“Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation,” Hegseth said in the prayer service. “Give them wisdom in every decision, endurance for the trial ahead, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”
“Every day, on bended knee, with your family, in your schools, in your churches,” he said, “in the name of Jesus Christ.”
Pete Hegseth sounds like some sobbing high school sophomore breaking down at a Billy Graham revival long ago in Billings, Montana, not our Secretary of Defense/War.
I know a little about this because, in fact, I went to a Billy Graham revival in Billings, Montana, long ago. A friend invited me. We were way up in the bleachers, empty space around us. All of a sudden, I turn to my friend. He’s sobbing and shaking. Tears streaming down. I turn back to the stage. To me it had been like watching the Ed Sullivan Show on television, a spectacle. Not to my friend. Both of us 15 years old. He brought himself to his feet and stumbled down the long stairs to receive the Lord in the form of Billy Graham, Sr.’s outstretched hands. I was not so much shocked as impressed by my friend’s transformation and the ability of old Graham to work it on the crowd of several thousand in the Shrine Auditorium.
My friend was in no way a fool like Hegseth, who is, as we would say in Montana, “dumb as a fencepost.”
It is a human phenomenon to be wary of, however, the butt-dumb arrogance of “With God on our side” as Bob Dylan sang (see coda below,) and at about the same time back then, just as the Vietnam War was grinding up.
Of course, Iran’s mullahs are zealots, as well. Of course, the Israelis are fighting a messianic war, too. All three are locked in some 2000 year old battle. (Or is it 4000 years?) I believe it was mythologist James Campbell, who wrote Hero with a 1000 Faces and engendered the Star Wars films, who said it’s time for humanity to move beyond “the desert religions.”
This almost got him canceled in rags like the New York Review of Books, long ago.
All for the squirmy glory of a New York sociopath from the 1980s!
Well, what hath God wrought? Maybe some good stuff, too. First, though, there will be a scramble across the energy world for dirty coal, outmoded but readily available, and then for US nat gas (which is anything but nature-natural,) silly nuclear, too, though that takes long time to generate electrons. But then any country with a thinking brain will go wind, solar, batteries because the electrostate is cheaper, faster, independent of the mullahs and the Hegseths, and much, much healthier.
This means China, which is now building electric cars that get an insane 800 miles on a charge, and that charge can be as quick as 10 minutes. Interestingly, China may be licensing the best solid state batteries from of all people the Finns to get the right mix, and that’s fine, if strange, but Finland is a wicked smart country. I mean, they gave us Nokia phones and Angry Birds, already, right?
Seriously, though, if you google WHERE DOES ENGLAND/ FRANCE/ GERMANY/ SPAIN GET THEIR OIL? China, too, you will get a curious answer. England gets most of its oil not from the Gulf but from Norway, that is, from the North Sea, along with Canada, Nigeria, Libyia, and the US. Germany gets its gas from Norway, Belgium France, etc. Needing an enemy to blame for OPERATION EPSTEIN/ MINNEAPOLIS/GROCERY STORE DIVERSION, Trump blamed our naturally reluctant allies: “They can police it themselves. Why should I do it for them? They weren’t there for me.”
“I” and “me,” indeed. As if he owned America like some Southern slave owner and the imagined insult was to him, personally!
No Kings.
Already in most advanced economies the energy mix is roughly 60 or 70 to 40 or 30% renewables with renewables about to be super-charged (yes, a pun,) by Heggy’s Childrens Crusade.
It is probably not a coincidence, therefore, that Spain’s electricity is already 75% renewables, and the country is refusing to join the US/Israeli madness. They don’t have a dog in the Khomeini hunt.
So Sobbing Pete and Cheater Don may be hastening their own demise on the energy front. America will take a while to transition from “a gas station with nuclear weapons,” to borrow a great line about Russia, but eventually we will catch up to the Finns (and the Chinese.)
Solid state batteries and saunas, anyone? #
And here’s another patriot:
MUSICAL CODA
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