The Betrayal Myth That’s Remaking the Pentagon

Written by urbanwronski

Trump’s military purge isn’t about readiness; it’s about rewriting history to create a theocratic warband.

When Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth summoned 800 generals and admirals to Quantico, on September 30, he didn’t greet them with a strategic assessment. He opened with a declaration:

“Welcome to the War Department because the era of the Department of Defence is over.”

What followed was not a briefing but a sermon, revealing the three terrifying dimensions of Trump’s military takeover that conventional analysis misses.

First, Trump’s Pentagon runs on a revanchist lie as old as authoritarianism itself; the “stab-in-the-back” myth. Second, evangelical Christian nationalist groups aren’t just cheering this on; they’re providing the theological engine. Third, the result isn’t a modern fighting force, but a sectarian warband, hopped up on crusader fantasies and itching for a holy war.

The Lie That Launched a Purge

History, for authoritarians, is not a record but a weapon. After World War I, the Nazis peddled the Dolchstoßlegende; the myth that the German army was “undefeated in the field,” but stabbed in the back by Jews and socialists. The lie, though absurd, provided the emotional kindling for Hitler’s rise.

Trump’s Pentagon is powered by the same American-made delusion. The narrative is simple: the U.S. military is inherently invincible. Any failure; from Vietnam to Afghanistan; is not a strategic misstep, but a betrayal by weak politicians, a “woke” officer corps, or a treasonous media. At Quantico, Trump made this explicit:

“We would’ve won Afghanistan easy. We would’ve won every war easy. But we got politically correct.”

This is more than revisionism; it’s epistemic arson. When failure can only be explained by treachery, the only solution is a political purge. Not better weapons, not smarter strategy; just ideological purity.

The February 21 massacre made this doctrine flesh. In one night, Trump fired six senior Pentagon leaders: the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Chief of Naval Operations, and other top brass, representing over 200 years of combined military experience. Their sin? Association with “diversity,” now redefined as ideological sabotage. No president in history has ever executed such a decapitation. Hegseth had telegraphed the move:

“Any general that was involved in any of the DEI woke shit has got to go.”

The Theology of the Purge

This is where mainstream coverage fails. Christian nationalist organizations aren’t passive supporters; they are the architects, laundering raw authoritarianism as divine mandate.

The Family Research Council, whose leader Tony Perkins became a White House fixture, has been the relentless drum major for this parade. When Trump banned transgender troops, Perkins claimed credit for pressing the issue for months. The framing is critical: diversity isn’t a policy; it’s a betrayal. This transforms a purge from political retaliation into spiritual warfare.

But Hegseth’s own theology is the real Rosetta Stone. He deliberately moved his family to join a church in the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC); a dominionist sect. CREC’s doctrine states women shouldn’t serve in combat and non-Christians shouldn’t hold leadership. Its co-founder, Doug Wilson, preaches a gospel of patriarchal supremacy.

This isn’t your grandmother’s church picnic. It’s Christian Reconstructionism, fused with Seven Mountains Dominionism; a creed demanding believers “take dominion” over all sectors of society, including the military. For them, this is literal spiritual war. As Hegseth wrote in his own book:

“Our American crusade is not about literal swords, and our fight is not with guns yet.”

The “yet” hangs in the air like a threat. In May 2025, Hegseth made it official, hosting a Pentagon prayer service led by his personal pastor, who declared Trump “sovereignly appointed” by God. The event was broadcast via official Pentagon channels; a stunning fusion of state and sect.

The Quiet Coup You’re Missing

Beneath the headlines, a deeper infrastructure is being built.

The Chaplaincy Capture: While 70% of the military identifies as Christian, the theological tilt is shifting. As dominionist chaplains rise, what happens to a Muslim soldier or a Jewish officer? In a holy army, unbelievers are not just outsiders; they are contaminants.


Purge of the Home Guard: While the Joint Chiefs’ firing made news, the parallel cleansing of the Reserve and National Guard; the forces used for domestic crises; is more sinister. Trump has explicitly vowed to use American cities as “training grounds” against “the enemy within.” The simultaneous firing of the top military lawyers; the JAGs who uphold the Constitution; isn’t a coincidence. It’s the removal of the guardrails.


The Authoritarian Playbook: This script is worn with use. Stalin’s pre-war purges eviscerated the Soviet officer corps, leading to catastrophic defeat when Germany invaded. Erdoğan’s ideological cleansing of the Turkish military has crippled its effectiveness. The pattern is a brutal constant: loyalty over competence equals collapse.

From Warrior Culture to Warband Logic

Hegseth’s vision isn’t a modern military; it’s a warband. Modern warfare demands intelligence, patience, and complex alliances. Hegseth offered a list of grievances against “beardos” and “fat generals,” and a pledge to gut the offices that investigate misconduct. This isn’t building a sharper sword; it’s sharpening a lynching mob. It operates on emotion, certainty, and a simplified story of good versus evil. Add crusader theology, and you have an institution incapable of the judgment modern warfare demands.

The Catastrophe of Forgetting

The most dangerous casualty is institutional memory. The six fired officials held over 200 years of hard-won experience. When you purge that, you don’t just lose people; you lose the ability to learn.

The stab-in-the-back myth makes learning impossible. If failure is always betrayal, then honest assessment is treason. Afghanistan wasn’t a 20-year lesson in the limits of power; it was a betrayal. This is how you get catastrophic intelligence failures; like believing the Afghan government would hold for months when it collapsed in days. When loyalty is the supreme virtue, truth-telling becomes career suicide.

What’s at Stake

America’s allies see an unreliable partner. China and Russia see an adversary that is actively hollowing out its own brain trust. The transformation rests on three interlocking lies: the historical lie (we never lose, we are only betrayed), the theological lie (our strength is purity, not wisdom), and the competence lie (zealotry can replace expertise).

If this succeeds, America won’t become stronger; it will become brittle. A military that cannot learn, adapt, or tell truth from power is not preparing for victory; it is engineering its own catastrophe.

And when that catastrophe arrives, the myth is already pre-loaded. The failure won’t be because crusader rhetoric is a poor strategy. It will be because someone, somewhere, betrayed the cause.

The question is no longer if this can happen in America. It is happening. The question is whether it can be stopped before a manufactured past creates a future where the military serves a theology, not the Constitution, and a leader, not the nation.