#1,072: The Pentagon’s Holy Warrior

Last week, this blog gave prominence to the first American writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature: Sinclair Lewis. This week, let’s give a slightly less effusive shout-out to an even more prolific author with a somewhat similar name . . . who never won a Nobel Prize: Upton Sinclair. Sinclair (1878-1968) was best known for his 1906 epic polemic on the meatpacking industry, The Jungle (which writer Jack London referred to as “The Uncle Tom’s Cabin of wage slavery”). But Upton was far, far more than a mere novelist and short story writer; he was a polemicist for socialism, healthcare, temperance, free speech, and workers’ rights, and a fiery political candidate, who once ran for governor of California on his own EPIC (“End Poverty in California”) ticket. He lost that race, due mainly to MGM, which flooded its theatres with what today we’d call “mocumentaries.” These slickly produced shorts showed hundreds of thousands of "hoboes” streaming into the Golden State atop hundreds of railroad cars in anticipation of Sinclair winning the governorship and giving them tons of free goodies. It didn’t help Sinclair’s campaign that Louis B. Mayer, producer and cofounder of the giant studio, was also a staunch conservative who happened to chair the California Republican Party.

When it came to sheer productivity, Upton Sinclair beat out Sinclair Lewis by miles and miles: Lewis published 23 novels over a period of 39 years, while Sinclair authored 87 novels over a period of 81 years . . . not to mention works of non-fiction, plays, and treatises on subjects ranging from diet and religion to economic interpretation. To my way of thinking (and reading), Upton Sinclair’s very greatest accomplishment was his 11-volume Lanny Budd series of political/historical novels written between 1940 and 1953. The series features a central character named Lanny Budd, who is the son of an American arms manufacturer. He is portrayed as holding the confidence of world leaders, and not simply witnessing events; most often, he is propelling them. As a sophisticated socialite who mingles easily with people from all cultures and socioeconomic classes, Lanny was, for his time, the antithesis of the stereotyped "Ugly American." Novelist Sinclair placed Lanny Budd within the important political events in the United States, Europe, and North Africa in the first half of the 20th century.

Sinclair’s eye for - and understanding of - high-stakes, history-making politics and the real protagonists and antagonists who shaped the period between pre-WWI and early McCarthyism is second to none . . . and in so many, many prophetic ways:

Lanny, in his role as FDR’s P.A. (“Personal Agent"), enters the personal political circles of both Mussolini and Hitler (as well as Goebels, Himmler and the rest of the European Fascist hierarchy. Posing as an international arts expert (which, in reality, he is), he has a front-row seat.
He comes to understand that what keeps dangerous dictators in power is that these autocrats surround themselves with men whose only requirement is that they be totally loyal to - and unquestioning of - their leader.
He learns that there is a vast difference between a “free” and a “bought” or “purchased” press.
He comes to recognize that the most immoral of tyrants use the language of religion to capture the approval of the masses . . . despite being both terribly irreligious and grossly immoral themselves. Indeed, in volume 10 (One Clear Call, 1948), in blowing off steam about Mussolini, Lanny quotes Antonio in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice:
The Devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart.
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!

OK. As much as I love and am awestruck by the brilliance of the Lanny Budd series of novels, this week’s blog really isn’t about Upton Sinclair. Rather, it is about the haunting, disturbing similarities Lanny Budd discovered among Fascistic regimes in the 1930s and 40s in Europe, and what is going on before our very eyes in 2020s America. It should be obvious that just as Hitler and Mussolini looked for and demanded nothing more, and nothing less, than total loyalty for those under them, so too does our current regime here in the U.S. Then, too, the underpinnings of religious millennialism have changed barely a whit. Hitler promised a Reich that would last for a thousand years; so too does He Who is Addicted to Gold Leaf promise an administration that will never require another election. And they, too, clothe their most misguided, inhumane, brain-dead policies in the name of Jesus and a much-promised “second coming” of the Messiah.

Sec Def Pete Hegseth - White Christian Warrior

If this sounds like something more out of the Feudal Dark Ages than modern 21st-century America, you are correct. We are closer to medieval times than is comfortable to admit. Without bringing up “Mr. Big” (A.K.A. Boss Greed), let’s hone in on one of his most loyal of loyalists: that mindless moral monster, Pete Hegseth, our current Sec. Def . . . who wants the press to refer to him as the “Secretary of War.” Hegseth is a Princeton graduate with a Master’s in Public Policy from Harvard (he reportedly returned his degree, writing “Return to Sender” on it in protest of the university’s offering classes in critical race theory), and a major in the United States Army. He also worked for Fox News for 10 years (2014-2024) as a regular contributor. Hegseth is a dyed-in-the-wool White Christian Nationalist who firmly believes that the U.S. is a Christian nation. He wears his faith on his body through the numerous tattoos he wears, including a Jerusalem Cross (a religious symbol tied to the Crusades) and the term Deus Vult (Latin for G-d wills it). He is tied to the highly patriarchal CREC (Council of Reformed Evangelical Churches) that staunchly holds, among other things, that women cannot serve in leadership, that homosexuality should be criminalized, and that the 19th Amendment (which gave women the right to vote) should be overturned.

To be perfectly frank, before last week, only a small percentage of the American public - outside of those who follow politics closely - knew thing one about Hegseth’s religious worldview, beliefs, or practices. What, if anything, they knew was that he sports a lot of body ink and is (he claims) a recovering alcoholic. That changed just last week when, standing in the Pentagon, Hegseth issued a call to the American people for a specific kind of wartime prayer: Every day, on bended knee, with your family, in your churches, in the name of Jesus Christ. . . . “ As New York Times journalists Greg Jaffe and Elizabeth Dias noted somewhat dryly in their article about Hegseth’s call to prayer, “At a time when the U.S. and Israeli militaries are dropping thousands of bombs on a majority-Shiite Muslim nation, the explicitly Christian nature of Mr. Hegseth’s call stood out.” In an earlier interview with CBS News’s “60 Minutes,” the Holy Warrior said: “Our capabilities are better. Our will is better. Our troops are better . . . The providence of our almighty God is there protecting those troops . . . “ Before the attack on Iran, Hegseth launched an effort to “make the Chaplain corps great again.” (Military chaplains are supposed to minister to all religions, but Hegseth wants to rewrite their manual to reinsert more God and rely less on secular language.)

In his 2020 book American Crusade, Hegseth wrote that the U.S. faces a “crusade moment” that echoes the 11th-century Christian invasion of the Holy Land. Islamists, according to the then-future Secretary, are enabled by American “leftists” against God-fearing White Christian Americans. I don’t know about you, but this kind of myopic religious bigotry sets my blood to boiling. There are so many millions upon millions of people in America who neither pray in the name of Jesus, kneel when they pray, nor are actively cheering on any kind of Second Coming. To achieve “Armageddon” (derived from the Hebrew Har Megiddo,, meaning, simply, “Hill of Megiddo) means, among other things, that all the Jews in the world must be removed to the Holy Land (the State of Israel) where they will be given the choice of either accepting Jesus as their Lord and Savior collectively, or going up in a ball fire. Sorry, but that’s not in my game plan . . . not by a long shot.

On the March 20, 2026, broadcast episode of The Last Word, MS NOW’s Lawrence O’Donnell gave a scathing rebuttal to what Hegseth had said earlier in the day. In part, O’Donnell, himself raised as a Catholic altar boy, said: Hegseth doesn't want the prayers of the vice president's wife because she is not and never has been Christian, and Pete Hegseth doesn't want the prayers of two of the three officials who testified to the House Intelligence Committee today about the worldwide threat assessment because Donald Trump's FBI director and Donald Trump's director of national intelligence are not Christian. And so they will never join together to pray on bended knee, in the name of Jesus Christ, to win the war that they could not defend.”

How many more reasons do American voters need in order to flip the House, Senate, and both state and municipal legislative bodies this coming November? Yes, I know there is quite a bit of concern about citizens having the ballot ripped from their hands because they cannot locate – or pay for – their original birth certificates, wedding licenses, or passports. But we can win this thing and begin the process of throwing the bums out, and then restoring and rebuilding our Democratic Republic which, for nearly 250 years, has been the marvel of the world.

BTW: Are you attending a “No Kings” rally this Saturday? If you’re interested, check out this link, type in your zip code or city name on the top left corner of the interactive map of the USA, and find out where there’s one in your neck of the woods. The sight of tens of millions of Americans marching down the streets of cities from Bangor, Maine to Escondido, California, will rattle our Fondling Father so badly that he will likely have an accident in public . . . whew!

It is indeed a very holy act to fight against a very unholy war.

And when you get some free time, get to know Lanny Budd!