Being a Canadian today feels an awful lot like being in Austria in the mid 1930s, in the years leading up to Anschluss. After watching last night’s performance by Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump at Marine base Quantico, I am left wondering how this absurdity will end.
There are really only two possible outcomes: violence or ridicule; dictatorship or democracy; war or peace.
Yesterday, Pete Hegseth, the former Fox news host who now heads the American military, gave a clear and utterly terrifying speech at Marine Corps Base Quantico. He ordered every serving Admiral and General to attend the televised event, so he could lay out his vision for the US military to its leadership — and the American public.
In his speech, he made it clear that the renaming of the Department of Defence to the War Department was no accident. The United States, under Hegseth and Trump, are placing themselves on a war footing. A war against who, exactly? Against the ‘woke’, women, minorities, fat people; against anyone who does not meet his image of the modern warfighter, a term he used repeatedly.
After Hegseth’s 45-minute policy realignment speech, President Trump took the podium and rambled incoherently for well over an hour. Amid his insane babbling was a single line that would have ended any other presidency:
We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military National Guard, but military, because we’re going into Chicago very soon.
Hegseth’s War Department under President Trump apparently sees its enemy as urban Americans in states that do not politically support them.
Every member of the American military must swear an oath upon joining. The oath is not to an individual, but to the American constitution and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The oath to obey orders from the president has a specific caveat to ensure that those orders are legal:
I, (state name of enlistee), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. (So help me God).
The speeches yesterday at several points invited military members who do not agree with the administration and their direction to resign. It was intended to help create a military loyal to the president rather than the constitution.
Trump also once again implored Canada to join the United States as the 51st state. Make no mistake, the annexation of our country into this personality-cult totalitarian dictatorship is very much still on the mind of its current leader.
For the United States to be placing themselves on a war footing, practicing military operations against their urban progressives, and threatening us, their loyal neighbours to the north, it is clear that their leaders are telling us how they want the story to end.
A “War Department” does not seek peace. Attacks on satirists do not tolerate ridicule. Destruction of the constitution does not protect democracy.
Violence benefits Trump and his supporters. Dictatorship ensures their power in the face of profound unpopularity. War ensures loyalty.
If the story ends with violence, dictatorship, and war, an attempt at Anschluss will eventually come for Canada.
If the story ends with ridicule, democracy, and peace, tourism will eventually return to the United States.
Which way the story ends largely depends on whether the 800 leaders of the American military in the room yesterday follow their oath to the constitution, or choose fealty to a president willing to shut down government and turn off the lights to get his way.
The stone cold reaction of the room, in which a sitting president begged his generals to applaud (or leave the room without their job), offers the first concrete hope that, when push comes to shove, the military will come down on the right side of history.