Billy Stormfield’s Visit to Hell: A Novel by Stan Rice, part three. What Would Pete Hegseth Say to Douglas McArthur?

Stan Rice as just published another novel, Billy Stormfield’s Visit to Hell. It is based on Mark Twain’s classic book about Captain Stormfield’s visit to Heaven. Here is the author’s description from Amazon:

Billy Stormfield, descendant of Captain Stormfield in Mark Twain’s book, wakes up in Hell. He meets Mark Twain, who takes him on a tour. All the interesting people are in Hell: Moses, Karl Marx (who is funny only when he quotes Groucho), Joe the Cherokee, the Apostle Andrew, and Pope Francis, because they were all what the fundamentalists called communists; Noah, because he was an environmentalist; General Douglas McArthur, because he forgave the Japanese rather than slaughtering them as the Old Testament commanded; and of course Charles Darwin. Thomas Jefferson, united at last with Sally Hemings, tells them how biologically stupid racism and oppression are. The only people in Heaven are the white supremacists and the jihadists, who spend all their time killing each other over and over forever. The young white supremacist Stonewall escapes to Hell, where he meets and loves the Black history teacher Philomena.

Between Heaven and Hell, Jesus eternally suffers the way Job did, dogs licking his wounds. With His friend the Prophet Mo, He watched His mother Mary helping people sneak into Heaven. Together with the crew from Hell, and led by the school girl Malala, Jesus and Mo storm the assembly in Heaven, kicking Henry VIII and Donald Trump (who look almost alike) down to Earth. Stonewall and Philomena celebrate their wedding feast.

 

Pete Hegseth is the American Secretary of Defense or, as he would insist, Secretary of War. To his way of thinking, the Department of Defense is not doing its job unless it is prosecuting a war somewhere. I don’t suppose the war has to have a good reason. One can only imagine that Trump and Hegseth started the Iran War because, well, we need to have a war somewhere. The reasons they gave were either untrue (to open up the Strait of Hormuz, which was already open, but is now intermittently closed) or vague. Well, Pete got his war. Where does the money come from? The answer is, who cares, we will find the money. He spent a billion dollars the first day on bombs. The deficit (on what should be called the Donald J. Trump Federal Deficit Clock) now exceeds forty trillion dollars. The interest on this debt eats up about half of the money the federal government takes in by taxes and other means.

Pete Hegseth is a fundamentalist Christian. This means that he really, really believes that God ordered the Israelites to slaughter entire cities of Canaanite people—every man, woman, child, and animal. Hegseth further believes that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8). He further believes, without Biblical foundation, that America is God’s Holy Nation. Therefore, if God wanted the Israelites to slaughter all of the Canaanites (presumably, this would include any Canaanites who attempted to surrender), He must want us, today, to slaughter our enemies, even the noncombatants, women, and children. By being Iranian, doctors and nurses deserve death. Bloody, gory death, not quiet executions. At least, he should believe these things, to be consistent with his other fundamentalist beliefs.

One of the most famous military leaders in American history was General Douglas McArthur, who oversaw the Pacific theater of operations in World War II. He gave the order (passed on from President Truman) to use atomic bombs on Japan. So far, Hegseth would make a good McArthur.

But then, McArthur ordered Allied troops to occupy Japan but to do so nondestructively. They were not to rape, pillage, or destroy whatever was left (that is, whatever the Japanese dictatorship had not already destroyed). He even shut down the American-sponsored whorehouses. The self-interest was clear: America wanted Japan to be an economically-strong ally, something that would be extremely expensive if American troops razed Japan to the ground.

The Japanese were astonished that American troops did not kill them all, as Japanese troops had done to their victims in Korea and China. They even began to love the Americans. There is a famous photo of a storefront in Japan that, in response to the announcement that McArthur was considering a presidential bid, “We play for your erection.” (Actually, this is not quite what the sign said.) In contrast, Hegseth would have felt obligated to tell American troops to kill all the Japanese. American history classes should therefore teach that Americans failed to carry out God’s complete will in World War II.

And, according to Rice’s novel, this is why General Douglas McArthur was in Hell.

 

General Douglas McArthur and Japanese Emperor Hirohito in 1945.