It’s cute to run with the “drunk Hegseth” meme, but I’m more worried about Christian Nationalist Hegseth.
From the “deus vult” tattoo to the blatantly racist Orwellian memory-holing of minority, especially black, contributions to U.S. military history, to his clear desire only white men should be in combat roles, I vote him the Secretary of Defense most likely to say “go right ahead” if Trump suggests nuking Los Angeles or NYC. Really, anyplace foreign or domestic that’s non-white and non-Christian in Hegseth’s worldview.
I know that sounds very der trish like, but Hegseth creeps me out and pisses me off to a degree that nobody else in Trump’s cabinet of horrors does. I mock RFK, Jr. and Noem, I roll my eyes at Duffy and Vought, but I fear Hegseth.
Hegseth is certainly an eager would be Schutzstaffel flunky and will do whatever it takes to impress both Trump and the Heritage Foundation fuckholes with his lickspittle devotion to white nationalist ideology, RFK Jr holds the real keys to a pandemic apocalypse in withholding vaccine approvals, research funds for infectious disease, eliminating support of surveillance of pathogenic threats and epidemiological support, and generally being an all around fuck-toad who seems devoted to bringing humanity back to medieval interpretations of medical treatment. If he established a board to approve of various methods of bloodletting and research into humoralism it would not surprise me in the least. Hegseth can’t actually target nuclear weapons back on the United States without major policy changes and would experience substantial pushback if he tried, and Noem is mostly interested in fascist cosplay where she can pose in front of immigrants in concentration camps but couldn’t arrange a Tupperware raid if her life depended upon it (aided by Tom Homan who can barely annunciate three syllable words without sounding like he’s choking on a hairball) but RFK Jr. is doing real and long lasting harm to not only the United States but global efforts to contain pandemic threats.
Sean Duffy seems like a particularly ineffectual Commander drawn from The Handmaid’s Tale who is going to get busted by a more wiley competitor but Russ Vought is a real planner, a ‘guy behind the guy behind the guy’ who is really putting together the bones of a real plan to turn the country into the dystopian horror-fantasy that Margaret Atwood intended to be an exaggerated allegorical warning about the dangers of letting a seemingly harmless fanatical religious movement gain too much social and political power.
Hegseth is just an opportunist, and is too inept to be a long-term threat . There are others who have real plans and real authority to influence things beyond the immediate situation that are and will continue to do serious damage to what remains of the fundaments of knowledge-based institutions and democratic norms.
RFK could screw things up, yes, but IMHO there are backstops. The insurance companies, greedy as they are, know the value (if only in $) of prevention, and as long as vaccines aren’t illegal will (again IMHO) cover them regardless of the recommendations or guidelines from RFK’s HHS. In any case, RFK hasn’t accomplished anything really harmful yet (stupid know-nothing committee to “review” vaccines hasn’t banned any).
Meanwhile, my concern with Hegseth is less that he’ll drop an A-Bomb on an American city and more that he’s been working fastidiously since day one on making the military a hostile environment for women and minorities (racial and religious) with the clear goal of an all-white-Christian-male force of “warriors” with possibly a few women in medical and clerical roles away from combat units and maybe some minority men doing scut work nowhere near a rifle. Sorta like the stereotypical view of the WWII-era military.*
Except in Hegseth’s case not purely for the sake of twisted nostalgia. I’m sure he wants reliably Christian Nationalist forces in place to carry out Christian Nationalist policy or oppose contrary policy; that is, revolt against a Democratic president, or at the very least stand back and not defend a Democratic government against a MAGA/right-wing rebellion. Sorta like all those Southern forts and armories that Buchanan’s Secretary of War filled with weapons, munitions, and supplies in the leadup to the Civil War before becoming a Confederate general.
*Which never quite matched reality, which had women transport pilots, decorated black fighter pilots, the famous Japanese-American combat regiment, etc. But don’t dare tell Hegseth that.
I also think Hegseth’s focus on lethality as the sole touchstone of all Defense Department policy and decisions:
“It’s lethality, lethality, lethality,” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has said. “Everything else is gone."
is of immediate rather than future or theoretical concern when:
(1) Hegseth has, since becoming Secretary, openly lamented that illegal immigrants are destroying American culture from within, and
(2) the military is posted right now in a major American city that MAGA types consider not “really” American, in support of ICE’s raids and harassment against people whom Trump, ICE, MAGAs, etc. definitely feel aren’t American or worthy of any protection of U.S. law.
Absolutely. Before about 50-100 years ago, the whole world was run by alcoholics, with greater or lesser degrees of functionality. Lincoln himself said, when people complained about Grant’s drinking, “Find out what whisky Grant drinks and send a barrel to all my other generals”.
And with Trump and Musk hopped up on adderall and ketamine and who knows what else, concerns about someone’s drinking in this government seems downright quaint.
I’m far more concerned about the accelerating Nazification of our leading politicians.
There are no such backstops and insurance companies are already withdrawing coverage for Covid and other vaccines for children or non-immune compromised adults for which the NIH is no longer recommending. While RFK Jr is not directly responsible for the recent measles outbreaks (which are owed to many years of parents electing to not get their homeschooled children vaccinated against this highly infectious pathogen) he encouraged parents to not get their unvaccinated children inoculated after the outbreaks began. But that’s the tip of the infectious disease iceberg; NIH is pulling grants for disease research, cutting funds for state-run public health departments performing disease surveillance, and tried to gut this year’s class of Epidemic Intelligence Service fellowships. He is hell-bent in basically destroying the entire federal infrastructure for supporting disease research, surveillance, and response in favor of his groundless pseudo-science theories in ways that may have ramifications for decades. For fuck’s sake, epidemiologists are now seriously concerned about a resurgence of poliomyelitis after decades of the disease being eradicated from the United States through comprehensive vaccination. Fucking polio!
Hegseth is a White Christian goon, an eager fascist lickspittle, and a general loud-mouthed asshole but he can’t make a plan to save his life or stay sober long enough to focus his aggression. I’m far more concerned about Tulsi Gabbard, Kristi Noem, or any of the functionaries that Elon Musk snuck into the government to dismantle it from within than I am about Pete Hegseth somehow rapidly turning the US military into Christian Crusaders. DHS is getting a metric ass-ton of money for which the only conceivable purpose is to build up a paramilitary that is ‘t bound by the strictures of the Uniform Code of Military Justice or even under notional oversight of the Department of Justice, all under the guise of dealing with ‘immigration’ which is already being expanded to include US citizens standing up for immigrants’ rights to due process.
Trump has learned his lesson from his first administration.
EVERY. SINGLE. member of the current Trump administration has been chosen because they are utter incompetent non-entities who are utterly beholden to Trump in every way.
Their only qualifying quality is they will never ever invoke the 25th amendment or do anything else to stand up to Trump
I disagree. Unfortunately there are enough competent non-entities who are utterly beholden to Trump in every way that they are able to ram through their evil plan. The competent evil people are the ones behind the scenes. The ones that can easily become sacrificial lambs are in front of the cameras.
They’re all the Joe Pesci character in the Scorsese movie of this regime, believing that they’re untouchable and going to get ‘made’. Meanwhile, Russ Vought is humming along executing the Project 2025 agenda with almost zero media attention.
