The Panican Ledger

100 Days of Ruin
Chapter IV: The Fall of Defense — Signalgate

The department of Defense had once been a citadel — solemn, deliberate, sober. Under the new regime, it became something closer to a frat house with nuclear codes.

Pete Hegseth, once a minor television courtier, had been elevated from Fox News greenroom bluster to Secretary of Defense — chosen not for his strategic brilliance, but for his willingness to smile, salute, and flex right-wing tattoos.

The new Secretary of Defense, brought with him few credentials save a taste for flag-waving and television grins. Strategy meetings were now attended by his wife, his brother, and a Signal chat group that included the editor of The Atlantic — none of whom, it must be noted, were vetted for security clearance.

Signal — an encrypted messaging app prohibited on government devices — became the true war room, hidden from oversight, judgement, and often from sanity itself.

And somewhere, across the oceans, enemy operatives toasted his career with cheap vodka and finer intelligence than they had dreamed possible.

"Text STOP to unsubscribe from war plan updates."

The Pentagon purges soon followed. DEI programs were gutted with the fervor of a bonfire; statues of Jackie Robinson and plaques to the Tuskegee Airmen vanished into dumpsters marked “Woke Trash.” In their place, historical "correctives" — such as a commemorative reprinting of Mein Kampf for "strategic study" — were quietly, chillingly circulated.

Thus the third of the Great Collapses unfolded:
not from foreign invasion,
nor technological surprise —
but from the willing decapitation of national seriousness,
and the elevation of clownery to command.

Continue with Caution...