The Quiet Purge of American Command: What Trump Is Doing to the Military—and What It Means for All of Us
By Dino Alonso
Let’s not dress this up in anything other than it is. What’s happening inside the Pentagon right now isn’t reform. It’s not “streamlining.” It’s not about fiscal responsibility or structural efficiency.
It is a purge.
Deliberate. Systematic. And terrifyingly effective.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s memo ordering the reduction of four-star generals by 20% is being pitched as a belt-tightening exercise. But anyone who has studied the authoritarian playbook knows what’s really happening: the deliberate hollowing of institutional expertise and its replacement with political loyalty.
It’s not even subtle.
Hegseth, a TV pundit who has never commanded a theater of war, has made no secret of his contempt for senior leadership. In his own words, a third of generals are “actively complicit” in the supposed “politicization” of the military—which, translated from MAGA-speak, means they wouldn’t play along when Trump wanted tanks on Pennsylvania Avenue and troops suppressing protests in Lafayette Square.
This purge didn’t begin with Hegseth. It started with Trump’s tantrums in 2018, when he publicly called his generals “a bunch of dopes and babies.” It escalated when respected leaders like Jim Mattis and H.R. McMaster were pushed out and replaced with sycophants whose loyalty wasn’t to the Constitution—but to Trump’s ego. When Trump demanded a military response to domestic unrest, it was General Milley who balked. It was military lawyers—the Judge Advocates General—that defended legal constraints. So now? They’re on the chopping block too.
The rationale is as chilling as it is clear: create a military that follows orders—not laws.
That’s the authoritarian dream.
Not a strong military—but a compliant one. One that doesn’t flinch when asked to turn inward. One that doesn’t ask questions when the Constitution is suspended in the name of “national security.” One that doesn’t balk when protestors need “to be dominated.”
This is how democracies collapse—not through spectacle, but through attrition. Through the slow and careful dismantling of institutional safeguards, replaced one by one with hollow uniforms and louder flags.
It’s the “protection racket” applied to national security. Fire the professionals. Install the loyal. Make every promotion a test of obedience, not competence. Eliminate the generals who remember what an oath actually means. And when the crisis comes—when a future Trump or someone worse refuses to leave office or demands the military “preserve order”—the only people left in the chain of command will be the ones who say yes.
We’ve seen this movie before. In Berlin. In Moscow. In Caracas.
History tells us what happens when a military becomes the personal militia of a head of state. You don’t get national defense. You get regime survival. You don’t get public service. You get private enforcement.
And the most terrifying thing?
It’s happening quietly. In memos. In personnel charts. In early retirements and vague press releases about “restructuring.” There will be no tanks in the street. Not yet. Just a series of subtle clicks as the last bolts of institutional resistance are unscrewed from the frame.
By the time you hear the creak of the door falling off its hinges, it’ll be too late.
So let me say it plainly:
This isn’t about a few generals.
It’s about whether this country still belongs to a people governed by law—or whether it has already been sold off to a man governed by vengeance.
And if we don’t object now, if we don’t scream now, if we don’t rally every civic, military, legal, and moral institution to fight back now—then the next time a president asks, “Will the military obey me?”
The answer will be: “Yes, sir.”
And that will be the end of the republic.
Source:
CNN “Hegseth orders Pentagon to cut number of senior generals by 20%” by Haley Britzky and Natasha Bertrand