The new Defense Secretary has been sworn in and as one of his first acts he wants a review of extremism in the ranks. From the Military Times:

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has called on the services to conduct a 60-day stand-down on the issue of extremism in the military, prompted by the Jan. 6 attack on the the Capitol and subsequent reports of both active-duty and former service members attending a rally calling to overturn the 2020 election and the riot that ensued.

Attending a political rally is not against the rules for the military unless they are in uniform, seeming to act in some official capacity, or they broke the law.  So that is weak sauce to conduct a review on. But I am most concerned about the way the media has managed to conflate the idea of extremism with support for Trump. They have put those things together so often that most people believe they are one in the same now. That was no doubt their intention.

So you have all of these young service members that have grown up with Facebook and Twitter documenting their every utterance. How hard would it be to find something in their social media history that could be seen as supporting extremism as they define it? If that is their plan, they are going to have a pretty big purge on their hands. I only knew a handful of people that leaned left in my 22 years.

This also has me thinking about the stories out there that mentioned Speaker Pelosi meeting with senior military leaders.

Speaker Pelosi spoke with General Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about making certain President Trump couldn’t launch a nuke. She also suggested they remove the President with a military coup.

I wonder if this may be some kind of house cleaning directed by the legislative branch. Congress isn’t officially in the military chain of command, but some generals and admirals have aspirations of political careers after their service. Those types like to get chummy with the politicos.

If a purge begins to happen we will hear about it pretty quickly. There are tons of us who still have contacts in ranks. A lot of them were not ashamed of their support for President Trump either.