this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2026
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[–] Jhex@lemmy.world 190 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I thought Hegseth had quoted Pulp Fiction and the issue was that it's blasphemous to do so by a gov official and such... but no, it totally looks like this idiot did not know this was not an actual Bible quote

The lesson here is "if you think they cannot possibly that dumb, forget about it and double down"

[–] TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 71 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

it totally looks like this idiot did not know this was not an actual Bible quote

He knew it wasn't an actual Bible quote, but he did think it was a modified version of Ezekiel 25:17. Which it definitionally is. The actual string is:

Ezekiel 25:17 –> (edit: Bodyguard Kiba modification) –> Pulp Fiction modification –> USAF modification

Whereas he thought it was:

Ezekiel 25:17 –> USAF modification

I think that's understandable if you've never seen Pulp Fiction (because you just assume the Pulp Fiction stuff was the USAF's addition), but it's still pretty funny.

The actual problem here, as usual, is separation of church and state being trampled over to make way for Abrahamic prayers in the US federal government.

[–] BlackVenom@lemmy.world 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

25:17 is a small segment of the "verse"... Pulp Fictions rendition is made up all in except the "great vengeance and furious anger..." Part....

E.g. fake bible verse.

[–] TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

E.g. fake bible verse

You mean "i.e.", and yeah, he said that it's "reflecting" Ezekiel 25:17.

“They call it CSAR 25:17, which I think is meant to reflect Ezekiel 25:17.”

He literally never said it's an actual Bible quote or even all that close to one.

[–] towerful@programming.dev 4 points 1 week ago

Yup. It's not giving an example so "e.g." doesn't make sense

For example fake bible verse

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[–] zewm@lemmy.world 100 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Separation of a church and state or nah? How is this allowed?

[–] baggachipz@sh.itjust.works 54 points 1 week ago (2 children)

That went out the window long ago

[–] eatCasserole@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Was it ever really a thing though [in the US]? Like aren't presidents sworn in on a Bible or something? And it says something about God on the money? And the pledge of allegiance? (The USA is a cult, btw)

[–] baggachipz@sh.itjust.works 26 points 1 week ago

That all changed during the “Red Scare” in the 1950’s. Swearing in on a bible is optional and lower offices have used e.g. a Quran in the past.

[–] sobchak@programming.dev 11 points 1 week ago

Before the Civil War, there was more separation. Things really started going out of wack in the 1950s (that's when "God" was printed on paper money). The swearing on the bible thing is a tradition from England. At US's founding 17% of the population were church members. In the the 1950s, 70% were. Now it's < 50%.

[–] lightnsfw@reddthat.com 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Presidents can be sworn in on whatever they want. At least one has used something else, although I don't recall who or what it was.

[–] XeroxCool@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

John Quincy Adams chose "The Volume of Laws" in 1825. Teddy Roosevelt had nothing right after McKinley's assassination in 1901. The only other oddball I see is Lyndon B Johnson used the closest prayer book after JFK's assassination

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[–] village604@adultswim.fan 20 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Well, it's technically not part of any religion since it's a verse from a movie.

[–] MnemonicBump@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 1 week ago

Are you telling me that Tarantino fans aren't a religion?

[–] samus12345@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Technically illegal, but the people whose job it is to enforce it are Christofascists, so this is the result.

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[–] YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 50 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Performative christians should get double hell.

[–] ohulancutash@feddit.uk 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 3 points 1 week ago (4 children)

I think the pope is restoring something I lost a long time ago. So I will say protestants, but not all Christians.

[–] ohulancutash@feddit.uk 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Yeah, nothing performative at all about the chap in the robes and the funny hat chanting incantations in a dead language in an art gallery while swinging incense around the place.

[–] YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 6 points 1 week ago (7 children)

Hard to hate the dude when he's on the right side of history.

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[–] brynden_rivers_esq@lemmy.ca 39 points 1 week ago (1 children)

These guys are such incredible losers. This guy in particular.

[–] samus12345@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 week ago

In the words of South Park, Pete Hegseth is a fuckin' douche.

[–] Malyca@lemmy.zip 34 points 1 week ago

🤣 at least the end of the world is funny

[–] NotASharkInAManSuit@lemmy.world 26 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

There are so many layers of what the fuck going on with this. A veritable dagwood of blatantly wrong decisions over the course of decades, relentlessly stacked upon one another and pinned together with the twin toothpicks of true faith and true grift. This is the culmination of a soul destroying amount of failures.

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[–] Fedizen@lemmy.world 24 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Tv guy prays to movie quote. You can probably figure out which AI he used by asking them all for the verse.

[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 3 points 1 week ago

It's an entire administration whose entire political education comes from the Conservative Propaganda Machine, and popular culture. Being profoundly ignorant, they don't know their own nation's history, and they don't take their inspiration from the great people of history, they get their inspiration from Hollywood action movies, and not even good ones. So they are obsessed with being the "hottest, the "richest," the most popular, etc.

And because they are irredeemably Sociopathic, they think it's perfectly normal to think that way. That's why they've fought so hard to take over America. They see most moral, decent Americans, trying to live moral, decent lives, and don't understand them at all. If we aren't fully on board with whatever chaotic agenda is in their profoundly broken psyches, then we must be the ones with the problem, and we need to be dominated, forced to submit, or eliminated.

So this guy thinks he was being a badass with his poor reading of a Samuel L Jackson monologue, like a high school drama student auditioning for the school musical, and he just came off as pathetically cringe.

[–] Mulligrubs@lemmy.world 23 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

"Pentagon Prayer Service"

Oh good lord we are dooooooomed

for years, I smugly thought our military was past this crap. what a dummy i was, no wonder everything is so fucked

I haven't been to a lot of churches, but I have been a part of a few church congregations, and they have been without exception bat-shit crazy.

terrifying

The fact the military has chaplains still…

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[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 22 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm not sure what irks me more. The existence of a "Pentagon Prayer Service" or this idiot quoting invented bible verses.

[–] spicehoarder@lemmy.zip 11 points 1 week ago

That's easy! All Bible verses are invented.

[–] CaptainBlinky@lemmy.myserv.one 21 points 1 week ago

Can we just talk about the fact that this "prayer" has the word 'aviator' in it and this moron in charge of our destructive power either didn't notice or didn't care?

[–] Soulphite@reddthat.com 19 points 1 week ago
[–] TommySoda@lemmy.world 18 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

“The path of the downed aviator is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who in the name of camaraderie and duty shepherds the lost through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to capture and destroy my brother, and you will know my call sign is Sandy 1 when I lay my vengeance upon thee. Amen.”

Dude probably prompted ChatGPT with the words Bible, badass, and US military and than asked it to replace some words with the rescue operation. That's my guess as some of the word replacements make no sense.

[–] lightnsfw@reddthat.com 4 points 1 week ago

How has this guy not had his ass beat for being cringe yet?

[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 18 points 1 week ago

This is one way I know that religion is bullshit, because if there really was a God, these guys would all end up a smoking hole at the podium.

[–] whotookkarl@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 1 week ago

100% this came from ai slop gibberish that this idiot has been convinced is able to think and reason because it's easy to convince immoral idiot gibberators to drink the fruit flavor sugar drink if you pay them to.

[–] chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Could be worse, he could have called upon Brother Maynard to read from the Book of Armaments...

[–] TheRealKuni@piefed.social 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

“And St. Atilla raised the hand grenade on high, saying, ‘O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade that with it Thou mayest blow Thine enemies to tiny bits in Thy mercy.’ And the Lord did grin, and the people did feast upon the lambs, and sloths, and carp, and anchovies, and orangutans, and breakfast cereals, and fruit bats…”

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[–] Marthirial@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Please tell me he started the quote from "Say what again, mortherfucker".

No. This guy is just distilled awfulness. He's all stick and no lollypop.

[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 6 points 1 week ago

but they will see it not for the lord god shall pour upon their minds a multitude of dumb fuckery!

[–] flandish@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

ahh good ole copyright infringement

[–] mavu@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 1 week ago

I wonder if he used Gemini or chatGPT to generate the speech.

[–] Artemis_Mystique@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 week ago (4 children)

TIL the bible quote in pulp fiction is fake, any reason Tarantino felt the need to do so?

[–] Wispy2891@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

Having a laugh every time "religious" people quote his "bible" verse?

Or claim copyright on that lol

[–] dantheclamman@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

He copied it from another martial arts movie

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[–] DandomRude@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Does it even matter what these people say? Apparently not, because none of them has ever said anything even remotely intelligent, let alone productive. Nothing but hate and lies for years - this latest embarrassment hardly seems worth reporting, given all the crimes the U.S. regime is committing.

But hey, politics works through entertainment, which the clever people behind these people naturally know. That’s why they've chosen a cabinet of clowns as straw men - because they’re so embarrassing that the relevant news doesn’t stand a chance against their entertainment factor.

That’s unfortunately how our world works, and that’s why the worst of them all always get off scot-free: their crimes are simply too complicated to generate any interest.

[–] AmidFuror@fedia.io 3 points 1 week ago

From this article (better than one posted yesterday), it's clear the error was saying the prayer was based on a Bible verse, when it's based on the Pulp Fiction script. In the movie, the verse is said to be from Ezekiel 25:17, but it is not.

The prayer itself is obviously not from Pulp Fiction or the Bible, as it mentions aviators and the call sign "Sandy 1." They call the prayer CSAR 25:17, and Hegseth was correct that that is in reference to Ezekiel 25:17. But it's the movie Ezekiel 25:17, not the actual one.

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