Slilent Pentagon

Editor,

Donald Trump walked into Quantico Tuesday expecting a rally. He got a funeral.

The generals sat in perfect silence, faces locked in the kind of grim stillness that comes from years of watching idiots talk and choosing not to react. Trump, of course, couldn’t handle it. “I’ve never walked into a room so silent before,” he confessed, his voice trembling somewhere between wounded pride and panic. Then came the kicker: “If you want to applaud, you applaud.”

This wasn’t leadership. This was a washed-up Vegas act begging the crowd to clap. The Commander-in-Chief turned into the Clapper-in-Chief, reduced to prodding the nation’s top brass like a sad carnival barker who forgot his punchline.

Instead of strategy, Trump delivered his usual medley of grievances: Barack Obama ruined everything, Joe Biden ruined it twice as hard, and only Donald J. Trump, self-proclaimed “two-term, maybe three-term president” could save America. It was less a military briefing than an episode of The Apprentice: Pentagon Edition.

The generals, trained to withstand battlefield chaos, sat stone-faced through the barrage of nonsense. They have endured artillery fire with more enthusiasm.

Enter Pete Hegseth, America’s Pastor-in-Arms. Trump’s “Secretary of War” took the podium with the intensity of a man who thinks Tom Clancy novels are actual military doctrine. He promised “fire and brimstone,” called for purges of “fat generals,” and announced he wants the next war to look exactly like the Gulf War, because apparently it’s still 1991 and CNN is running that same grainy footage of tanks in the desert.

But Hegseth wasn’t done. He led them in prayer. Yes, prayer. The nation’s top generals, summoned by presidential ego, now folded into a forced altar call like extras at a megachurch revival. The separation of church and state? Obliterated. Constitution? Shredded. Jesus, apparently, is now Commander-in-Chief. Trump can play Vice.

Trump likes to brag about firing generals who “aren’t warriors.” But on Tuesday, the real firing squad was silence. Not one clap. Not one cheer. Just the steady hum of contempt vibrating off the brass like feedback from a dead microphone.

These men and women have seen actual combat. They’ve buried soldiers. They’ve lived with the weight of real command. And now they’re expected to cheer for a man who brags about moving “a submarine or two” like it’s a toy in a bathtub, or who lectures about “two N-words” as though nuclear strategy were a stand-up routine.

No wonder they didn’t clap.

What happened at Quantico wasn’t just awkward. It was diagnostic. Trump’s presidency is a hollow shell propped up by applause, and when the applause disappears, so does he.

And Hegseth? He’s the zealot-in-chief, delivering sermons about war and Christ in equal measure, a man confusing the Book of Revelation with the Pentagon’s operations manual. Together, they make quite the duo: one desperate for claps, the other desperate for amens.

The generals gave them neither.

William Wanhala

Pelkie

Amazing service

Editor

I am writing this letter to publicly thank the owners of The Shipping Shop (Emily and Jacob) and acknowledge the amazing service and professionalism they offered before, during and after packaging and shipping my belongings. I retired this summer and wanted to see if retiring abroad was for me. But, I failed to understand how much time and effort was required for every single part of the endeavor, including, but not limited to sorting the possessions into discard, ship and give away possessions, as well as trying to time the various events into a logical sequence.

Basically, my contributions to every part of the process were disastrous, but thanks to many friends, who I can never adequately thank (but who I hope know how much they are appreciated), and the personnel at Northland Vet who managed all the veterinary and legal and practical issues of taking my animals overseas, (especially Karen who did all the paperwork for me) and Jacob and Emily at the Shipping Shop, somehow it came together. Again, I cannot thank any of you enough.

The professional services provided by Jacob and Emily at the Shipping Shop were so far beyond anything one could reasonably expect of a business that I wish to list just some examples of services I benefited from. Because I had so many things going on they accommodated my frantic schedule to work on weekends and evenings on short notice. They did an amazingly skillful job packaging diverse items from breakables, to electronics, to books, and even dog toys. As these items were being shipped by sea I was concerned about humidity damaging some items and they procured and included special packaging and drying packets within the boxes of items that I thought vulnerable, but also vacuum packed the books along with small drying packets.

Then, because the shipping costs by sea freight were based on volume, not weight, they spent considerable time cleverly sorting and packaging things to attain the minimum possible safe volume (e.g. cleverly packing some CDs and DVDs inside the empty spaces in a small table) and fitting the items into boxes chosen for needed sturdiness but also shape so they fit into a small pallet, all of which saved me significant costs. They further negotiated all the legal shipping criteria and paperwork for me. Then when the sea freight people seemed to be taking an excessive amount of time to deliver my pallet and I began to worry it was lost they tracked down the pallet, even though they had no responsibilities for it once it was received by the sea fright people, who I had been unable to reach. It seems they were over a week behind in their deliveries but at least I now knew where the pallet was. But, the most amazing “service” was just an incredibly gracious donation of their skill and time to set up some of my older computer equipment I was leaving to be as easy-to-use as possible so I could keep in “zoom contact” with some elderly friends. Considering how much work goes into building and maintaining their own business, raising their own young family, and all the other demands on their time, I found this donation of their time and effort to be particularly noteworthy because I was just a one-time customer they met a month or so earlier. So although I have tried to thank everyone who helped me through this process, I wanted to express my thanks to Emily and Jacob publicly so others could know the quality of service to expect from them at The Shipping Shop.

Sincerely,

Pat Heiden

Houghton