” Hegseth said. “We became the woke department, but not anymore. … We just have to be honest. We have to say with our mouths what we say with our eyes.”

Hegseth said that Military Equal Opportunity policies will be overhauled to disempower “complainers” and make sure commanders are no longer “walking on eggshells.”

He also said the department is reviewing its definitions of “bullying” and “hazing” to make sure leaders can properly train new recruits.

“Basic training is being restored to what it should be: scary, tough and disciplined,” Hegseth said. “We’re empowering drill sergeants to instill healthy fear in new recruits, ensuring that future war fighters are forged. Yes, they can shark attack. They can toss bunks. They can swear. And yes, they can put their hands on recruits.”

In a lot of ways, Hegseth’s message to commanders was a call to get on board or get out: “If the words I’m speaking today are making your heart sink, then you should do the honorable thing and resign. We would thank you for your service.”

More context:

The Military Equal Opportunity program and the Defense Department’s civilian equivalent allowed personnel to report discrimination and harassment. Policy changes and cultural shifts will likely impact service members, including victims of sexual assault and harassment, who already face obstacles when reporting bad actors. Nearly 1 in 4 women in the military report having experienced sexual assault and more than half report harassment — though researchers found the vast majority of incidents go unreported altogether.

This story was originally reported by Mariel Padilla of The 19th.

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The post In a Room Full of Men, Hegseth Called for a Military Culture Shift From ‘Woke’ to ‘Warrior’ appeared first on DCReport.org.

“Unhinged” is one word I heard on the news shows describing Trump’s speech this morning. So is “bonkers.” One report called Trump “meandering” and “exhausted.” But no description could capture what took place in Quantico, Virginia this morning. All the papers and cable shows and commentators are talking about how Trump said he wants “dangerous cities” led by Democrats to be used as “training grounds” for the military, and that was on obvious outrage among many others, but I want to begin with Trump’s disquisition on walking up and down stairs.

He began by attacking Biden, naturally, complaining that “We were not respected with Biden. They looked at him falling down stairs every day – every day, the guy’s falling down stairs – and I said, that’s not our president. We can’t have it. I’m very careful, you know, when I walk down stairs, I walk…very…slowly. Nobody has to set a record. Just, try not to fall, ‘cause it doesn’t work out well. A few of our presidents have fallen, and it became a part of their legacy, you know. Walk nice and easy. You don’t have to set any records. Be cool! Be cool when you walk down, but don’t…don’t bop down the stairs. The one thing with Obama…I had zero respect for him as a president, but he would bop down those stairs, I’ve never seen…da-da-da-da-teh-deh-bop-bop…I’ve never seen…he would go down those stairs, bop-bop, he wouldn’t hold on, he’d go down those stairs, I said, it’s great! I wouldn’t want to do it. I guess I could do it, but eventually, bad things are gonna happen, and it only takes one. A year ago, we were a dead country. We were dead. This country was going to hell. We had nothing.”

He went on. And on. And on. Seventy minutes, he blathered through his usual patter of lies, bigger lies, grievance, self-pity, and self adoration. I watched the speech, and he must have said the word “Biden” 30 times. It’s not really worth quoting any more of his lies and nonsense, because you’ve heard it before, heard it too many times.

So had the generals and admirals and noncommissioned officers. They are citizens. They either live in the United States, or they’re stationed overseas where American broadcasts are available via satellite. They know a rally speech when they hear one, and they knew that is what they had been ordered to travel great distances to listen to today. One report noted that the audience of the most senior uniformed officers in our military sat “stone-faced” through the whole thing, with only a momentary chuckle from a few in the audience at something Trump said. There was no applause during the speech despite the fact that Trump hit all his applause points like he does at his rallies.

It’s the bragging and exaggeration that must have really gotten to them. I ended eight wars! The pull out from Afghanistan was the worst day in the history of our country. I did this. I did that. Biden was the worst president. The Democrats don’t respect you and will never treat you right.

Trump seemed oblivious to the fact that everyone in that auditorium, during careers of as many as 30 years, had served under not only Biden, but Trump and Obama and Bush and Clinton. Most of them had seen combat. Most of them had their own experience with “the worst day” on the battlefield or in training accidents. They know that the Marines and the Army have had helicopter accidents that killed more soldiers in a single training incident than died in the terror attack in Kabul that killed 13 which Trump referred to.

In the culture of the U.S. military, generals and admirals don’t brag about themselves. The only bragging that is done by commanders in the military is about the accomplishments of the troops who serve under them. Not one of those generals or admirals had ever stood up before an audience in the military and cried out look at me! I’m the greatest! Look at all I’ve done!

Unseemly is not an adequate word to describe how generals and admirals and senior NCOs consider bragging. They don’t do it, and they don’t put up with it from others who serve with them.

I have concluded that today’s display of ego and bluster and falsehoods by Hegseth and Trump may have served a useful purpose after all. Every one of those generals and admirals and senior noncommissioned officers now has had personal experience with who they serve under. None of them could have missed the sexism in Hegseth’s speech when he told them that the military is “going back to male standards” for combat soldiers. All of them know that female soldiers have earned Ranger status by enduring the exact same hardships male soldiers endure. All of them know that women fly jets off and onto the pitching decks of aircraft carriers in dangerous seas. The Coast Guard admirals know that female officers command the same rescue boats that go out in impossible weather every day.

There were Black generals and admirals sitting amidst their white counterparts in that audience in Quantico today. Not one of them, white or Black, could have missed the rank racism when Trump imitated Barack Obama “bopping” down a set of stairs. Trump said he “never seen” anything like it, as if he were describing a tight end in a football game catching a difficult pass. None of them missed the racism when Trump mentioned, in speaking about “the nuclear” that there are two “N-words” you can’t say. Every person in that room knew what the other N-word is, and they got it that Trump was complaining that “political correct,” as he called it, had stopped its usage.

The really sad thing about what transpired in Quantico today is that there is no one in Trump’s White House or among the top civilian command at the Pentagon or for that matter in the entire Republican Party who thinks there was anything wrong with anything said by either Hegseth or Trump. But generals and admirals endured George Bush and the lies he told that forced them into a war they knew was bogus. They endured his absurd “mission accomplished” moment when everyone in the military knew that precisely nothing had been “accomplished” a few months into the war in Iraq. They knew from reading history that this country and its military had been forced into a war in Vietnam on the basis of another ocean of lies.

In the end, the generals and admirals know that presidents come and go, but their job remains the same. The soldiers, sailors, airmen and airwomen and Marines under their command need them to do their jobs in spite of the madness at the top. Their loyalty is to the Constitution, not to President Donald Trump and Secretary of Whatever the Hell He Thinks He Is Pete Hegseth.

They will endure. So will we.

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Like so many things the Trump administration does, today’s meeting of some 800 admirals and generals convened by “Department of War” secretary Pete Hegseth was equal parts asinine and terrifying. Gathering the top military brass all in one place is very obviously foolish — a fabulous waste of time, and an enormous security risk to boot. Hegseth, the least experienced defense secretary in modern history, used the opportunity to lecture top military brass on how their forces are too fat, too woke, and too bearded to be up to standard. And President Donald Trump used his time at the podium to say that he instructed Hegseth to use American cities as “training grounds” for the military.

Let’s repeat that: The president of the United States told his Secretary of Defense to use American cities as training grounds for the military.

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The American military is supposed to defend the United States of America. It is not supposed to be used against US citizens. And yet that is precisely what the president is promising. I have to wonder at what point military leaders realize that this is not what they signed up for — that they pledged not loyalty to the man in the Oval Office, but to the flag and the nation.

I also have to wonder at what point a critical mass of military men and women realize they’re being led by a bunch of phony wannabe tough guys.

The posturing from this administration is almost comical. The truth is that most of the time, if someone truly understands that they possess a particular admirable trait, they don’t need to constantly tell you about it. People who are extremely mentally and physically tough — real lethal “warriors,” as Hegseth might say — don’t need to constantly tell you how tough and lethal and warrior-like they are; they know, and they don’t need repeated external validation.

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Tuesday night at midnight, Republicans will shut down the federal government. Again. Trump is reportedly quite excited about this. He wants it to happen and will almost certainly do everything possible to ensure it.

Why would he do something so stupid?

Well, he thinks he’s going to “win” the shutdown. And, to be fair, Republicans should win, if one were to only go by the broadest outlines of previous shutdowns. That’s a really stupid way to approach tonight’s deadline and, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, I really hope Trump and his party of fuckwits keep at it! There’s a very real chance they’re going to re-learn a very painful lesson, and I have my popcorn ready.

Here’s the thing: Most shutdowns occur when the minority party makes a demand and then withholds votes when they don’t get what they want. Thus, they are blamed for the shutdown and end up giving in as public resentment builds against them. That’s the calculation Trump, or rather the people telling him what to think, is making. Trump’s syphillis-riddled brain is leaking into his diaper, so it’s obvious Stephen Miller and Russ Vought are running the show now.

Tonight’s shutdown would appear to follow that same pattern as most of the previous shutdowns, so Trump/Miller/Vought feels confident that they will “win” and Democrats will be the villains. The legacy press feels the same way, too. Trump is holding all the cards! He’s threatening to set the government on fire if Democrats don’t cave to his demands! Dems are in trouble! Blablabla…

But there are a few critical differences that are really REALLY fucking obvious. So obvious that one wonders how the press is not noticing them. I get how Trump and his regime of incompetent imbeciles don’t see it. They live in a propaganda bubble where the Glorious Leader is never wrong and beloved by all. But the press? They goddamn well know better.

The most glaring difference is what’s at stake. Previous shutdowns have been due to Republicans demanding massive cuts to the social safety net. That’s really hard to sell, even to the GOP’s benighted base of drooling bootlickers. “Cut SNAP for pregnant women and hungry children, or we’ll shut it all down!” is not a winning message.

What super unpopular things are Democrats demanding right now? Are they demanding cuts to law enforcement spending? Are they demanding cuts to defense? Are they demanding, maybe, cuts to oil subsidies?1 Nah. They’re demanding funding be restored to Medicaid so 15-20 million people, mostly in rural areas with rural hospitals, will continue to have healthcare.

They’re also demanding the subsidies to the ACA, aka Obamacare, be renewed so another 15-20 million people will not suddenly see their insurance become unaffordable next year when prices double or triple.

The Republicans’ Very Mature response?

In an interview on CNN, Senate majority leader John Thune called Democrats’ healthcare demands “completely unhinged and unreasonable and unserious”.

Just in case you’re not sure if Republicans are the Very Serious Grown Ups in the room:

President Donald Trump on Thursday blamed Democrats for making “unserious and ridiculous” demands, foreshadowing what is likely to be the go-to talking point should neither side blink ahead of the Tuesday night deadline.

“He read all the shit they’re asking for, and he said, ‘on second thought, go fuck yourself,’” the White House official said.

Which side would you want to be on in that debate? The “Please allow us to keep 30-40 million people on their insurance” side? Or the “Fuck off! Let the little people die!” side? Objectively, which side is easier to sell to the public? There’s only one correct answer, and it’s not the one that sounds like Ebenezer Scrooge.

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Republicans are simply refusing to find any kind of middle ground. Would compromising on restoring healthcare be great? Not really. But getting 20 million people covered is better than none. That would require compromise, though, which Republicans view as a cardinal sin. Curiously, the same press that excoriates Democrats for not compromising enough is utterly silent when Republicans refuse to budge even a little. Isn’t that strange?2

While this is happening, Trump is bragging about how he wants the shutdown so he can fire tens of thousands (or more) of government employees. That will give his MAGA moron base an erection, but the general public has definitely noticed that gutting the government has not really been good for them. The sharp decline in service at Social Security and national parks and the IRS and and and is not making people happier.

On top of all of this is Trump’s historic unpopularity and a tanking economy. Trump is a phenomenally weak president, despite the legacy press’s constant efforts to prop him up. He has no cachet of goodwill to draw on, and the public will not be kind to his regime if (when) the shutdown drags on.

So, to summarize, Republicans are unwilling to negotiate. Democrats want people to keep their healthcare, and Republicans are quite literally and on the record telling them to “fuck off.” The extremely unpopular Trump and his even more unpopular regime are gleefully announcing their plans to use the shutdown to further gut the federal government, something even MORE unpopular than both Trump and his regime. The economy is crashing and people are aware a government shutdown will make that worse.

This is the definition of a losing hand.

Now, this is not an automatic win for Democrats. Republicans have a vast propaganda machine that will be spinning lies at the speed of light. Democrats are actually demanding transgender operations for little kids! And free healthcare for every immigrant, while taking it away from white senior citizens! Also, they want to cut spending to rural hospitals and send that money to the “Inner City!” You know, The Blacks!

The legacy press, of course, will throw its hands up and be professionally confused. Who knows who is telling the truth?! Is Republican messaging winning? Are Dems in disarray?! If only we could discern reality! But that’s not the job of the mainstream media, I guess…

It doesn’t help that Chuck Schumer is, to put it delicately, not up to the task of fighting fascism.3

But with Trump and his party being so nonchalant about the shutdown, I suspect (and hope) things will not go the way they think. That when they drag this out, Republicans will discover, whoopsie!, shutting down the government to save healthcare for tens of millions of Americans is actually pretty popular and sneering at the working poor…isn’t. That laughing as you gut the government while the economy tanks doesn’t play well, even in the heartland. That maybe stealing from the poor to give trillion-dollar tax cuts to the rich was not a sound electoral strategy.

If and when Trump is forced to concede, assuming Schumer can hold his fucking nerve, it will be a tremendous blow to the regime’s projected image of strength. Everything they do, every cruel and sadistic cut they make, is predicated on the premise that the public is on their side. That they represent the “will of the people.” But they don’t, and they never have. How this fight resolves, a fight over Democrats restoring healthcare to millions or Republicans telling the public to “fuck off,” will tell us a lot about how we move forward as a country.

Don’t fuck it up, Schumer.

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The Opinionated Ogre is a Stay-at-Home parent first, foul-mouthed hater of fascist Republicans second. He’s been making the most horrible people in the country miserable for 15 years and the hate he feels for American Nazis is eternal and without limits. He plans to stop torturing right-wing trash the day the last fascist dies. So, you know, never. Please help support this potty-mouthed newsletter for just $5/month or $50/year (Almost 17% less!)

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MAGAland is giddy after last week. The long-promised indictment of the long-hated James Comey is upon us! Now he will pay for his crimes! So many crimes! He’ll spend the rest of his life in prison! Maybe even the public execution QAnon has been demanding for years!

None of that will happen, of course. The case against Comey is so weak, the first Trump-appointed U.S Attorney who was ordered to fabricate the charges quit rather than engage in such a waste of time. Erik Siebert, a staunch conservative prosecutor, knew there was no way to win this case, and anyone bringing it to court would look like a moron. Which is why Trump found just the moron to do it in Lindsey Halligan, an insurance lawyer with no prosecutorial experience.

Good luck!

This all happened after Trump ordered his puppet Attorney General to start indicting his enemies in a public tweet most people believe was supposed to be a private message. Supposed to be, but Trump was too stupid or deranged and accidentally made it public.

So…the great and mighty MAGA purge is upon. Trump will now rain down his revenge upon all who wronged him. What’s the problem? This is what Republicans have been dreaming of for years, isn’t it?

Well, not so much, it turns out:

Mr. Trump’s campaign to imprison, fire or otherwise punish his political foes and use government power to crack down on free speech he does not like has broken norms that stood for generations. But it has also established new standards for what a president can do that even some conservatives worry may come back to bite them. Power claimed by one party is then eventually available to the other. Limits ignored by one administration may no longer seem binding on the next.

If the precedent set by Mr. Trump takes hold, America may be entering a period when each new administration takes aim at the last one in a cycle of retaliation, a what-goes-around-comes-around pattern more familiar in authoritarian countries than in developed Western democracies. Even presidents more restrained than Mr. Trump may succumb to the temptation to follow at least some of his example.

The New York Times article is actually quite hilarious. It’s attempting to preemptively frame what happens after the regime falls as “retaliation.” It’s quite literally scolding Democrats in advance.

But the fear among the right and the legacy press is very VERY real. Last week, I explained how Republicans are not acting like a party convinced it will be in power forever. Hell, they’re not even convinced they’ll be in power after the midterms, much less after 2028.

If they don’t believe Donald Trump’s Stephen Miller’s Thousand-Year Reich is going to last past next year, they must be thinking about what happens when Democrats retake power and survey the damage Republicans have done.

This is where the flop sweat and mounting panic come in. Specifically, the concern over Trump shattering norms is keeping them up at night. And for good reason.

Since the Civil War, there has been one singular constant in American politics: We do not hold treasonous white racist men accountable for their actions.

We did not hang the leadership of the Confederacy.

We did not hang the leaders of the Business Plot.

We did not hang the seditious pro-Nazi members of the government (mostly Republicans) during and after WWII.

We did not imprison nearly enough of the treasonous criminals in the Nixon, Reagan, or Bush administrations.

Most importantly, after Trump led an insurrection at the end of four years of lawlessness, we dithered and “followed norms.” Because we don’t like to hold administrations accountable for the crimes they commit.

It’s really important to understand that this “norm” exists overwhelmingly to protect Republicans. Are Democrats perfect saints? Of course not. But when it comes to violating the law, Republicans vastly outperform, which is why the press does not directly compare the lawbreaking by the two parties. Rather, they resort to their favorite method of obscuring the truth: Bothsiderism. Because if everyone is guilty, then no one is.

Of course, this is like comparing a local shoplifter to a corporate embezzler. Sure, they’re both thieves, but one is stealing a couple of hundred dollars while the other steals millions. Only a lying sack of shit, or the legacy press,1 would treat them the same.

But Trump is shattering this norm of “looking forward for the good of the nation.” Prosecuting “political enemies” is a thing now, and Trump will continue full speed ahead. The press will have a choice: Normalize it to protect Trump from a damaging public backlash or make a lot of noise about how dangerous and terrible this is to protect Republicans from future repercussions.

They will, of course, normalize it. It’s an ingrained reflex at this point. But they know, THEY KNOW, how dangerous this is for Republicans. The legacy press knows, just as Republicans do, that Trump is not the glorious leader of a Thousand-Year Reich. Unless things go absolutely perfectly for the GOP, the regime will fall and Democrats will retake power.

Then, seditious white racist men of the right have a problem.

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The norms that protected them for over 150 years are gone. Trump destroyed them. The public will no longer recoil at “political enemies” being arrested and charged. It won’t matter how loudly the press and the GOP squeal that it’s all a witch hunt and unfair and politically motivated. They set the standard under Trump and taught the public that this is now normal.

Here’s the thing that’s really freaking them all out:

Under Trump’s revenge campaign, it’s unlikely a single person will see a single day in jail. The cases will be sloppy and stupid and politically motivated. Assuming grand juries don’t toss them out of a window, judges will be merciless, and regular juries unsympathetic. “Being mean to Trump” is not actually a crime.

Trump doesn’t necessarily want to put his enemies in prison, anyway, although that would be an awesome bonus. He wants to drag them through a trial. He wants to cost them time and money and have his propaganda machine drag their name through the mud. In other words, he wants them to suffer the indignity he experienced as a (legitimate) criminal defendant.2 Because how fucking DARE anyone hold the Great and Powerful Donald J. Trump accountable for the crimes he committed?! That is for lesser beings!

He wants his enemies humiliated and hurt. When the cases fail, he’ll just use that to rail against the courts and further weaken the system because that was always part of Project 2025 and the dictator’s handbook. An independent judiciary is intolerable to fascism.

On the other hand, and this is the source of consternation, when Democrats come for Republican criminals, those cases WILL stick. Are Democrats better at fabricating charges? Are the courts stacked with corrupt liberal judges? Are juries tainted with Antifa?!

No, of course not. Republicans are criminals. Worse, they’re stupid and arrogant criminals who flaunt their criminality in our faces, confident they’ll never be held accountable. The regime brags about the laws they’re breaking because the press has rewarded them for their brazen corruption over and over again.

After all, if the regime were REALLY committing crimes, they wouldn’t be confessing…would they?

The press knows better, but they’re complicit, so they help with the cover-up. But that only works if we maintain the norms Trump is currently smashing. Whoops.

The New York fucking Times is showing us how they plan to protect Republicans after the regime falls, but I do not believe it will work. They will only put up mild protests as Trump continues his revenge tour, preferring to focus the bulk of their coverage on normalizing the disgraceful weaponization of the DoJ. By the time the regime falls, it will be far too late to pivot back to “We don’t prosecute the opposition! That’s an outrageous abuse of power!”

And once those cases go to court, the glut of evidence will see Republican after Republican convicted and handed down VERY long prison sentences.

The GOP will rage. The press will be professionally appalled. After all, there’s nothing more un-American than holding treasonous white racists accountable for the criminal actions they take. We just don’t DO that here! It’s not fair! It’s not proper! It’s indecent!

Well, too fucking bad. Should of thought of that before you paved the way for fascism. Because when the regime falls, and it will, we are coming for all of the criminals. The legacy press will demand we “look forward” in order to “heal the country.” That “revenge" will “divide the nation.” But they don't give a flying fuck about that. The press, like the GOP, is terrified of consequences. They know that facing the music for what they’ve done will cripple the GOP for decades. That by the time they recover, there won’t be enough racist white men left to sustain a white nationalist movement and rebuilding a new fascist movement without white racism is hard. Breaks my heart. Really.

In the meantime, pay attention to how the press covers the Trump regime manufacturing charges against its enemies. Pay VERY close attention to the language they use to blame “both sides” and to normalize it. And then compare it to how they demand Democrats never EVER charge a single Republican when the regime falls. That will tell you everything about who the legacy press works for and, believe me, it will not be the rule of law, the people of the United States, or democracy.

If they’re freaking out now, they will be hair on fire screaming in terror when the regime falls and the bill comes due for the criminals of the Republican Party. All thanks to Donald Trump’s unquenchable thirst for revenge. Ha. Ha. Ha.

I hope you feel better informed about the world and ready to kick fascists in the teeth to protect it. This newsletter exists because of you, so please consider becoming a supporting subscriber today for only $5 a month or just $50 a year (a 17% discount!). Thank you for everything!

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Fascism hates organized protests. They fear the public. They fear US. Make fascists afraid again by joining Indivisible or 50501 and show them whose fucking country this is!

The Blue Wave has begun and the fascist fucks are scared. There are 35 days until it hits Virginia and Pennsylvania. If I were a billionaire fascist loser, I’d think REALLY hard about getting out of the way.