Pentagon Pete and the Desecrated Turtle

One might have thought that things in America could not get any worse. One might have thought that the peak of madness had been reached. One might have thought that the US secretary of defense had enough to do. Wars, crises, crisis meetings. No. Pete Hegseth, that permanently aroused preacher of the perpetual state of emergency, still found time to turn a children's book character into a paramilitary martial artist. Franklin the Turtle, for decades the most peaceful inhabitant of children's rooms, suddenly appears with a bulletproof vest, tactical gear, and a look that says, "Today you will learn how to load tanks."

The image looks like a product of that dark corner of the internet where cartoon characters solve kidnappings and Easter bunnies carry assault rifles. Only this time it does not come from some bored graphic design student but from the head of the Pentagon. The man whose signature decides which weapons go where - and how many people will die because of it. The fact that Hegseth found this creation "funny" says more about the state of American military policy than any budget debate. Anyone who turns a literary pet philosopher into a lethal combat machine has finally lost the boundary between power fantasy and political office. For decades, Franklin was the symbol of a world in which conflicts were resolved through conversation, humor, and small pieces of life wisdom. Now he holds a weapon that would not pass every security check even in the United States.

Maybe this is the new military bible: when you can no longer calm the country with numbers, when the missions get out of control, when no one knows anymore who is stopping whom from doing what, you simply take a harmless character and turn it into a frontline soldier. Who needs diplomacy when you can militarize childhood nostalgia? Hegseth's message is clear: even the last undamaged places in US culture, as a Christmas present - the children's rooms, the shelves full of cardboard books, the stories without bloodshed - are now being drawn into the great patriotic battlefield. If even Franklin is no longer allowed to be peaceful, what is actually left?

In the end there is an image that sums up everything that is wrong with this generation of political commanders: the confusion of strength with brutality, the inability to distinguish between leadership and folklore, and the grotesque desire to take a knife even to innocence. Hegseth has turned a turtle into a soldier. But there is no such book. There is only the image. And that is exactly what makes Hegseth's posting so disturbing and sick.