“Charlie has awakened a generation of warriors.”
That is one of the slogans apparently under consideration by US military leaders in a bid to capitalize off of the assasination of Charlie Kirk to help boost recruitment numbers.
As the economy tanks, troops are on the streets, the president threatens to bomb someone weekly, and the ruling class embraces its vision of War Crimes ‘R’ Us, it makes sense that the military would be looking to boost its numbers. How could the late Kirk help? Here’s NBC News:
As part of the potential new campaign, Pentagon leaders are considering using chapters of Kirk’s political organization, Turning Point USA, at schools across the U.S. as military recruitment centers, the officials said. That could include inviting recruiters to be present at events or advertising for the military at the chapters, one of them explained.
According to the New York Times, Turning Point has chapters at over 850 campuses that register students to vote, and Kirk was a frequent advocate for the use of military force, including for the “full military occupation” of numerous American cities once DC was “liberated.” Regardless of Turning Point’s reach and Kirk’s views, however, the fact remains that the military is facing a host of other issues, which won’t simply disappear by piggybacking off of Kirk’s popularity.
Desperate Times, Desperate Measures
Today there are 340 million Americans and 1.3 million active service members, or 0.4 percent of the population—down from two percent in 1955. That’s far too low, fret the empire enthusiasts, for all the “threats” the US faces across the world. Even if the Silicon Valley lords of death are able to successfully roll out some wonder weapons misnomered as unmanned, the military still needs people to use them.
Why is the military struggling to keep up the numbers? After all, the defense budget is now over a trillion dollars. Army Maj. Michael P. Ferguson mentions the following oft-cited reasons:
Unpopular wars in the Middle East, the Pentagon’s “woke” controversies, a widespread obsession with technology that devalues human labor, poor oversight of government housing and the burdens imposed on military families have gotten headlines lately.
Yes, and add to that the increasing number of military-age people who do not qualify because they score too low on academic testing, or because they are overweight or have other medical conditions—and that’s despite standards being relaxed. Yet Ferguson either omits or dismisses these reasons as “not viable.” The true culprit, he insists, is the so-called “crisis of masculinity.”
That’s why Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, peddler of “trickle-down masculinity,” was brought in:
Pete Hegseth is an alpha male.
Our military is in such good hands.
“A strong force is a ready force.” pic.twitter.com/DjvTcfkGIz
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) March 28, 2025
Hegseth: “Maximum lethality — not tepid legality. Violent effect, not politically correct. We’re gonna raise up warriors. Not just defenders.” pic.twitter.com/pWi5qTAdz2
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 5, 2025
I’ve seen like 10 push-up videos from Hegseth since he got in there. We all love push-up contests. Unclear if that’s the key ingredient to successful war-fighting in 2025 tho. https://t.co/rRA7Co4GEH
— Tim Miller (@Timodc) March 31, 2025
Beyond all the push up videos, the administration’s idea of masculinity seems to be encouraging more indiscriminate killing. Hegseth wants an armed forces that are “more aggressive on the battlefield” while being “potentially less hindered by the laws of armed conflict.”
And so the US military’s Africa Command, for example, no longer provides specific details of its strikes, which are being launched in record numbers. That’s because the White House greenlit a policy allowing American commanders to authorize airstrikes and special operation raids outside conventional battlefields, broadening the range of people who can be targeted for death. And they’re overhauling the Judge Advocate General’s corps” (JAG) to make the Pentagon “less restricted by the laws of armed conflict. That means “more aggressive tactics” and a “more lenient approach in charging soldiers with battlefield crimes.”
With the US’ number one “ally” and its Israel Defense Forces as a model, the sky’s really the limit here, I suppose.
Problem is all this purported masculinity is still not really working as far as recruiting goes:
Trump and Hegseth have touted an uptick in recruiting since Trump’s inauguration, though it actually began under President Joe Biden after two years of shortfalls in 2022 and 2023. But that trend could be short-lived, in part because of societal and generational changes that are shrinking the overall number of Americans eligible to serve, and which show no signs of slowing…In a July news briefing, [Pentagon spokesman Sean] Parnell addressed the task force’s work, noting that the Pentagon believes 7% to 11% of Americans see military service as a viable path forward, down from 27% after 9/11.
And part of the uptick is the result of the increased use of waivers, including for drug and alcohol abuse, which is a likely contributor to higher first-term attrition rates.
Beyond just the number of soldiers, the military is facing a series of setbacks across the board. Aside from hardware being nearly useless in Ukraine, humiliated by the Houthis, and expensive and overmatched against Iran, Trump’s June military parade was a reminder of the armed forces decline. As Seth Harp writes in a Harper’s piece that is well worth a full read:
Rather than the authoritarian spectacle that liberals had anticipated, the festivities seemed to be more a demonstration of political fatigue and civic apathy. And if Trump intended the parade to be an advertisement of America’s military strength, it would instead prove to be an inadvertent display of the armed forces’ creeping decrepitude, low morale, shrinking size, obsolescence, and dysfunction.
Kirk’s death isn’t going to help there, but it could prove useful in other areas.
Everyone Wants in on the Grift
It seems fitting that some churches are turning to AI-Charlie to encourage members to “double down on truth…courage…and your faith”—and presumably the offertory giving.
Here’s a clip from one of the church services — Prestonwood Baptist in TX.
As the pastor, Jack Graham, makes clear, this is not an actual clip of Charlie Kirk. He never said these words. This is an entirely AI-generated fabrication that, nonetheless, garners a standing ovation. https://t.co/JGvX3zNk9G pic.twitter.com/IzJ0IAwCb8
— Jack Jenkins (@jackmjenkins) September 18, 2025
It is also symbolic of the AI plutocracy dressed up as Christian nationalism that the administration and its benefactors in Silicon Valley are trying to push. I like the following the Venn Diagram because it illustrates how the tech accelerationists have weaseled their way into the center of the competing interests of the administration:
And so we see the likes of Andreessen Horowitz, Peter Thiel, Larry Ellison, Palantir, etc. popping up whether it’s the Tik Tok sale, the surveillance and police state, deals with Gulf monarchies, genocide in Palestine, the AI bubble, plans to craft a more Christian and “martial society.” They’re trying to use Kirk’s death to advance their goals—and line their pockets—on many of these fronts.
At Kirk’s memorial service on Sunday, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller framed Kirk’s killing as part of a wider battle between good and evil—with the administration as “good, virtuous, and noble.”
🚨 BREAKING – STEPHEN MILLER JUST WENT OFF: “WE are the ones who build, who create, who lift up humanity. You thought you could KILL Charlie Kirk? YOU HAVE MADE HIM IMMORTAL!”
“They cannot IMAGINE what they have AWAKENED! They cannot conceive of the army they have arisen in all… pic.twitter.com/r9kCPUzDCO
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) September 21, 2025
This type of language is not, however, new. At the Peter Thiel-backed National Conservatism Conference last year, Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts declared the start of a new American revolution to overthrow “the left”:
You might even say, accounting for the institution building that NatCon is leading, that we’re in the second American revolution: a political, social, and cultural wrestling from the left, all those institutions that have considerable power, that they have steadily co-opted over decades.
If you’re someone on the left, you might be surprised to hear about all this power wielded by “the left” that he’s talking about. Well, for Roberts it’s a big bucket that includes all Democrats, identity-focused and neoliberal NGOs, the press, universities as well as economic progressives, communists and the like on the traditional left. Here’s more:
A generation hence, we’re gonna live in a place called the United States. But if the left succeeds, our republic will cease to be a nation at all, and certainly not with self-government. We’ll be ruled from afar, subjects without rights, subservient to a religion without God, in a land without hope.
Whether Roberts, Thiel, Miller, and company really believe all this is an open question, but that’s what they’re selling, and what the administration is pursuing.
Thiel has expressed a fondness—common among the plutocrats— for using the power of the state to punish his enemies and remake the country and world the way he sees fit. Slop philosopher Marc Andreessen enjoys peddling paradise as an AI-powered police state. And they think Kirk’s death can help them get there.
I wouldn’t be so sure. On this particular objective of increasing military recruitment it ignores numerous other challenges the armed forces are up against, not least among them that it is yet another collapsing institution in a country full of them:
Confidence in the American military has fallen to its lowest point in over 20 years, according to Gallup. Public trust in the military has plummeted to 45 percent from 70 percent in 2018, another survey has found.
The precipitous decline is a testament to just how badly the Pentagon has screwed up its only real job: winning wars. There are many reasons why confidence has plummeted, but it all comes back to the broader societal reality that the Pentagon brass are inveterate losers.
And the grift is too far advanced at this stage and accelerating in order to prevent more losses in the near future, especially as conflict with Iran continues to look like a strong possibility. A report last year from the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University titled “How Big Tech and Silicon Valley are Transforming the Military-Industrial Complex” details how the racket is evolving.
At its heart, the plan embedded in the trillion-dollar defense budget is to make a lot of people obscenely wealthy and hope that a wonder weapon or two emerges from the bottomless money pit. There’s little reason to believe one will. One need only take another look at that sorry excuse for a parade for evidence. Back to Seth Harp’s parade write up at Harper’s:
On display near the entrance were three Army workhorses, all of which went into service more than forty years ago and have yet to be replaced despite many billions spent on fruitless research and development. I saw an outdated Bradley Fighting Vehicle, scores of which have been destroyed by Russian forces in Ukraine, and an Abrams tank, an equally antiquated vehicle that the Ukrainians have found even less useful, despite receiving at least thirty-one of them for free. Parked in front of the Capitol was a motionless specimen of the Black Hawk helicopter, whose propensity to crash or get shot down has defined so many pivotal events in U.S. military history.
And there are many more examples of weapons, vehicles, and aircraft that got some people fabulously rich while being nothing more than burdens for soldiers at best and death traps at worst.
But hey, a grift is always an opportunity for another one:
“Special thanks to our sponsor: Coinbase” pic.twitter.com/wtcZbHLIt2
— Acyn (@Acyn) June 14, 2025
And Coinbase was of course just one of many. Here were the others (including not one, but two, sugar companies!):
Speaking with attendees at Trump’s parade, Harp found most “motivated mostly by tired cultural grudges, xenophobic resentment, social-media memes, and civic illiteracy. Few were enthusiastic about defending Trump’s complete capitulation to Israel and the neocons.”
So we can see the appeal of using Kirk in an attempt to “awaken a generation of warriors,” but they might not be enlisting anytime soon, and even if they do, likely won’t make for the warriors Hegseth and his benefactors are banking on. The problem with running a country like one big bust out is the military hardware starts to break down, and few are eager to put their life on the line for such a transparent swindle no matter how catchy the slogans.
In reality, the best the armed forces can hope for is probably that Trump continues to wreck the economy. As RAND notes:
The civilian unemployment rate for 16–24-year-olds has risen slightly since mid-2023, although it remains historically low. Past research indicates that enlistments tend to increase with higher junior enlisted pay, advertising, bonuses, the number of recruiters, and the unemployment rate.
Even then, an army of masculine and religious warriors for global Silicon Valley interests would not appear imminent. The decay of the military might be welcome around the world but bad news on the home front. Judging from recent developments, it seems one of the last suitable functions of the armed forces will be deployments on US soil to bludgeon protesters and go after those with brown skin or the homeless.
