Dogma, Tyranny, Glamour
The God Pete Hegseth Appeals to is Clout
Dear Reader,
Following President Trump’s spat with the Pope over Truth Social, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth led a Pentagon worship service where he quoted a fake Bible verse taken straight from the Academy Award winning film Pulp Fiction. The Secretary’s attempt to indoctrinate the Pentagon with Pulp Fiction gospel is a particularly blasphemous violation of the Establishment Clause. The American separation of church and state was designed to protect the independence of churches and religious communities from this exact genre of false religion dictated as government policy.
The fake Pulp Fiction Bible verse, repeated by Hegseth as a colorful reinterpretation of Ezekiel 25:17, was originally said by actor Samuel L. Jackson to justify a murder. It was an embellishment of the Bible by a Hollywood villain to justify crime. Hegseth quoted the passage with an apparent similar intent to justify perfidy, crimes against humanity, unjust wars, murders and unjust prosecutions of U.S. citizens, and presidential usurpations of legislative and judicial power with an appeal to higher laws and powers.
As beloved Hollywood maven Eve Babitz would have said, President Trump and Pete Hegseth are attempting to “self-enchant.”[1] The Supreme Court of the United States (“SCOTUS”) seems ready to affirm Trump’s bid to enchant himself as America’s religious authority through Hollywood stardust. The Court already set aside the Lemon test to potentially allow government officials to lead worship and prayer in government spaces, and it has repeatedly validated Nazism, Klanism, Homophobia, and Misogyny as protected speech.
According to Trump v. United States, the President’s most controversial opinions are not prosecutable as long as the opinions were expressed in the course of the President’s official duties. Even so, if there was one exception to Trump, behavior amounting to treason, sedition, or insurrection should still be available to prosecute—even against a sitting President (once removed of course). But the Court’s decision in Chiles v. Salazar might interpret such treasonous or seditious speech or communicative behavior as an unregulable First Amendment protected viewpoint.
In Chiles, the Court decided that a State cannot regulate professional speech through licensure, even if the speech is completely unethical and potentially criminal. Justice Thomas’s former clerk and mastermind of the January 6 insurrection, John C. Eastman, may successfully manage to use Chiles in his forthcoming SCOTUS petition to get his law license back. If Eastman’s January 6, 2021 speech was protected viewpoint speech that cannot be regulated by the California Supreme Court under Chiles, then there may be no professional consequence for lawyers who incite insurrection, sedition, or treason with reckless legal conjecture premised on conspiracy theories including those about lizard people and cannibalistic pedophiles running the world.
One of these individuals may be Sidney Powell, the lawyer who bellowed “release the kraken” in a public statement regarding her filing of several cases in federal courts attempting to upend the 2020 election. Through Chiles, the Court may absolve the worst and most corrupt American feudalists who appear to be ready to crown Trump the king of America. Thus far, their attacks on democracy have mostly been rejected in Court, but Trump’s redefinition of justice in America appears to be unchecked based on an underlying belief that his speech is inherently non-suspect even as it appears to violate the constitution and criminal statutes.
Non-satirical speech over social media that postures Trump as a religious authority is not supposed to be protected speech, especially if it is the President’s own speech. It potentially treasonously, or at least seditiously, incites an overthrow of the First Amendment itself. However, the Supreme Court’s paradoxical sense of text, history, and tradition might include speech designed to topple the First Amendment as a protected viewpoint by and through Chiles, Trump and Seila Law LLC v. CFPB, to allow a rival pontiff to establish in the Oval Office.
Meanwhile, on April 1, 2026 President Trump’s Office of Legal Counsel (“OLC”) issued an opinion that the Presidential Records Act is unconstitutional. The OLC imagined that it was impossible for a President to be charged with treason, sedition, or obstruction by sequestering or destroying presidential records after he leaves office. Citing to Trump and Seila Law, the OLC concluded that the separation of powers allows the President to ignore statutes he feels “intrudes upon the independence and autonomy of the President.”
This OLC opinion potentially absolved President Trump for his alleged crimes arising from his absconding with several boxes of Presidential documents at the end of his first term. According to NLRB v. Noel Canning, the Court has already committed itself to interpreting such OLC opinions as if they were precedential by inverting Justice Frankfurter’s concurrence in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer where Frankfurter explicitly refused to give an advisory statement on “the gloss which life has written upon” the constitution. After Noel Canning, the Court does and will give advisory statements by inverting Justice Frankfurter’s attempt to prohibit advisory statements as a justification for giving advisory opinions.
In a new case, the American Historical Association is setting out to prove that there is still a basis to sue a President as “a legitimate class of one” according to Nixon v. GSA. However, if the Supreme Court allows Trump to use Truth Social, a company he owns, to adjudicate administrative issues without an enabling act in Lisa Cook’s case, then it may not matter. Trump will be that much closer to establishing the lucrative entertainment-vigilantism content machine his followers really want.
Just imagine, Dr. Phil could be embedded in ICE task forces and deputized to give credible fear interviews or even to adjudicate defensive asylum claims in the Cops-styled TV show Dr. Phil clearly envisioned himself producing with the President. Or better yet, TikTok influencers trying to reenact the good old days of To Catch a Predator could be deputized with adjudicatory powers, to dispense justice-as-entertainment outside of the traditional criminal system. Viewers could vote on the results they want to see in real time, not unlike the depiction of the Colosseum we know from The Gladiator.
Yet, Hollywood is still in the game of self-enchantment. For example, Ariana Grande wrote a feminist corollary to the fake Pulp Fiction Bible verse Hegseth recently quoted in her hit 2018 song God is a Woman that was featured in a Madonna cameo voice-over to justify shattering the glass ceiling. Like Grande, and her supportive pop star elder Madonna, Hollywood-at-large does not and never did waive the argument that the Pulp Fiction fake Bible verse could be used for social justice.
Hollywood’s embellishments of the Bible might be blasphemous if they are taken as religious doctrine. But in context, even Hollywood’s most racy stories can provide a warning of men like Hegseth, and in the hands of a talented woman they may yet produce results for social justice movements. Thus, it does not seem that Hollywood condones or supports the extension of its glamour or clout to aid or abet Secretary Hegseth’s crimes even as Hollywood continues to tell stories about problematic and terrifying clout chasers including Donald J. Trump himself.
Yours Cordially,
Joshua J. Schroeder
[1] Eve Babitz, Black Swans 49 (1993).