“Charlie has woke up a era of warriors.”

That is among the slogans apparently into account by US navy leaders in a bid to capitalize off of the assasination of Charlie Kirk to assist enhance recruitment numbers.

Because the financial system tanks, troops are on the streets, the president threatens to bomb somebody weekly, and the ruling class embraces its imaginative and prescient of Conflict Crimes ‘R’ Us, it is sensible that the navy can be seeking to enhance its numbers. How might the late Kirk assist? Right here’s NBC Information:

As a part of the potential new marketing campaign, Pentagon leaders are contemplating utilizing chapters of Kirk’s political group, Turning Level USA, at colleges throughout the U.S. as navy recruitment facilities, the officers stated. That might embrace inviting recruiters to be current at occasions or promoting for the navy on the chapters, one in all them defined.

In response to the New York Instances, Turning Level has chapters at over 850 campuses that register college students to vote, and Kirk was a frequent advocate for using navy drive, together with for the “full navy occupation” of quite a few American cities as soon as DC was “liberated.” No matter Turning Level’s attain and Kirk’s views, nevertheless, the very fact stays that the navy is going through a number of different points, which received’t merely disappear by piggybacking off of Kirk’s recognition.

Determined Instances, Determined Measures

Immediately there are 340 million Individuals and 1.3 million lively service members, or 0.4 % of the inhabitants—down from two % in 1955. That’s far too low, fret the empire fans, for all of the “threats” the US faces internationally. Even when the Silicon Valley lords of dying are capable of efficiently roll out some surprise weapons misnomered as unmanned, the navy nonetheless wants individuals to make use of them.

Why is the navy struggling to maintain up the numbers? In spite of everything, the protection funds is now over a trillion {dollars}. Military Maj. Michael P. Ferguson mentions the next oft-cited causes:

Unpopular wars within the Center East, the Pentagon’s “woke” controversies, a widespread obsession with expertise that devalues human labor, poor oversight of presidency housing and the burdens imposed on navy households have gotten headlines recently. 

Sure, and add to that the rising variety of military-age individuals who don’t qualify as a result of they rating too low on educational testing, or as a result of they’re chubby or produce other medical situations—and that’s regardless of requirements being relaxed. But Ferguson both omits or dismisses these causes as “not viable.” The true perpetrator, he insists, is the so-called “disaster of masculinity.”

That’s why Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth, peddler of “trickle-down masculinity,”  was introduced in:

Past all of the push up movies, the administration’s thought of masculinity appears to be encouraging extra indiscriminate killing. Hegseth needs an armed forces which can be “extra aggressive on the battlefield” whereas being “doubtlessly much less hindered by the legal guidelines of armed battle.”

And so the US navy’s Africa Command, for instance, now not gives particular particulars of its strikes, that are being launched in document numbers. That’s as a result of the White Home greenlit a coverage permitting American commanders to authorize airstrikes and particular operation raids outdoors standard battlefields, broadening the vary of people that could be focused for dying. They usually’re overhauling the Decide Advocate Normal’s corps” (JAG) to make the Pentagon “much less restricted by the legal guidelines of armed battle. Which means “extra aggressive ways” and a “extra lenient strategy in charging troopers with battlefield crimes.”

With the US’ primary “ally” and its Israel Protection Forces as a mannequin, the sky’s actually the restrict right here, I suppose.

Drawback is all this purported masculinity remains to be not likely working so far as recruiting goes:

Trump and Hegseth have touted an uptick in recruiting since Trump’s inauguration, although it really started beneath President Joe Biden after two years of shortfalls in 2022 and 2023. However that development might be short-lived, partly due to societal and generational modifications which can be shrinking the general variety of Individuals eligible to serve, and which present no indicators of slowing…In a July information briefing, [Pentagon spokesman Sean] Parnell addressed the duty drive’s work, noting that the Pentagon believes 7% to 11% of Individuals see navy service as a viable path ahead, down from 27% after 9/11.

And a part of the uptick is the results of the elevated use of waivers, together with for drug and alcohol abuse, which is a probable contributor to greater first-term attrition charges.

Past simply the variety of troopers, the navy is going through a sequence of setbacks throughout the board. Except for {hardware} being practically ineffective in Ukraine, humiliated by the Houthis, and costly and overmatched towards Iran, Trump’s June navy parade was a reminder of the armed forces decline. As Seth Harp writes in a Harper’s piece that’s properly value a full learn:

Somewhat than the authoritarian spectacle that liberals had anticipated, the festivities gave the impression to be extra an indication of political fatigue and civic apathy. And if Trump supposed the parade to be an commercial of America’s navy power, it could as a substitute show to be an inadvertent show of the armed forces’ creeping decrepitude, low morale, shrinking measurement, obsolescence, and dysfunction.

Kirk’s dying isn’t going to assist there, nevertheless it might show helpful in different areas.

Everybody Desires in on the Grift

It appears becoming that some church buildings are turning to AI-Charlie to encourage members to “double down on reality…braveness…and your religion”—and presumably the offertory giving.

It is usually symbolic of the AI plutocracy dressed up as Christian nationalism that the administration and its benefactors in Silicon Valley are attempting to push. I like the next the Venn Diagram as a result of it illustrates how the tech accelerationists have weaseled their means into the middle of the competing pursuits of the administration:

And so we see the likes of Andreessen Horowitz, Peter Thiel, Larry Ellison, Palantir, and so forth. popping up whether or not it’s the Tik Tok sale, the surveillance and police state, offers with Gulf monarchies, genocide in Palestine, the AI bubble, plans to craft a extra Christian and “martial society.” They’re making an attempt to make use of Kirk’s dying to advance their objectives—and line their pockets—on many of those fronts.

At Kirk’s memorial service on Sunday, White Home Deputy Chief of Employees Stephen Miller framed Kirk’s killing as a part of a wider battle between good and evil—with the administration as “good, virtuous, and noble.”

The sort of language isn’t, nevertheless, new. On the Peter Thiel-backed Nationwide Conservatism Convention final yr, Heritage Basis president Kevin Roberts declared the beginning of a brand new American revolution to overthrow “the left”:

You would possibly even say, accounting for the establishment constructing that NatCon is main, that we’re within the second American revolution: a political, social, and cultural wrestling from the left, all these establishments which have appreciable energy, that they’ve steadily co-opted over many years. 

If you happen to’re somebody on the left, you may be stunned to listen to about all this energy wielded by “the left” that he’s speaking about.  Nicely, for Roberts it’s a giant bucket that features all Democrats, identity-focused and neoliberal NGOs, the press, universities in addition to financial progressives, communists and the like on the standard left. Right here’s extra:

A era therefore, we’re gonna stay in a spot known as the US. But when the left succeeds, our republic will stop to be a nation in any respect, and definitely not with self-government. We’ll be dominated from afar, topics with out rights, subservient to a faith with out God, in a land with out hope.

Whether or not Roberts, Thiel, Miller, and firm actually imagine all that is an open query, however that’s what they’re promoting, and what the administration is pursuing.

Thiel has expressed a keenness—frequent among the many plutocrats— for utilizing the facility of the state to punish his enemies and remake the nation and world the best way he sees match. Slop thinker Marc Andreessen enjoys peddling paradise as an AI-powered police state. They usually assume Kirk’s dying may also help them get there.

I wouldn’t be so certain. On this specific goal of accelerating navy recruitment it ignores quite a few different challenges the armed forces are up towards, not least amongst them that it’s one more collapsing establishment in a rustic filled with them:

Confidence within the American navy has fallen to its lowest level in over 20 years, in line with Gallup. Public belief within the navy has plummeted to 45 % from 70 % in 2018, one other survey has discovered.

The precipitous decline is a testomony to only how badly the Pentagon has screwed up its solely actual job: profitable wars. There are a lot of the reason why confidence has plummeted, nevertheless it all comes again to the broader societal actuality that the Pentagon brass are inveterate losers.

And the grift is just too far superior at this stage and accelerating with the intention to forestall extra losses within the close to future, particularly as battle with Iran continues to appear like a robust risk. A report final yr from the Watson Institute for Worldwide and Public Affairs at Brown College titled “How Large Tech and Silicon Valley are Reworking the Navy-Industrial Complicated” particulars how the racket is evolving.

At its coronary heart, the plan embedded within the trillion-dollar protection funds is to make lots of people obscenely rich and hope {that a} surprise weapon or two emerges from the bottomless cash pit. There’s little cause to imagine one will. One want solely take one other have a look at that sorry excuse for a parade for proof. Again to Seth Harp’s parade write up at Harper’s:

On show close to the doorway had been three Military workhorses, all of which went into service greater than forty years in the past and have but to get replaced regardless of many billions spent on fruitless analysis and improvement. I noticed an outdated Bradley Preventing Automobile, scores of which have been destroyed by Russian forces in Ukraine, and an Abrams tank, an equally antiquated automobile that the Ukrainians have discovered even much less helpful, regardless of receiving not less than thirty-one of them free of charge. Parked in entrance of the Capitol was a immobile specimen of the Black Hawk helicopter, whose propensity to crash or get shot down has outlined so many pivotal occasions in U.S. navy historical past.

And there are a lot of extra examples of weapons, automobiles, and plane that bought some individuals fabulously wealthy whereas being nothing greater than burdens for troopers at greatest and dying traps at worst.

However hey, a grift is all the time a possibility for one more one:

And Coinbase was in fact simply one in all many. Right here had been the others (together with not one, however two, sugar firms!):

Talking with attendees at Trump’s parade, Harp discovered most “motivated principally by drained cultural grudges, xenophobic resentment, social-media memes, and civic illiteracy. Few had been smitten by defending Trump’s full capitulation to Israel and the neocons.”

So we are able to see the attraction of utilizing Kirk in an try and “awaken a era of warriors,” however they may not be enlisting anytime quickly, and even when they do, possible received’t make for the soldiers Hegseth and his benefactors are banking on. The issue with working a rustic like one large bust out is the navy {hardware} begins to interrupt down, and few are keen to place their life on the road for such a clear swindle irrespective of how catchy the slogans.

In actuality, the perfect the armed forces can hope for might be that Trump continues to wreck the financial system. As RAND notes:

The civilian unemployment charge for 16–24-year-olds has risen barely since mid-2023, though it stays traditionally low. Previous analysis signifies that enlistments have a tendency to extend with greater junior enlisted pay, promoting, bonuses, the variety of recruiters, and the unemployment charge.

Even then, a military of masculine and non secular warriors for international Silicon Valley pursuits wouldn’t seem imminent. The decay of the navy may be welcome all over the world however dangerous information on the house entrance. Judging from latest developments, it appears one of many final appropriate capabilities of the armed forces can be deployments on US soil to bludgeon protesters and go after these with brown pores and skin or the homeless. 

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