If We Had No Military Academies, Who Would Train the Sadists? - World BEYOND War
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The bigotry, the misogyny, the cruelty, the cynicism, the ignorance — all the things one associates with Trump: we have established, respectable, well-funded institutions dressed up as Academia and training young men in all of these things. #WorldBEYONDWar

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, May 22, 2026

What do Donald “a whole civilization will die” Trump, Pete “kill all Muslims” Hegseth, Army Secretary who couldn’t be found on January 6 Ryan McCarthy, Trump supporters Douglas Macgregor and H.R. McMaster, former CIA Director Mike “we lied, we cheated, we stole” Pompeo and his aides Ulrich Brechbuhl and Brian Bulatao, Trump confidant David Urban, many U.S.-backed foreign dictators, private-sector mafiosi like John Gotti, and their ilk back through the ages have in common?

They were all “educated” by a reprehensible institution that combines the downsides of the Catholic priesthood with the worst aspects of prisons, namely military academies. I’m referring, as does Jasper Craven, in his book God Forgives, Brothers Don’t, to everything from the most well-known (West Point, Annapolis, etc.) to little-known institutions abusing young children through young adults. Trump may have been sent to one because he was hanging out too much with the mafia, but the bosses kids were there too.

What these schools typically do to minors is clearly pre-recruiting, but the abuse goes well beyond that. These institutions produce endless cases of PTSD, suicide, assault, sexual assault, cheating, and all the horrors that come with the worst forms of hazing. This is not a side matter, but central to the educational philosophy that maintains horrific suffering to be redemptive, and the transfer of revenge against upperclassmen onto innocent lowerclassmen to be leadership development. Douglas MacArthur had learned to be attacked by and to attack his fellow students at West Point long before attacking the Bonus Army.

Craven recounts the historical ups and downs in the popularity of sending boys (and very recently girls) into these hell holes. A major U.S. proponent, Bernarr Macfadden, helped develop military academies for Mussolini, Salazar, and the U.S.A., as well as pushing for the creation of the agency now overseen by a man Craven compares him with, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. A big push for military academies and military infiltration of universities came with WWII and the U.S. military’s massive — still ongoing — investment in research and insistence on the shift toward STEM and away from morality. A collapse in military academy attendance followed that most healthy of illnesses, the Vietnam Syndrome. A brief resurgence followed 9/11. I hope the trend is now, once again, in the right direction.

One military academy now closing is the Valley Forge Military Academy, the place Holden Caulfield fled (or at least the place J.D. Salinger attended). Activities there have included a wide range of entertainment targeting younger students: dart throwing, shooting BB guns, beating with wire hangers and lacrosse sticks, and so on. There’s also a tradition called tooth-pasting passed down over the decades, in which older cadets ambush younger ones and forcibly sodomize them with brooms, lacrosse sticks, and coat hangers. One could speculate that this sort of training has contributed to scandals abroad such as Abu Ghraib, except that speculation is hardly needed, given all the connections. Steve Stefanowicz, a key player in the torture at Abu Ghraib, later oversaw 10- to 14-year-olds at the Forge.

Military academies may have kept women out longer than any other institution (until 2007 at the Forge), and male cadets have systematically terrorized the first young women to enroll at each terror training center. While being trained in this way at West Point, students have chanted “I went to the mosque, where all the terrorists pray. I set up my claymore and blew ’em all away.” The bigotry, the misogyny, the cruelty, the cynicism, the ignorance — all the things one associates with Trump, and with supporters of Trump, and with a culture that tolerates Trump — we have established, respectable, well-funded institutions dressed up as Academia and training young men (and women) in all of these things.

There have been initiatives in the past to change that fact, to close those doors, to cease educating and conditioning people to tear down everything we care about.

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