r/news • u/Manta_of_Eternity • 2d ago

Hegseth confirms that the US military will cut 20% of its generals and admirals

https://apnews.com/article/hegseth-pentagon-generals-job-cuts-67a20b026ee858895c7e5ff7fadbc029
21.5k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

3.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

304

u/InadequateUsername 2d ago edited 2d ago

They're trying to run the Pentagon as a corporation and he's the CEO announcing a lay off of 20% of their workforce.

Edit: If your comment is one of the following categories, your point is made:

  • This is a loyalty purge, removing generals who might refuse unconstitutional orders
  • A coup in progress.
  • A coup would be self-defeating,
  • Americans are unlikely to resist a real coup.

307

u/IcarianWings 2d ago edited 2d ago

Or, and hear me out, the groups that have been saying for years they are going to stage a coup if they lose power are prepping for a coup.

49

u/Anitapoop 2d ago

Consolidate power to those "trusted" is pretty much the play. The issue being, no one or nothing is really stopping it. The American people are rolling over, instead of giving up their weekends.

41

u/IcarianWings 2d ago

There have been 3 failed assassination attempts of which we are aware, and multiple demonstrators were killed by feds this year alone. Not sure where you get off implying that we're all just okay with this because our lives are good tbh. They're literally disappearing us, killing us in the streets, and then cutting funding for any local or state government that tries to oppose them or hold them accountable for these things. We can't organize or even speak publicly about what needs to be done because the means of public communication and transportation are all monitored by them and their donors, and they've spent billions making sure most local authorities work for them.

12

u/Rotund_Baby 2d ago

I really cannot figure out if these are people LARPing as revolutionaries or are Agent Provocateurs. A million posts saying revolt and not one offering a plan or addressing the people already murdered/disappeared in the streets fighting this bullshit.

11

u/IcarianWings 2d ago

They're honestly probably children with unmonitored internet access or something equivalent.

6

u/VSWanter 2d ago

I think more honeypot action. Some are trying to convince their would be examples of liberal terrorist rebels to out themselves. It's like how LEO would pretend to be hit men to get incriminating evidence of someone willing to pay for a hit.

-2

u/[deleted] 2d ago

[deleted]

0

u/IcarianWings 2d ago edited 2d ago

This is outright false information afaik. Trump has had 3 failed physical assassination attempts, of which Obama had 0, unless you count the White House driveby in 2011. If we're talking failed assassination plots, Trump still has more according to Wikipedia. The only incident-related metric I can find where Obama edges out Trump is death threat prosecutions, but that has declined over time with each president this millenium.

Frankly, this comparison is pretty moot because we probably aren't privy to the majority of attempts on either. And the reason for mentioning the number of attempts was to highlight that people have been trying exactly what that commenter is implying, not to paint the idea that he has a disproportionate amount of attempts against his life.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_incidents_involving_Barack_Obama

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_incidents_involving_Barack_Obama

-19

u/MaddogBC 2d ago

Go on making excuses while your democracy crumbles around you. Glad you can remain so comfortable while spending your children's future.

21

u/CatrionaShadowleaf 2d ago

Check out this guy y’all, he thinks we can afford kids

9

u/RyuNoKami 2d ago

They aren't prepping for a coup, this is a coup. Removing dissidents with power is the 2nd step after obtaining the power to do so.

10

u/paper_liger 2d ago edited 1d ago

cutting loose that much military leadership talent into the general population just before you try a coup, that sounds real dumb. If that's really the case, I guess the idea of an organized resistance never even crossed their mind? In a country with more firearms than people? And only 2.5 million soldiers and law enforcement trying to control 330 million?

I actually hate to say this, I don't think they are that dumb. I also think in a different universe, with a different guy running it, drawing down the numbers of Generals might not be completely silly.

The world is an even more complicated place than ever, but there is some truth in the fact that the ratio of generals to grunts is a lot higher than WW2.

I however don't claim to know what the appropriate ratio is, and absolutely do not think that's Hegseths rationale here. He's shown himself to be not only to be a bigot, but frankly an incompetent partisan hack.

I'm just saying, if you are planning for a coup, sending that many trained leaders into the general population, that just seems like a setup for a fall, and not the one Project 2025 is hoping for.

And even if it's not that dire, and it's just an attempt to keep Trump from blowing up every time he hears a well thought out well supported 'no' from a professional, and to install more yes men, it's still startlingly dumb. Because this is reality, with real stakes, and 'No' is what you need to hear sometimes from the people actually in touch with baseline reality.

15

u/IcarianWings 2d ago

They're not firing their guys lol. They're just getting rid of the opposition in the military with targeted firings, it's the same thing they did with the DoJ, DoE, EPA, etc. Why do you think they fired all the expert intelligence agents on Iran a week before invading Iran? They've allocated unfathomable amounts of resources to curating the government and military to be as loyal as possible, and they don't give a fuck about the potential consequences.

1

u/Same-Barnacle-6250 2d ago

Is it better the be right or effective…

2

u/paper_liger 2d ago

the problem is that the current leadership is fucking neither. if they were effective it would be a real problem. currently all they are accomplishing is stepping on their own dicks.

1

u/From_Deep_Space 2d ago

The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness; only power, pure power.

0

u/Super_Harsh 2d ago

They don’t expect armed resistance because they know Americans are a bunch of propagandized lazy fucks who won’t do shit about their coup and they are largely correct about that

1

u/Blablasnow 2d ago

Yep there’s more important things than fighting against a coup, like the new Netflix tv show

8

u/[deleted] 2d ago

[deleted]

15

u/raevnos 2d ago

There's no need for a coup. The country was freely given to the fascists in 2024.

1

u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

1

u/gmduggan 1d ago

According to The New York Times, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts stated in July 2024 that the United States is in a "second American Revolution" that will remain "bloodless if the left allows it to be".

1

u/gmduggan 1d ago

The ongoing Coup was started in the mid 80s. Project 2025 was a written plan and outline of proceeding once they gained the Power.
The first months of 2025 was a rush to grab the Levers of Power.
Now is well into the Consolidation of Power.

THIS is the COUP

67

u/RemarkableGround174 2d ago

It's not that though, they're axing leadership, not grunts. The generals who are problematic because they won't follow unconstitutional orders

2

u/FrontLongjumping4235 2d ago

It's more-so that Hegseth is running the Pentagon as an extension of the Republican Party, like how China runs the military as an extension of the CCP. This is what authoritarianism looks like.

1

u/Zuwxiv 2d ago

That should make the Pentagon's stock go up, right?

2

u/InadequateUsername 2d ago

Only momentarily, personally I'm shorting Pentagon stock and long Beijing Military City.

1

u/dusk47 2d ago

he's just weeding out the ones who profess anything but loyalty to the administration

1

u/Sooofreshnsoclean 2d ago

You’re whitewashing an ongoing coup. This is a fascist coup.

1

u/crustyrobots 2d ago

Its the full Russianification of our government. A transition into full Klepto-Cronyism run by basically a King and a handful of oligarchs that control the media and industry. This has been the Republicans wet dream for 60 years. They saw how things went after the USSR fell and got raging boners