It takes a special kind of piety to mistake a hired killer’s catchphrase for the Word of God and then
read it, eyes closed, at a Pentagon prayer service.
But here we are.
When Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently intoned what he presented as a biblical‑sounding prayer,
he was not, in fact, quoting Scripture. He was channeling Samuel L. Jackson’s character in “Pulp Fiction” – specifically, the little speech a mob hitman delivers just before he shoots someone in
the face. It is the first time in recent memory that U.S. state power has so enthusiastically outsourced its theology to Quentin Tarantino.
In the film, Jules Winnfield recites his beloved “Ezekiel 25:17” before executions: the “path of the
righteous man,” “the tyranny of evil men,” the promise of “great vengeance and furious anger.” It sounds like the Bible, the way a movie trailer sounds like real life. The verse is largely
invented, stitched from fragments and grindhouse imagination. Jules admits as much. For most of his career, he says it because it sounds cool. Only after a miraculous escape – or a lucky miss,
depending on your theology – does he start to suspect that maybe, just maybe, he is not the “righteous man” of the story, but the “evil man” with a gun.
It is an oddly subtle narrative for a film best remembered for its trunk shots and hamburgers, but the
arc is classic: the violent agent of a sovereign power discovers that his favorite justification script might be a lie he tells himself. A killer glimpses that the speech he wraps around his
violence is not revelation – it’s rhetoric.
The Pentagon, it seems, is not quite there yet.
Hegseth’s version keeps the structure of Jules’ monologue – righteous path, wicked enemies, vengeance,
furious anger – and blesses it with a thin coat of official gravitas. The targets are no länger petty debtors who crossed Marsellus Wallace, but “those who would seek to poison and destroy my
brothers,” a conveniently elastic category in an age when “enemy” can mean anything from a foreign adversary to a critical journalist. Where Jackson’s character ends with “and you will know my
name is the Lord,” Hegseth substitutes a military call sign, transforming what was once God’s prerogative into the brand logo of a rescue squad.
In Tarantino’s universe, this language is part of the joke: gangsters pretending to be Old Testament
prophets as they shake down college kids over a suitcase. The text is fake, the performance overblown, the violence unmistakably criminal. We are meant to see the distance between the moral
grandeur of the words and the banality of what they actually do.
In the Pentagon’s universe, the distance collapses.
The United States likes to think of itself as the global “righteous man,” walking the path beset on
all sides by the inequities of lesser nations and the tyranny of assorted evil men. The state’s violence, from drone strikes to sanctions, is domestically framed not as brutality but as
regrettable necessity in the service of order, liberty, or “our people.” The category of “those who poison and destroy my brothers” has been remarkably flexible over the decades, stretching to
cover communists, terrorists, drug dealers, “rogue states,” and occasionally the press.
Jules is a useful mirror here. He is, after all, a professional instrument of private sovereignty.
Marsellus Wallace is not elected; he is obeyed. Jules enforces a very local rules‑based order: cross the boss, lose your life. The monologue is his way of elevating his function from thug to
providential agent. Every bullet becomes part of a larger moral screenplay in which he is cast as shepherd, not wolf.
When a U.S. defense secretary lifts this speech out of its cinematic context and recites it as prayer,
he is not just confusing movie dialogue with Scripture; he is unconsciously ratifying the worldview the film is critiquing. State violence becomes a sacrament. The soldier, like Jules 1.0, is
“the righteous man,” the enemies are “evil men,” and the furious anger of the Lord is very conveniently co‑extensive with the targeting priorities of the national security
apparatus.
The uncomfortable truth is that “Pulp Fiction” is more theologically mature than the Pentagon’s
performance. Jules’s story is one of doubt. He comes to suspect that his favorite justification, however poetic, is a cover for cruelty. He decides, in a decidedly non‑Hollywood twist, not to
kill the terrified robber in the diner. He walks away. His last use of the verse is an attempt to rewrite his role: maybe he is not the righteous one or the evil one, but the flawed man trying to
become a shepherd. The film leaves open whether he will succeed, but it is very clear about one thing: redemption looks less like holy rage and more like putting the gun down.
The U.S. government’s narrative rarely gets to that third act. It has an admirable talent for
recognizing crises – Pearl Harbor, 9/11, Kabul, Kyiv – as moments of destiny. It is less adept at recognizing them as moments of repentance. The response to catastrophe is almost always more:
more funding, more bases, more authorities, more latitude to identify and neutralize those who might “poison and destroy” us. The rhetoric occasionally flirts with contrition (“mistakes were
made”), but the policy script remains an action movie: the next strike, the next surge, the next righteous operation.
We might forgive a nation for borrowing its self‑image from Hollywood; America has been doing that for
a century. What is new is the unembarrassed collapse of fiction into liturgy. You can imagine a different Pentagon scene in which Hegseth introduces the passage honestly: “This isn’t actually
Ezekiel; it’s from a movie we all know, and it shows a man realizing he’s been using God to justify violence. Are we any different?” That would be an uncomfortable, possibly career‑limiting
reflection. It would also be recognizably religious.
Instead, the state chooses the cooler option: take the killer’s speech, sand off the movie credits,
and pass it off as the inheritance of a pious military tradition. If the country has spent decades turning war into entertainment, perhaps it was only a matter of time before entertainment
returned the favor and became liturgy.
One could argue, charitably, that this is all a misunderstanding – that the secretary did not know the
origin of the words, that the speechwriter was sloppy, that somewhere a junior staffer is frantically googling “real Ezekiel 25:17” and updating the next draft. Perhaps. But even then, the
accident is revealing. It suggests that for at least some of the people tasked with waging war in the name of the republic, the emotional resonance of “great vengeance and furious anger” matters
far more than the source. If the words bless our side and curse theirs, they are close enough to holy.
Jules ultimately learns that the script he loves is not revelation; it is something he can choose to
stop reciting. The question for the U.S. government is whether it can imagine a similar moment of self‑interruption – not because a bullet missed in a cramped apartment, but because, after two
decades of perpetual war and a domestic politics marinated in grievance, it doubts whether it is still the “righteous man” in its own story.
There is a line from the film that the Pentagon did not quote, though it might have been the most
honest of all. “I used to say this because I thought it was some cold‑blooded thing to say,” Jules reflects, “but I’m trying, Ringo. I’m trying real hard to be the shepherd.”
If Washington ever finds itself praying that line instead, we’ll know it has finally understood the
joke.
Kommentar schreiben