Either command loyalty or fire them. This is one opinion of what’s going to happen in the meeting of Hegseth and top military brass from around the world. Not only does this gathering feel like a massive security risk, but it smacks of more dominoes falling. It’s all moving too fast.

I’m starting to have creepy dreams about what the future is gonna look like. It’s wearing on my psyche. Father David, a current YouTube regular, echoed the words we’ve heard in reference to Nazi Germany—the ones about silence being complicity—and it was a gut-wrenching awakening.

Trump is looking for fealty from the entire US military? We can’t be there already, can we? And something else: can Trump really be the one in charge? Isn’t it past time that Republicans in Congress wake up and grow a backbone? Isn’t it past time we start looking a lot closer at Vought and Miller and Roberts and the rest? Trump is an incompetent, perpetually angry and vengeful, 79-year-old marionette, doing these other guys’ dirty work.

Calculating, spineless, sniveling goons all. With issues. Taking pages from the Nazi playbook! And right now, getting away with it.

I feel like it’s no wonder the US team lost another Ryder Cup, and this one in the friendly confines of Bethpage Black—on home soil. The pressure Keegan Bradley put on these guys must have been enormous.

The appeal to country and patriotism, I would think, might have felt more like a weight than an inspiration. Too much pressure, too much trash talk, and maybe, given the current atmosphere, a certain internal conflict and confusion. What America were they representing—the Ideal, or this dystopian Trumpian disaster? I would think it might be difficult to get behind that.

Anyway, they at least made it interesting on Sunday. But all it really proved is that you can’t win on emotion alone. They had dug themselves a hole that was going to be hard to get out of. And the Europeans were a veteran group, talented and cagey, playing for each other, unmoved by and ready for the typical and predictably boorish American bluster and loudness.

As a country, we still behave like immature teenagers. Like blunt force is all we need.

The Pope has spoken. I guess, unless it was all AI. It was somewhat inspiring, but in some ways just MOTS, stuff I’ve heard before. It’s unlikely to move the needle in the midst of Trump’s laser-focused villainy. Donald appears to be a lost cause.

I used to be in a place where the kind of person Trump seems to be would have been a pathetic figure, worthy of forgiveness and a second chance. But anymore, he’s just a cancer that needs to be removed, afforded no more wiggle room, no kindness, no grace. Just shown the door with a healthy kick to his giant ass.  

Neither left nor right, blue nor red has a corner on correct answers to whatever questions we can muster regarding how to run this country. One thing is for sure: whatever Trump and the rest are attempting to lay out or co-opt since January 20—and long before—is nothing but corruption, motivated by self-interest, vengeance, and a lust for power.

There is currently no attempt to govern in what might be considered a responsible way. All we’re getting is blatant disregard for the rule of law, a stunning coldness, and ignorance manifesting itself in abandoned sanity and rampant incompetence.

There are few days where many of us aren’t hesitant to check the headlines, because we know Donald Trump will sign another Executive Order that sets something back 20 or 100 years, or takes something away from somebody. We know that, on multiple occasions and in different settings, he will say something astoundingly stupid long before the sun sets. He will play the victim, cry and whine and accuse and plot payback for a perceived wrong he’s filed away from years ago, or just a few days ago at the U.N.

The reason I started this post is because of the elephant in the room: despite a bit of daylight shining on the issue of free speech, our efforts largely go nowhere if talking with and listening to each other mostly reminds us why we are so entrenched in the first place.

Therapy is already in order, even before we start arguing over Trump making it to 2028 with intentions of running again.

If one is to believe certain people on YouTube, the big meeting Pete Hegseth is calling next week is a harbinger of more bad news— in this case, the groundwork for decapitating our military.

Why the hell would anyone want to do that? The thought of such a wise-ass, incompetent pretty boy having any authority at all—especially in matters of national security—is absolutely galling. If the jury was still out regarding what this administration is trying to do to America, maybe this will awaken the realization that it’s not only Trump we have to worry about.

It’s also been and will continue to be the ones working in the shadows, pulling the strings, writing the playbook, which they’ve been at for years. This is their ballgame. People like Vought and Miller and Roberts and Thiel. All this ugliness is their baby, their brain child. Their… dream for America? Not to mention foreign players who have gained access and leverage.

It’s an all-out assault on democracy, or whatever we’ve had here. Or is this latest development just one more distraction?

What a worthless bunch.

How can so many of them be in lock step with Trump? One might think that, at some point, there would be an awakening among the brown-nosed crew at Fox News or one of the other so-called Conservative mouth pieces. How long can they go on with this cringeworthy groveling? How long before they realize Trump really is an embarrassment and an insult to every man, woman, and child in this country, including them? How can they keep propping him up?

It’s only a matter of time before his next public utterances. They might have happened already, and chances are that next to nothing will have been said. Well, apart from ill-advised threats, darkness, and self-congratulatory drivel.

He deserves all the pushback people can muster. The escalator incident was hilarious. Perfect, really, even if it turns out to have been an accident. Maybe it’s a harbinger of some long overdue closure. One can always hope.

In any event, how dare he treat the office with such flagrant disregard?