#567: Trump has Created a Civil-Military Crisis in American Democracy

Rudy Barnes, Jr. October 11,  2025

Trump has talked too much about the use of military force and not enough about national security policy and the civil-military relations that are so essential for a stable democracy.  For Trump, talk about the military is cheap and honesty on the rule of law is in short supply.  That was evident during  an unexplained and unprecedented meeting of US military brass called by Trump’s Secretary of Defense (or War), Pete Hegseth on September 30.

The meeting was notable for its timing.  It came just as Trump had started to act aggressively to deploy National Guard troops to Democratic cities as training grounds to reduce crime, despite state and city officials opposing Trump’s uninvited military invasions.  In a real sense it proclaimed an invasion to proclaim Trump’s political power.

“Several hundred top military commanders turned up at Quantico having flown in from places as far away as Germany, Brussels, Japan and South Korea, and they sat mostly in silence as Trump talked for 73 minutes about the same things he talks about almost every day, no matter where he is or to whom he is speaking.” Trump did not elaborate on deteriorating civil-military relations or national security strategy, or how the military would be deployed in American cities.  Instead he talked about the media, tariffs and the border, and going to a restaurant in Washington to eat dinner, and not being awarded a Nobel Peace Prize that he felt he had earned.

The words of Trump and Hegseth should leave no doubt in anyone’s mind that the civilian leadership intends to use the threat and actuality of violence to infringe on Americans’ constitutional rights. Where Americans can take some comfort is in the quiet professionalism displayed by our military in this disgraceful and dangerous maelstrom.

What transpired was the commander in chief darkly asserting that “we’re under invasion from within.” Trump extolled his executive order “to provide training for a quick reaction force that can help quell civil disturbances. This is gonna be a big thing for the people in this room, because it’s the enemy from within, and we have to handle it before it gets out of control.”  The president claimed Washington, D.C., was more violent than anything our military experienced in Afghanistan.

Hegseth preceded the president, calling for a “historic reassertion of our purpose.” Sounding like the infamous sergeant major from the HBO series Generation Kill, he emphasized the importance of grooming standards and physical fitness. He also asserted ignoring the Law of War and to end “stupid rules of engagement,” saying that the military’s job is to “break things and kill people.”   

The words of Trump and Hegseth should leave no doubt in anyone’s mind that the civilian leadership intends to use the threat and actuality of violence to infringe on Americans’ constitutional rights. Where Americans, like me, can take some comfort is in the quiet professionalism displayed by our military in this disgraceful and dangerous maelstrom. Hegseth called all the military’s commanding officers to Quantico, Virginia, for a pep rally and Gave the Military Brass a Rehashed Speech.  See Shawn McCreech, NYTimes, at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/30/us/politics/trump-military-brass-speech.html.

Trump extolled his executive order “to provide training for a quick reaction force that can help quell civil disturbances. This is gonna be a big thing for the people in this room, because it’s the enemy from within.  He said he had instructed the secretary of defense to “use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.” The president claimed Washington, D.C., was more violent than anything our military experienced in Afghanistan. Sounding like the infamous sergeant major from the HBO series Generation Kill, Hegseth emphasized the importance of grooming standards and physical fitness, and asserted an end to “stupid rules of engagement,” saying that the military’s job is to “break things and kill people.”

The civilian leader of the Department of Defense instructed the brass that “if the words I’m speaking today are making your heart sink, then you should do the honorable thing and resign”—especially when coupled with the president’s calls for violence against fellow Americans. These are unprecedented and dangerous words from the civilian leadership of our military. What was reassuring was how the military leaders reacted. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine introduced the secretary as the secretary of war—distasteful, since only Congress has the authority to change the department’s name, and it has not done so. But Caine and his colleagues exemplified the professional restraint of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at State of the Union addresses: present but not participating in the politics.

Trump was clearly taken aback, encouraging them: “If you want to applaud, applaud.” They did not, just as the chiefs do not applaud at the political festival that is the State of the Union address. That is the appropriate professional response by the military when forced by their civilian leaders into being present at political events. See Foreign Policy, By Kori Schake, the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, see Foreign Policy, Oct 1, 2025.

At this unprecedented meeting, U.S. President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth behaved reprehensibly. Their speeches before several hundred assembled military commanders and their senior noncommissioned officers (NCOs) were tantamount to incitement—a genuinely dangerous effort to suborn the military’s oath and condition them for using violence against their fellow Americans. Their words should leave no doubt in anyone’s mind that the civilian leadership intends to use the threat and actuality of violence to infringe on Americans’ constitutional rights. Where Americans can take some comfort is in the quiet professionalism displayed by our military in this disgraceful and dangerous maelstrom.

Hegseth and Trump called all the military’s commanding officers to Quantico, Virginia, for a pep rally. What transpired was the commander in chief darkly asserting that “we’re under invasion from within.” Trump extolled his executive order “to provide training for a quick reaction force that can help quell civil disturbances. 

Trump said he had instructed the secretary of defense to “use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.” The president claimed Washington, D.C., was more violent than anything our military experienced in Afghanistan. Hegseth preceded the president, calling for a “historic reassertion of our purpose,” emphasizing the importance of grooming standards and physical fitness over obeying the rule of law in the Constitution.

These are unprecedented and dangerous words from the civilian leadership of our military that deny the Constitutional rule of law in warfare.  What was reassuring was how the military leaders reacted. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine introduced the secretary as the secretary of war—distasteful, since only Congress has the authority to change the department’s name, and it has not done so. But that was probably unavoidable in the circumstances and was more than balanced out by the comportment of Caine and his colleagues. They exemplified the professional restraint of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at State of the Union addresses: present but not participating in the politics.

Trump is sure to be disappointed, as he was disappointed at the niceness of soldiers during the Army parade over the summer. Before today’s event, the president threatened: “I’m going to be meeting with generals and with admirals and with leaders, and if I don’t like somebody, I’m going to fire them right on the spot.” Nobody was fired on the spot, but the president and the secretary may retaliate for this disciplined response. Congress, the other constitutionally empowered source of civilian oversight of the military, ought to put its weight behind preventing any retribution.

During the 1867 constitutional crisis, Ulysses S. Grant, the commanding general of the Army, was pinioned between Congress impeaching President Andrew Johnson and that president threatening to disband Congress. Johnson fired Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, appointing Grant the civilian war secretary concurrent with his military appointment. Congress threatened Grant with five years in prison and a $10,000 fine if he accepted the appointment.

In what feels like an important decision for our time, Grant determined that in peacetime, the legislature has the superior claim to military subordination. Our current Congress might profit from the example and exercise its Article I authorities to establish military policies and shield our military from partisan onslaughts of the kind we saw today. From The Atlantic Daily <newsletters@theatlantic.com> October 7, 2025; and 

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2025/10/civil-military-crisis-trump-hegseth/684486. See also,  https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/10/01/trump-military-generals-incitement-civilians/.

Summary:

When the President and Secretary of Defense call for senior military leaders to ignore laws that restrict their use of force in military operations, they make a mockery of the rule of law and their oath to support and defend the Constitution as the foundation of the rule of law.  If any should resign, they should include the President and his Secretary of Defense.   

Will America Follow Britain as a Once Proud Democracy That's Now Floundering?

           By Rudy Barnes, Jr., October 4, 2025

      Trump made an official visit to Britain recently and seemed right at home with the grandiose privileges of monarchy--even though Britain is a democracy.  We need to remember that the American colonies fought a revolutionary war to be free of British power.  If Trump’s vision of America represents following the example of Britain it may portend another civil war.

Freedom is in decline with radical right demagogues in America, Israel and Russia.  In seeking to expand their power, they seem to have forgotten the lessons of history and are likely doomed to repeat those painful lessons in legitimacy.  Democracies are not a panacea.  Trump, Netanyahu and Putin became demagogues in putative democracies.  Will people ever learn?

After an initial period of power and prosperity, despotic democracies in America, Israel, and Russia are becoming the rule rather than the exception.  No powerful and affluent democracies have survived the initial lure of materialism, hedonism and greed of human depravity that have “trumped” altruism in their politics.  

With the demise of America, China is the likely hegemon.  Putin is seeking to restore the Russian empire while Ukraine is fighting for its independence, and a Zionist Israel has resorted to the genocide of Palestinians to expand its borders.  Demagogues now control politics in America, Russia and Israel, and they have used religion to promote their corrupt regimes.

“Ben Rhodes has used Britain as a warning of what America could become.  Trump’s second term has embodied the cruder approach of taking control.  Grabbing what can be got for the sake of what is to be got. There is no pretense of democratic values. The considerable powers of the state have been leveraged to reward Trump and his associates, punish his foes and elevate a largely white, Christian, conservative American identity: to “take back control.”  

“We cannot turn back the clock. Democracies will be increasingly diverse, no matter what politicians say. The American and British people will continue to suffer, enthralled by the siren song of blood-and-soil nationalism and imperial nostalgia. The challenge for those who rightly fear this approach is to reclaim the better aspects of our stories as a source of identity and accountability, not supremacy.” 

“Both of our countries have benefited when we strove to represent something bigger than a narrow conception of nationalism. And both countries can retain a sense of pride and patriotism about the better aspects of our past without whitewashing or clinging to it. That requires leaders who embrace societal change instead of fearing it.

Winston Churchill once described democracy as the worst form of government, except for all the others.  But no pluralistic democracy can be sustained without a moral culture based on providing for the common good.  That’s a big order for cultures corrupted by materialism, hedonism and greed.  America will have to go back to the future more than 250 years ago to find it.

Notes:

“Ben Rhodes has used Britain as a warning of what America could become. President Trump’s visit to Britain was designed to flatter with imperial imagery: Windsor Castle, a carriage ride, flyovers, a glimpse at the Churchill archives at Chequers, the prime minister’s country estate. This pageantry veiled the reality that Britain is no longer the superpower of these symbols.  Of course, the nostalgic diplomacy serves a purpose. For Trump, it sates his thirst for validation as the predominant Western leader, with the British establishment genuflecting before him as so many powerful American institutions have done since his re-election. For Prime Minister Keir Starmer, it continues a careful strategy of avoiding worse outcomes on tariffs and the war in Ukraine while showing that Britain has a foot in the door on technologies such as artificial intelligence.

Yet underneath the surface, both the United States and Britain are suffering through crises of identity. For two centuries, London and Washington were the seats of empire, the vanguard of the West, the proselytizers of liberal democracy. Our leaders used to meet to shape the direction of world events; now the balance of global power is shifting to the East. Our leaders used to reaffirm a story of shared democratic values; now the United States has taken an authoritarian turn, and Mr. Starmer is struggling to prevent Britain from doing the same.As our nations go through a crucible of change, it is no wonder that our people are anxious and unmoored, our politics destabilized. 

In the summer of 2016, British voters severed their relationship with the European Union, motivated by a nationalist backlash to globalization. A few months later, American voters stepped into the same undertow, electing a president who railed against immigration and international norms, institutions and obligations. Within a matter of months, both nations turned against their own stories. 

Are the American and the British people better off than they were before 2016? They are still polarized and pessimistic. Rampant inequality and overburdened safety nets feel beyond the control of governments. Global conflicts have escalated, from wars in Europe and the Middle East to trade wars and tensions with China. Post-Brexit Britain should offer a cautionary tale to America about the dangers of isolationism dressed up as exceptionalism. 

“Separated from Europe, the value of British citizenship has shrunk. Growth has stagnated. And the social welfare state has continued to depend upon migrant labor. Trump and Mr. Starmer will be judged on whether they can fend off this resilient far right with a return to normalcy: sober leadership, stricter border enforcement and the pursuit of better economic indicators. Given our long and intertwined history, there is much that can and should bring the United States and Britain together. But the special relationship should be rooted in learning from our shared past,” not by going back to the future more than 250 years ago. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/opinion/trump-britain-state-visit.html.     

 

The Greatest Commandment as a Moral Imperative for Pluralistic Democracies

The Greatest Commandment as a Moral Imperative for Pluralistic Democracies

By Rudy Barnes, Jr., September 27, 2025

Charlie Kirk claimed to be a Christian conservative who supported Donald Trump.  But no one who claims to follow the universal and altruistic teachings of Jesus as the Word of God can support Donald Trump. The greatest commandment is a summary of the teachings of Jesus that calls believers to love God and our neighbors, including those of other races and religions, as we love ourselves.

At the memorial service for Charlie Kirk, his widow tearfully said she forgave the man who killed her husband.  At the same service, Trump stated “I hate my opponent.”  It was a nasty sentiment that Trump has publicly proclaimed throughout his Presidency, but it was clearly out of order at the memorial service for Charlie Kirk.

Repercussions from the Kirk assassination have impacted Christianity from colleges to neighborhood churches.  Kirk’s Turning Point is a mixture of religion and politics that has transformed evangelicalism, especially among the young, while traditional congregations are aging and becoming smaller.  The American church is destined to have its own Turning Point.

On Christianity after Charlie Kirk Ross Duthat has observed that “eight years ago, religious conservatives accepted the leadership of a flagrant immoralist as the price of protection against a then-ascendant-seeming secular progressivism.  This political compromise fractured churches, divided pundits and introduced a further crisis into an American Christianity already dealing with scandal, disaffection and decline.”

“But today conservative Christians are eager to tell a different story, and Charlie Kirk’s memorial service was subordinated to preaching, with Erika Kirk’s  extraordinarily moving message of forgiveness for her husband’s killer.  It was a stage for a narrative of revival, recovery, conversion, Christian strength.”

David Brooks has noted,”There’s been a lot of mingling of Christianity and politics since Charlie Kirk was murdered. Tucker Carlson opened one of his shows with a straight-up sermon: “This is a religion committed to love above all and to living in peace and harmony, truly. It’s a universalist religion that believes that every person has a shot at heaven. It’s not exclusionary at all.”

Given the rise of popular new variations of Christianity in politics and the decline of the church, it’s questionable whether the church will survive as the major social institution that it has been in the past.  Familiar but smaller versions of the church will no doubt continue to survive to satisfy traditional desires, but American churches are likely to continue to decline.

With the contentious relationships between competing Christian organizations like Turning Point, change is certain, but what kind of change it will produce--other than declining churches that is already evident--is yet to be seen.  David Brooks has indicated that one thing is certain:  There is no confusion between the teachings of Jesus as a moral imperative in pluralistic democracies and the evil narcissism of Trump.

Notes:

On Ross Douthat’s Christianity After Charlie Kirk, see   https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/22/opinion/charlie-kirk-memorial-christianity.html

On David Brooks, Why we Need to Think Straight About God and Politics, see 

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/25/opinion/kirk-trump-christianity.html

Behind Charlie Kirk’s Spiritual Journey that Fused Chrstianity and Politics, see  https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/22/us/charlie-kirk-christian-faith-politics.html.

Musings of a Maverick Methodist on Conflicting Concepts of Jesus, see 

http://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2023/09/musings-of-maverick-methodist-on.html.

Musings on the the Dismal Failure of the Church and Democracy in America, see

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xWM4o586mCu6QoL69XAhkxfjjh6daTnNdnGnkJ05cZ8/edit.

On Jefferson's Jesus and Moral Standards of Legitimacy in Religion and Politics.docx

#564: Are You a Conservative or a Liberal?

  

By Rudy Barnes, Jr., September 20, 2025

I always considered myself a non-partisan moderate conservative, but after Charlie Kirk was described as a conservative who supported Donald Trump, I’m clearly not that kind of conservative.  Those who support Trump are committed to support his corrupt political agenda rather than providing for the common good, and are not true conservatives.

Until Trump’s domination of the Republican Party, there were conservatives and liberals in both parties who supported both liberal and conservative issues that provided for the common good.  But with partisan polarization voters are limited to choosing between Republicans or Democrats, and have no real choice for voters beyond party lines.  

David Brooks recently wrote, Why I Am not a Liberal, and I share his support of the maxim of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, that “the central conservative truth in politics is that culture, not politics determines the success of a society.”  Brooks also said that the central liberal truth is similar, but different: Democratic politics can change culture and save democracy from itself.”

The truth is that the politics of a majority in a democracy reflects their cultural values and preferences.  The Democratic preference for cash benefits to the poor will always be needed, but should be limited since they don’t always improve a nation’s culture.  The Bidenomics of throwing money at problems before the 2024 elections were politically ineffectual.

In American democracy today the majority of people define their cultural and moral standards through partisan politics.  In a pluralistic democracy political standards should provide for the common good.  Even then there are major differences, but today America’s polarized politics are dominated by partisan hatred rather than seeking to promote the common good.

Voters must end America’s polarized partisan politics to avoid the partisan trap that defines all national candidates along partisan lines.  That’s the only way to restore politics that can provide the common good.  Before the era of Trump we had leaders in both parties who had conservative and liberal perspectives of what constituted the common good.

   

Conservative and liberal labels don’t work in today’s polarized partisan politics since voters have to choose between Democratic and Republican candidates who put loyalty to their party ahead of other political issues.  You can be either conservative or liberal, but you won’t find any candidates who feel free to support true conservative or liberal political views.

Brooks ends up saying that “If you find some lefties who are willing to spend money fighting poverty but also willing to promote the traditional values and practices that enable people to rise, you can sign me up for the revolution.”

Notes:

David Brooks has cited a study “suggesting that merely giving people money doesn’t do much to lift them out of poverty. Families with at least one child received $333 a month. They had more money to spend, which is a good thing, but the children fared no better than similar children who didn’t get the cash. They were no more likely to develop language skills or demonstrate cognitive development. They were no more likely to avoid behavioral problems or developmental delays.  Kelsey Piper noted in another study published last year that families given $500 a month for two years had no big effects on the adult recipients’ psychological well-being and financial security. A study that gave $1,000 a month did not produce better health, career, education or sleep outcomes or even more time with their children.”  Piper noted that once children’s basic material needs are met, characteristics of their parents become more important to how they turn out than anything additional money can buy.”

Conservatism, as you know, is a complete mess in America right now. But reading conservative authors like Edmund Burke, Samuel Johnson, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Gertrude Himmelfarb and James Q. Wilson does give you an adequate appreciation for the power of nonmaterial forces — culture, moral norms, traditions, religious ideals, personal responsibility and community cohesion. That body of work teaches you, as Burke wrote, that manners and morals are more important than laws. You should have limited expectations about politics because not everything can be solved with a policy.”

Matt Bruenig’s contention was typical of liberals.  He scorned the very idea that focusing on human capital is a good way to improve social mobility. He wrote, “Cash is the key part of every welfare state in the developed world and absolutely critical for keeping poverty down.” We shouldn’t make fighting poverty overly complicated, he argued. “As a policy matter, these are mostly solved problems.” Just write people checks.

Progressives, by contrast, are quick to talk about money but slow to talk about the values side of the equation. “This materialistic bent leads to all sorts of bad judgments. For example, Joe Biden and his team had one job: to make sure Donald Trump never set foot in the White House again. They tried to accomplish that the only way they knew how: throw money at the problem. The vast bulk of the new Biden spending went to red states to employ workers without college degrees. Politically, the project was a complete failure. Populism is not primarily economic; it’s about respect, values, national identity and many other things. All that spending did not win anybody over.  Today most of our problems are moral, relational and spiritual more than they are economic. There is the crisis of disconnection, the collapse of social trust, the loss of faith in institutions, the destruction of moral norms in the White House, the rise of amoral gangsterism around the world. I wish both right and left could embrace the more complex truth that the neocon Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan expressed in his famous maxim: “The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change culture and save it from itself.” If you can find some lefties who are willing to spend money fighting poverty but also willing to promote the traditional values and practices that enable people to rise, you can sign me up for the revolution.”  See Why I Am Not a Liberal, By David Brooks, at  https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/opinion/liberal-conservative-left-right-politics.html.       

The Cultural Seams that Threaten America's Pluralistic Democracy

The Cultural Seams that Threaten America’s Pluralistic Democracy

By Rudy Barnes, Jr., September 13, 2025     

In 1860, slavery broke the cultural seams of race in American democracy with a civil war.  It was followed by cultural seams shaped by greed, materialism and hedonism.  In 1929 the Depression forced Americans to address endemic poverty, and that was followed by World War II, in which America’s revived economy saved America and the world from Hitler’s tyranny.

In 2016, Trump was elected as President and reelected in 2024.  Since then America’s democracy seems doomed by a President with 34 felony convictions who is determined to undermine America’s Constitution.  Voters and our churches have ignored the altruistic and universal moral teaching of Jesus in America’s polarized partisan politics.

Trump’s Republican regime has been reshaped into forms unfamiliar to those who aren’t Trump insiders and privy to his corrupt and narcissistic views.  Chaos has become the political and economic norm, represented by a wildly fluctuating stock market and the likelihood of increasing inflation caused by Trump’s tariffs. 

Today cultural redemption in the darkness of Trump’s oppressive politics make a return to normalcy unlikely without a major moral, cultural and political reawakening before America’s 2026 midterm elections.  America is a divided nation ruled by Trumpists with little hope of it returning to political normalcy anytime soon

Since the Moral Majority of the 1980s American politics have been controlled by a two-party duopoly that set the stage for the primacy of a radical right Republican majority that was exploited by Trump’s assumption of power in 2016 and reaffirmed in 2024.  During that time Trump made no secret of his megalomania.

The feeble moral altruism of Christianity has been defeated by the self-serving nationalism of Trump’s narcissistic politics, which have been more about voters rejecting a divided liberal Democratic Party than accepting Trump’s corrupt policies. Trump has demonstrated the power of partisan politics over reason and common sense.  

Polls indicate a majority of Americans now oppose Trump’s economic policies based on the inflation caused by his widespread tariffs.  With a massive and unsustainable national debt of over $36.7 trillion and a falling dollar, there’s no public support for Democratic spending policies, or for a third party.  American democracy is caught in a political trap of its own making.  

The illusion of democracy as a political panacea in America’s polarized partisan politics is history, but we’ll have to wait and see if the 2026 midterm elections can restore some hope for repairing the Constitution and a functioning Congress.  Meanwhile, we can only hope that the cultural seams in American democracy can withstand the internal pressure of self-destruction. 

Notes:

Trump was found guilty on 34 felony counts after prosecutors alleged that he engaged in a "scheme" to boost his chances during the 2016 presidential election through a series of hush money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, and then falsified New York business records to cover up that alleged criminal conduct.  "I did my job, and we did our job," Bragg said following Trump's conviction.   "There are many voices out there, but the only voice that matters is the voice of the jury, and the jury has spoken."   https://abcnews.go.com/US/anniversary-hush-money-conviction-trump-continues-fght-criminal/story?id=122325361   "The alleged evidentiary violations at President-Elect Trump's state-court trial can be addressed in the ordinary course on appeal," the Supreme Court said in a brief unsigned opinion, though four justices said they would have granted Trump's application. For Trump's criminal defense, he relied on then-defense attorneys Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, who now serve as the deputy attorney general and principal associate deputy attorney general. Earlier this week, Trump announced that he plans to nominate Bove -- who led a purge of career law enforcement officials before the Senate confirmed his nomination to help run the DOJ -- to the United States Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit.   "That President Trump's defense in fact takes the form of a new constitutional immunity announced by the Supreme Court after his trial ended, rather than a new statute enacted by Congress, should if anything cut in the President's favor," lawyers with the Department of Justice argued in a brief submitted on Tuesday.  The appeal -- as well as the ongoing appeal of Trump's $83 million judgment in the E. Jean Carroll civil case and half-billion-dollar civil fraud case -- is proceeding on uncharted legal grounds as Trump wields the power of the presidency in his defense. He has characterized the prosecutors who pursued the cases against him as politically motivated, and has touted his electoral victory last November as a political acquittal.  "The real verdict is going to be Nov. 5 by the people," Trump told reporters as he left court following his conviction last year. "And they know what happened here, and everybody knows what happened here."

I’m an independent in my politics, and I’m still waiting on third-party candidates who have both altruistic morality and the potential to win a national office.  I have often referred to Trump as an evil man, and have reminded people who support him that they are supporting the power of evil in the cosmic battle between the forces of good and evil.