(Andrew Harnik/Pool via AP)
Today’s MAGA spectacle at Quantico wasn’t leadership — it was a recruitment rally for exclusion. Oligarch Donald Trump and his Minister of War, Pete Hegseth, stood in front of hundreds of the America’s top officers and offered a menu of authoritarian nostalgia: a military reset that elevates sameness over service and suspicion over solidarity. It looked less like a defense summit and more like a loyalty oath.
Leader Trump went beyond rhetoric when he told the room that he’d suggested using “some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military,” calling the violence he wants to crush a “war from within.” He dangled rapid domestic deployments — language that makes civil-military boundaries shudder.
Minister of War Hegseth matched the tone with blunt contempt. He slammed what he called “fat generals,” vowed “more leadership changes,” and told officers who disagreed with his agenda that “if the words I’m speaking today are making your heart sink, then you should do the honorable thing and resign.” That’s not a pep talk — it’s a purge threat dressed up as discipline.
Let’s pull back a moment and talk about Project 2025—the blueprint behind all of this exclusion talk.
What is Project 2025 — and Why It’s a Monster?
Project 2025 is a far-right policy initiative, backed by the Heritage Foundation, designed to remap the U.S. government and consolidate power in the executive branch under a loyalist regime. Wikipedia+1
Here are its most dangerous proposals:
- Replace merit-based civil servants with MAGA political loyalists. Wikipedia+1
- Dismantle or neutralize checks and balances in agencies like the DOJ, FBI, and oversight institutions. Center for American Progress
- Eliminate protections for Queer, Transsexuals, and minority groups, and erase DEI programs entirely, calling them “state-sanctioned racism.” Wikipedia+1
- Deploy the Army for domestic law enforcement and testing advanced chaos, insurrection, and Gestapo undercover police giving sweeping new MAGA powers to the executive over regions and cities. Wikipedia+1
- Control promotions in the military so they align with political priorities, not competence. Center for American Progress
In short: Project 2025 is the ideological engine behind the “PURGE” logic you saw today. The meeting at Quantico isn’t an aberration — it’s the on-the-ground rollout of a plan to remake your institutions and recast what it means to belong.
When leaders begin telling you who should belong by skin tone, gender, or sexual orientation, that isn’t a return to “standard values.” It’s the start of a “PURGE”.
(AP News)
Back to the Stage: Why This Meeting With Trump and Hegseth Matters
When you roll back diversity initiatives, scrub histories of minority service, and make “universal male” fitness the standard, the message is unmistakable: only certain bodies, certain identities, will be tolerated. That’s not about merit — it’s about policing humanity.
Trump and Hegseth are not asking generals to sign policy memos. They are kneeling to an exclusionist ideology. Generals forced to toe the line become complicit in this purge. It’s textbook totalitarian playbook: first policing the narrative, then policing the bodies.
And no, this isn’t paranoia. This is where Project 2025 and the Quantico meeting intersect: both demand loyalty, conformity, and uniformity. Both require the erasure of difference. When you hear terms like “if you can’t stand it, resign,” don’t be fooled: they’re not concerned about morale — they’re clearing the deck for purge.
So here’s your war cry: belonging is not a favor — it is our birthright. Reject the lie that difference makes someone less worthy. These policies aren’t about “strengthening the military” — they’re about restricting who gets to call themselves American. Embrace the voices they want to silence. Protect the stories they want to scrub. Be the resistance.
George Freeman
Presiding Chaplain Universal Life Church Monastery
