Former President Donald Trump's use of a mashup of scenes from the 1987 Stanley Kubrick film, "Full Metal Jacket," interspersed with clips of today's military, has caused some outrage on the left, but mostly, it has caused consternation among some of the right people.
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The official and institutional embrace of sexual fetishes as a normal part of the military has been shocking. The clips Trump shows are nowhere near as bad as the situation really is.
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Trump's promise to fire the generals behind this insanity is viewed by Kamala's flailing and undirected campaign as a campaign issue.
Trump says he will “fire” America’s military generals and replace them with MAGA loyalists, echoing Project 2025 pic.twitter.com/kbEfzkllzQ
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) June 2, 2024
FOX NEWS: Are you going to fire those generals? The woke generals at the top?
TRUMP: Yes, I would get rid of them. Yeah. But see, now I know them. I didn’t know them before. But, you know, I came in, what do I know? I was a New York real estate person. But no, I’d fire. I would fire them. You can’t have woke military.
Most of the commentary on the video is by room-temperature IQ intellectuals trying to explain that the video shows that Trump doesn't understand "Full Metal Jacket." This guy is real. He's not an AI parody, though he's exactly what an AI parody of a clueless leftist would look and sound like.
The point is less that Trump doesn't understand a movie, than Trump's critics don't understand where R. Lee Ermey fits into popular culture.
A guy who produces Rachel Maddow's MSNBC show says (see Why Trump’s vow to fire ‘woke’ U.S. generals matters (msnbc.com)):
Now, however, the Republican apparently has more expansive plans for a second term, planning to fire U.S. military leaders who fail to meet his ideological standards.
At first blush, this might not seem especially surprising, but let’s not forget that a bedrock principle of the American experience is that we have an apolitical armed forces, filled with servicemembers who are loyal, not to an elected leader, but the U.S. Constitution.
If Trump intends to politicize the military, filling the ranks with loyalists, it sets the stage for a dramatic and fundamental change in how the United States is supposed to operate.
I'd encourage this guy to review how Thomas Jefferson dealt with known Federalist Army officers or ponder the fact that the military is not the civil service. The military is not an independent power center that has "equities." The president is the commander-in-chief. Every commissioned officer is appointed at each step of his career by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate. I have a copy of the Congressional Record when the Senate voted to make me a second lieutenant. No one is advocating a partisan military, but Trump and many of us would like to return to the days when active-duty general officers, or even retired general officers, stayed out of partisan politics and basic standards of civilized behavior adhered to; see General Mark Milley Reportedly Stocking Up on Brown Trousers in Case Trump Is Reelected – RedState. The president has the right, and I would argue the duty, to ensure that senior officers faithfully execute his will and not sandbag him behind his back.
The former president has lashed out at generals before, but this was new. Trump apparently envisions a system in which U.S. military leaders will be subjected to some kind of ideological review, in which members of a task force — whose members will presumably be appointed by Trump — will go about assessing the generals’ and admirals’ personal attitudes.
Those deemed “woke” will apparently see their military careers curtailed.
What could possibly go wrong?
There is nothing wrong with Trump doing just that, and the worst results of that process would not be as bad as what we've seen with the military being suborned on a wholesale level by the left.
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