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Central Pennsyltucky
How do you deal with a nomination like the odious Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense? I’m not going to take the time and space to run through the many reasons he is the wrong person for the job. They are manifest and obvious every time he shows his face or opens his mouth.
That appears to be the point with Donald Trump’s decision to appoint him. It’s as if Trump is waving a red flag at the establishment, or somebody anyway, telling the D.C. old guard and everybody else that they’ve run things long enough, so now we’re going to try something really different: the raw, unfettered, incompetence of norm-busting ugliness. There is simply nothing right about Hegseth, not his lack of experience, not his criminal attitude about women, not the insta-Christian nationalism he has deployed as a kind of parachute to save himself by embracing the worst instincts and lies of the far Right.
Trump is known to be furious with the Pentagon for its recalcitrance at the end of his last term in office. Neither Milley nor Esper would countenance his insane plans to put active duty troops on the street to face down American citizens who, along with providing the troops’ paychecks, were exercising their Constitutional right to protest the killing of George Floyd. What Trump wanted from the military was to use it for his own purposes, and anyone who got in his way he saw as not loyal to him and his agenda of grievance, if it can be called that. Trump’s attitude about the military was a version of what good is an army if you can’t do something with it. Previous presidents – George W. Bush comes to mind – have put this attitude to work starting wars that should never have been for reasons that couldn’t stand even a glance of scrutiny.
With Trump, of course, it was personal. Why waste his soldiers and guns and tanks on some country halfway across the world when he could use them right here in the exercise of a coup-in-place? That’s the way other dictators have done it over the years, and we know how much Trump admires dictators.
So, angry at a military establishment he sees as insubordinate to his sense of self as Supreme Ruler Over All, Trump just decided to take a well-coiffed Fox News yapper and blow the whole thing up and see what happens.
It would be one thing if the only people watching were his MAGA base, who have been eating up Hegseth and his simple-minded posturing like a Family Bucket of KFC. Were you watching yesterday during the hearing when half the room erupted in applause for Hegseth and started shouting “USA! USA!”? It was like a scene from the movie “Idiocracy” when a crowd of morons starts cheering because that’s what they’re supposed to do, MAGAs gone wild with delight because they think they’re being treated to the downfall of everything they think they hate about Washington and the establishment. That the “establishment” is this country’s military, which in another day conservatives embraced as reflexively as this crowd opposes our soldiers who have stood fast for the Constitution, is one of the great ironies of my lifetime.
But it isn’t just the MAGA mob watching that abomination of a hearing. It is the whole world, a world that knows all too well what happens when you throw a stink-bomb like Hegseth into the midst of what can only be called the world order. Because that’s what is happening. Trump isn’t just blowing up the Pentagon. He wants to blow up NATO, he wants to blow up our trade alliances, he wants to blow up everything that came before him put in place by anyone not named “Trump.” Europeans and our other allies around the world know what will come to pass if you throw away 75 years of carefully crafted mutual defense: more countries than Ukraine may begin to fall to fascism and force; people and institutions and whole countries will die.
The satisfaction among the MAGA faithful in the hearing room of the Senate Armed Services Committee was right out in the open. Hegseth is a dreamboat to this strain of American idiocracy. He has the “look,” he has the attitude, he wears the ill-fitting suit of the requisite anti-woke, anti-DEI, anti-woman, anti-rational right-wing male as if he’s a contestant for Mr. America, or these days perhaps a “hero” inside the “cage” at one of these fake mixed martial arts macho battles.
It’s so obvious that the whole thing is fake, it’s hard to believe the MAGA faithful don’t see it too. But they don’t. Apparently, neither do the Republican senators whose charge it is to “advise and consent” so that disasters-in-the-open like Hegseth don’t happen.
But they cower in fear of Trump, because that’s what you do if you’re a Republican today, and they will put their stamp of approval on this manifestly unqualified, incompetent TV-ready hand puppet Trump wants over there across the river at the Pentagon so he can call him up and tell him to do things that no other Secretary of Defense in our history would ever do.
It is obvious there is nothing Democrats can do to stop this trainwreck. Standing athwart the tracks and yelling “NO!” will not work. Trump and the Republicans have the votes, and they are going to have their way with Washington D.C. come hell or high water, and unless I miss my guess, an actual flood of downtown Washington is probably among the disasters that will befall us before Trump’s four years are over.
What is next, you may wonder? Well, we have endured this sort of madness before: Vietnam was a truly horrible misuse of American military might, and that included, in Nixon’s attempts to fight the anti-war movement, huge abuses of civil rights, privacy, and real weaponization of the Department of Justice and FBI against those Nixon considered enemies. The misbegotten war on Iraq and the trip we took through the graveyard of empires that is Afghanistan were almost as bad. Young American men and women lost their lives once again in pursuit of policies that never had a chance of success and so should never have been pursued in the first place.
After the deluge comes the clean-up, I’m afraid. Trump’s abuse of our military with the likes of Hegseth leading the way will cause a huge correction to take place at some point in the future, and we will begin again. As happens in Washington, no one will pay for this madness. Look at Wolfowitz and Feith, the “architects” of the lies that begat the invasion of Iraq. Do you see them paying a price? They have sinecures at the evergreen think tanks that populate the banks of the Potomac. Even Dick Cheney has achieved a nearly inexplicable hero status simply because he opposed Trump and stood up for whatever passed for the “old values” of the Republican Party Trump has turned to ashes. But you need to remember that it was Cheney who oversaw the whole Iraq disaster and in the process went after Joe Wilson for telling the truth when he took the job of investigating Iraq’s so-called WMDs and ended his wife Valerie Plame’s CIA career in the process.
That it has always been difficult to find good guys in Washington does not excuse the fact that Trump is fully in mid-stride in placing actual bad guys everywhere he can in Washington, and he’s giving them the triggers to set off bombs every time he picks up the phone and demands “loyalty” from these fools who would not recognize real allegiance and dedication to duty if it came from one of their own children.
The one glimmer of hope I see is that these people always end up doing to themselves what they think they are doing to others. There is no place from which incompetence can rise. It just stays where it is as the consequences ripple out and do their damage. The MAGA functionaries Trump is planting like deadly nightshades all over Washington can’t save themselves by suddenly learning to do the right thing, because they don’t know what the right thing is. And Trump isn’t going to save them, because everything that happens from here on out will be somebody else’s fault, not his.
Get ready for finger-pointing and blame. There’s going to be a lot of it coming, and oh, how much fun it’s going to be to watch Trump and his MAGA faithful eat their own.
Now we’re going to try something really different: the raw, unfettered, incompetence of norm-busting ugliness.
Central Pennsyltucky
It’s hard to pick the worst, least qualified, or most dangerous of Donald Trump’s cabinet appointees, but his pick to head the Department of Defense, Pete Hegseth, is certainly up there. Hegseth is the least qualified DoD nominee perhaps ever. He has never led any major organization; when he did head up two right-wing vanity nonprofits, he was such a disastrous leader he was pushed out of both. He’s disrespectful of the same soldiers he claims to stand up for, arguing that women shouldn’t be in combat and arguing that a lot of people who serve are unqualified for their roles because of their race or gender. He doesn’t even have the kind of career-long military experience one might expect from an unconventional but still experienced hire. He argues that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, along with the basic rules of war, have hamstrung the military, turning it into a woke, equity-seeking institution instead of a cadre of warriors.
Here’s the thing: Hegseth is right that the US military has a readiness problem and, frankly, a standards problem. The military has in fact lowered its recruiting standards. But that isn’t to make the institution more diverse or to include more women or to meet some DEI goal. The military has lowered its standards because the American population has gotten less healthy — especially the middle- and working-class groups from which the military largely pulls. It’s lowered its standards because more young people are choosing college or other work over military service — because more young people, and especially middle-class young people, have opportunities outside of the military. And it’s lowered standards because the narrowed pool of people who are willing to serve often can’t meet basic academic requirements, and the military needs bodies — which means that the people they’re recruiting are sometimes particularly ill-suited for the kind of technological and technical work that a modern military requires.
Many of these problems do stem from policy, much but far from all of it Republican-made. The problem, though, of a military that has lowered its standards is not solved by radically lowering the standards for who runs it. Hegseth isn’t a symbol of a military returning to its warrior ethos. He’s the epitome of its lack of qualifications problem. He is, in fact, the very thing he rails against: A person elevated to a position he doesn’t deserve because of his identity, not his accomplishments.
Central Pennsyltucky
Put in that work, do the training, and practice hard every day and, eventually, you too can be an ungrateful jerk who resents deaf people just for existing.
Central Pennsyltucky
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I swear to fucking god, it never ceases to amaze me how stupid toxic masculinity makes you. Maybe it’s the steroids. Maybe it’s the testosterone injections. Maybe it’s being kicked in the balls by angry women too many times in high school. Who can really say? But clearly, subscribing to the whole alpha male dudebro he-man women hater’s club thing makes you a fucking moron.
How else can you explain this dick-wagging idiocy?
Bankers and financiers told the Financial Times that Donald Trump’s victory has emboldened those who chafed at “woke doctrine” and felt they had to self-censor or change their language to avoid offending younger colleagues, women, minorities or disabled people.
Said one banker: “I feel liberated. We can say ‘retard’ and ‘pussy’ without the fear of getting [sic] cancelled… it’s a new dawn.”
“Some Wall Streeters also feel able to embrace making money openly, without nodding to any broader social goals.”
Said another banker: “Most of us don’t have to kiss ass because, like Trump, we love America and capitalism.”
Right after the election, I wrote an article explaining that MAGAland was in for some sad times as they relearned some unpleasant lessons from 2016. After 2016, the racist white people of MAGAland thought they could run out into the streets and scream racial slurs at people with zero consequences.
That went very poorly for them.
They forgot all of that and they’re already repeating the mistakes of the past. Because MAGAts are very stupid people.
It had not occurred to me that this stupidity would extend to the business world. Aren’t they supposed to be smart? These are people who are making money hand over fist in Biden’s historic economy. But that’s just not good enough, is it? What’s the point of raking in billions if you can’t be a fucking asshole while doing it?
And that’s what we’re talking about here; being a dick for the sake of being a dick. There’s absolutely nothing about buying and selling stocks that requires you to treat women like dirt. You don’t need to be a racist fuckstick. You don’t need to sneer at the handicapped. Money is green and your job does not involve being hostile to marginalized groups. In fact, it’s an impediment to getting work done. Social friction is ALWAYS an impediment.
So why revel in being “free” to toss around slurs and sexually harass women?
Oh, right! Because that’s what it means to be “a manly man.”
Cool. Cool. So…enjoy those lawsuits and I’ll enjoy drinking your little manboy tears as you lose everything because you couldn’t keep your fucking hands off the girl in the mailroom.
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Because here’s the thing, buddy. I know you think Trump being president means all the rules are gone buuuuut that’s not how it works. TRUMP got away with it. You? You’re not Trump. When you sexually harass someone at work, she’s going to sue and if you were so stupid that you openly bragged about what a big dick alpha male you are? You’re going to lose. All of those discrimination laws are still on the books and the Republicans on the Supreme Court haven’t erased them…yet. They may get to that but I doubt it’s going to be in time to save your dumb ass.
“You honor, my client was groped by the defendant who called her a ‘dirty whore’ while she was at work.”
“She was asking for it! She was wearing a skirt and lipstick! Donald Trump is president and I felt liberated!”
“The plaintiff is awarded $30 million and the defendant is to be placed on the sexual offender registry.”
“You can’t cancel me! I’m an alpha male! This is Trump’s America! I have rights!!!!!”
The only part of this that these losers can make a legitimate claim to is making money without connecting to a broader social goal. Yeah, OK, sometimes you just want to do your job without flying a pride flag. Sure. But that’s not the only aspect of “woke” here.
There’s a difference between being pro-LGTBQ and being against discrimination. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: I don’t really care about the trans community. But not being personally invested in them doesn’t mean I’ll look away while they’re being persecuted and killed by the worst people in the country.
If your company can’t stand against something morally repulsive, then you are, by default, siding with it. You don’t have to love the Black community to agree that they shouldn’t be executed by the police. Silence is siding with the oppressor. Too woke? Fuck you. You know it’s true and that’s why you don’t want to hear it.
At the same time, “nodding to broader social goals” also means doing no harm, or at least limited harm, yourself. Yeah, making money is fine and all but if you’re doing it in a reckless and irresponsible way that destroys the lives of others? Don’t fucking cry your big sobby tears when the “woke mob” comes for you.
Did you HAVE to dump your toxic waste in the water supply? No.
Did you HAVE to buy up all the new homes in a city and create a housing crisis? No.
Did you HAVE to turn your social media platform into a haven for neo-Nazis? No. No, you fucking did not. You WANTED to do that because you thought it would put money in your pocket. That’s exactly the calculation Mark Zuckerberg is making as he, quite literally, turned off the programming that prevented disinformation from spreading on Facebook:
Behind the scenes, the company was also quietly dismantling a system to prevent the spread of misinformation. When the company announced on Jan. 7 that it would end its fact-checking partnerships, the company also instructed teams responsible for ranking content in the company’s apps to stop penalizing misinformation, according to sources and an internal document obtained by Platformer.
The result is that the sort of viral hoaxes that ran roughshod over the platform during the 2016 US presidential election — “Pope Francis endorses Trump,” Pizzagate, and all the rest — are now just as eligible for free amplification on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads as true stories.
Now, Zuckerberg is so rich that he can’t be canceled and no lawsuit will affect him personally. But this attitude of “we don’t have to care anymore” is apparently pervasive on the right. There’s a feeling that this is the “end of history.” That they’ve won and the Thousand-Year Reich permanent Republican majority is here to stay. Or rather, elections won’t matter anymore after this.
Sure is funny how many fascists and dictators have said that exact same thing in the past. They all died, most of them as bloody stains against a wall. Be a shame if Zuckerberg took the Hitler route in his little bunker in Hawaii…
Anyway, the point I’m making is that these dickwads don’t have to enrich themselves with excessive cruelty and viciously predatory tactics. But they like doing it and they resent being held accountable. That’s all the pushback against “woke” ever was, a mindless scream of rage at even the suggestion of consequences.
Now they think Trump winning frees them from all of that. But I guess being an alpha male means having a goldfish memory. The right made up the phrase “go woke go broke” but that rarely ever plays out in real life. They finally figured out how to make a boycott here and there work but mostly…not so much.
The left, on the other hand? We’re VERY good at boycotts. We’re exceptionally good at making people internet famous. We are the side of “Fuck Around, Find Out.” It’s why the right hates and fears us so much. There’s a cost for being a monster and we’re the ones that hand them the check. Does it always work? No. But it works enough that you’re playing Russian Roulette with your livelihood and reputation.
Is it really worth grabbing the pretty intern’s ass? Is it really worth dropping racial slurs in the office? Is it really worth being an alpha if you lose it all when you can just act like a normal human fucking being and keep getting rich, anyway? Why don’t you fuck around and find out, bro?
There are 292 days until the first Blue Wave and it starts in Virginia, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
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There’s a difference between being pro-LGTBQ and being against discrimination.
Central Pennsyltucky
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Back in the distant past of 2009, when I was but a wee little Ogre first starting to pay attention to politics, I spent a lot of time on Bob Cesca’s blog. One of the recurring columns at the time was “Creepy Robot of the Day” in which Bob would highlight the early efforts to build robots that could walk and, later, run.
The not-exactly-a-joke was that these were the precursors to the Terminators that would rise up and destroy humanity and/or eat the medicine of old people (they use it for fuel, you see).
I didn’t really pay it any mind because LOL the robots/drones from 2010 were hilariously slow and clunky. They were about as dangerous as a chihuahua with three teeth. I didn’t pay much attention to drones at all until a few years ago when I wrote a sort-of review of the movie “Outside the Wire” for The Banter.
While I was writing that article, I had a moment of clarity in which I realized that drones presented an imminent threat. Partly because it makes war cheap and “bloodless,” as in, we don’t have to send in our people to die.1 But mainly because military tech inevitably makes its way into the hands of our highly militarized police and they cannot be trusted with that kind of power.
They already abuse drones to spy on us without warrants. They keep trying to put drones in our communities to “protect” us. That will lead to drones with tasers, then guns. But that’s not a big deal, right? Robot dogs are kind of awkward and easy to get away from, yeah?
Not so much.
This is advertised as an “industrial” tool that can be used for search and rescue and construction but let’s not kid ourselves, this thing is a weapon. It’s made by the Chinese but just knowing it exists means American arms manufacturers will be making their own soon enough. Or we’ll just buy them from the Chinese, paint an American flag on it, and send it out loaded with guns to kill terrorists in the Middle East.
A decade after that, it will be rolling around the streets of New York and Los Angeles, keeping us “safe.” How “safe” you’ll be will depend on who programmed it.
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There’s a scene in Robocop 2 where Officier Murphy has been reprogrammed and he’s a hot mess. He can barely function. It was played for laughs but imagine the robot dog from the video programmed to treat Black people as more dangerous just because they’re Black. Or the mentally ill as hostile if they’re having an episode in public, regardless if they’re actually hostile or not. Police academies “program” flesh and blood cops to behave this way now. Silicon Valley programmers, today, are overwhelmingly white men who can’t seem to keep their racism out of their programming.
Are these the people you want plugging the parameters of what they consider “the public safety” into a machine that can run you down in seconds? And that’s assuming they’re actually TRYING to do this in good faith and not going for straight-up drone-enforced fascism.
Each generation of these machines will be more lethal, less expensive, and much more attractive to both the military and police. One of the things I try to do with my writing is look ahead and see where we are going. Sometimes it’s not super obvious. This, though? This may as well be a giant neon warning sign in the sky.
If we don’t want these things on our streets, killing us (and stealing our medicine for fuel), we need to start putting up a stink with our elected officials now because once the lobbyists start pouring their bribes into re-election coffers, that’s going to be the end of that.
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1
I wrote that article shortly before the Russian invasion of Ukraine turned into the first drone war and showed us the horrible future.
Central Pennsyltucky
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