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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   1067 thread views

Transnational Thursday for September 25, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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The USA is summoning the Elector Counts... er, generals. Which is to say, all flag officers (exempting those on staffs) are being called to Quantico next week. Why? Nobody knows! Probably not a coup or assassination, though. My crackpot theory is that it's related to Trump's recent rhetoric on Ukraine taking the fight to Russia, but it's a very crackpot theory. I don't anticipate the US entering that conflict within the next week.

It's turned out to be nothing, so my crackpot theory is that Hegseth for drunk and called the meeting to announce something big, got sober and realized his announcement was a terrible idea, so he gave a weird values speech to cover.

Just more wasted money I guess.

So it's not even "this meeting could have been an email," it's "this meeting could have been a corporate announcement of our new Our Values Sharepoint page?"

I was expecting something dumb, but that's just... wow.

I was expecting something dumb, but that's just... wow.

That's pretty much par the course for the current administration, so really not that surprising (eg. recall the formula used to calculate the initial tariffs).

I would like to think that it be for something serious.

By serious I don't mean an annual general (heh) meeting. I mean either 'the federal govt layoffs are coming and high command will be cut by 25%' or 'We're getting into a fight with China over Taiwan. Soon. Really'

I'd rather expect they are about to hear something that is not going to please them, probably "we thank you for your service, bye now" for some of them. And Hegseth does not want an organized opposition and the press circus before he does the deed. It will happen afterwards, but that'd be too late.

I'm leaning towards layoffs.

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