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| Alex Wong/Getty Images |
{USNI News 30 September} 'Pentagon issues fresh edict on physical fitness and grooming standards in the wake of the Quantico address'
An assembly of generals, all feigned enthusiasm, hanging rapt upon each syllable uttered by the Secretary of War and the President of the United States. (/obvious sarcasm).
To be fair, the new directives, taken on their own, possess a surface logic—most notably in prescribing stricter standards of physical fitness and ensuring combat readiness. Yet what is far more disquieting is the pageantry of their unveiling, staged unmistakably as a ritual of humiliation. For years—since his first tenure in the White House—Trump has inveighed against generals who honoured their oaths. His disdain for the military is unvarnished, at once putting them on a pedestal and emasculating them. Thus to assemble them, and then subject them to over an hour of his typical rambling irrelevance, was to reduce the nation’s senior commanders to the theatre of abasement. They recognised as much; their stony demeanours and reluctant postures betrayed the truth.
It may yet be these very generals—men, and a diminished handful of women, many of the latter already purged by this regime—who preserve the republic. For they did not appear as a cadre inclined to betray their oaths, nor to contort the Constitution into sanctioning a presidential war against his own citizenry and all whom he capriciously names ‘enemy’. One suspects, or at least strongly hopes, they confer in private, formulating strategy for the inevitable hour—fast approaching—when the Commander-in-Chief’s commands trespass so egregiously into unlawfulness that they cannot, in conscience, be obeyed.
{alternate text) In this photograph taken on 30 September 2025, rows of senior US military officers, clad in dark dress uniforms heavy with insignia, ribbons, and medals, sit in stony formation at Quantico. Their faces, rigid and unsmiling, betray an air of discomfort that undercuts the ceremony of their appearance. Some look downward, others stare blankly ahead, while a few allow the faintest flicker of exasperation to cross their features. The sea of green and blue uniforms, punctuated by the glint of brass and polished cloth, forms a tableau of disciplined composure masking inner disquiet. Against the gravity of their bearing, the mood is unmistakably strained, the officers’ silent demeanour reflecting a collective unease at being compelled to endure the rambling oratory of President Donald Trump. It is an image less of military pomp than of professional stoicism tested by political theatre, each face a study in the art of concealing disdain under the iron weight of duty.
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