The Dark Satire of Pete Hegseth’s Quantico Speech

Maybe Dr. Strangelove—the best satire that ever was—comes closest to capturing what transpired in Quantico on September 30. “God keen,” says Gen. Jack D. Ripper, the madman liable for thrusting the world into its nuclear demise. “We are going to prevail in peace and freedom from worry and in true well being by way of the purity and essence of our pure fluids. God bless you all.”

That line saved returning to me as I watched the newly minted Secretary of Warfare Pete Hegseth, the Princeton Tory shock jock turned gung-ho infantryman turned disgraced right-wing nonprofiteer turned interchangeable Fox Information dunce and reckless axe thrower turned sexual-assault-allegation collector turned faux Very Severe Statesman. Citing Jesus on the Golden Rule (“do unto others that which you’d have performed unto your self”) to a room stuffed with generals throughout a decadent empire’s decline doesn’t, in itself, represent darkish comedy. It’s that such a fallen, flailing specimen as Pete Brian Hegseth invoking the sacred instruction rivals Stanley Kubrick at his peak.

Not like Ripper, Hegseth by no means spoke of the purity and essence of our pure fluids, however his speech stank of the identical, self-emasculating worry. A lot of the diatribe centered on the secretary’s obsession with restoring what he known as a “gender-neutral age-normed male customary.” For him, this implies no extra tolerating the “beardos.” That’s, the Sikhs, Muslims, or Jews who’ve been allowed waivers for spiritual functions. In addition to Black Individuals who’ve been equally waived because of a medical situation that makes common shaves insufferable.

At occasions the secretary’s prissiness appeared in earnest, and I imagine he’s satisfied himself that a part of the rationale the USA misplaced Kabul is as a result of too many troops had facial hair. Nevertheless it’s unimaginable to not marvel if he additionally has extra nefarious motives. Proper earlier than declaring a navy with out “Nordic pagans,” Hegseth famous with out clarification the obtrusive exception of the Particular Forces who get to proceed basking of their undisciplined methods. If scruffiness and navy competence are at odds, how can the navy’s most competent troopers be so stubbly? Or is the secretary trying to choose for traits aside from competence? Nor did he clarify how his go-to examples for manly warfighters, from the Spartans to the Crusaders, get a move. They weren’t precisely the clean-shaven sorts—although they weren’t Sikhs, Muslims, Jews, or Black Individuals both.

Contradictions abound within the life and occasions of Pete Hegseth. An inordinate portion of his harangue centered on fats troops, fats generals, and fats admirals. He waxed romantic on the return of accountability, advantage, and excessive requirements. On the necessity to reject silly leaders for certified and succesful ones: “We simply must be trustworthy. We now have to say with our mouths what we see with our eyes, to simply inform it like it’s in plain English, to level out the plain issues proper in entrance of us. That’s what leaders should do. We can not go one other day with out instantly addressing the plank in our personal eye, with out addressing the issues in our personal instructions and in our personal formations.”

Then the Jesus-quoting, hypocrisy-denouncing secretary welcomed to the stage Donald J. Trump.

These contradictions gesture at one thing extra sinister. And for all their “plain English” speak, males like Hegseth usually lapse into euphemism. Amid his putative requires restorative self-discipline and requirements, our self-anointed redeemer demanded a curious set of relaxations: “No extra frivolous complaints. No extra nameless complaints. No extra repeat complainants. No extra smearing reputations. No extra infinite ready. No extra authorized limbo. No extra sidetracking careers. No extra strolling on eggshells. After all, being a racist has been unlawful in our formation since 1948. The identical goes for sexual harassment. Each are mistaken and unlawful. These sorts of infractions will likely be ruthlessly enforced. However telling somebody to shave or get a haircut or to get in form or to repair their uniform or to indicate up on time, to work exhausting, that’s precisely the sort of discrimination we would like.”

Once more, it’s conceivable the niminy-piminy secretary simply actually likes correct grooming and match males. However as somebody with an extended monitor document of being accused of constructing bigoted statements and abusing girls, together with by shut colleagues and relations, it might be good if Hegseth would—on this occasion—inform it like it’s: He’s not calling for self-discipline however domination, and of the kind he’s been getting away with for years.

Likewise for the secretary’s pronouncement that “silly guidelines of engagement” are actually over. Hegseth was too coy to inform us which particular guidelines would now not be enforced, however his current announcement that the butchers at Wounded Knee would retain their Medals of Honor speaks for itself. So does his half in convincing Trump to pardon or grant clemency to the battle criminals Clint Lorance, who ordered his males to fireplace on unarmed Afghans; Mathew L. Golsteyn, who executed a captive; and Eddie Gallagher, who stabbed a teen prisoner to dying and posed with the physique. Or his cheering on of Trump’s menace to drag a web page from the Taliban playbook and destroy Iran’s heritage websites. Taken collectively, Hegseth’s plea for self-discipline collapses into its reverse—a requirement for wanton violence and mayhem.

For the naïve listener, Hegseth may come throughout as a bona fide if cranky traditionalist. That is absolutely what he’s betting on. In making his case for returning the “Division of Woke” to the Division of Warfare, he insisted he’s simply having us return to the great ol’ days of Gen. George Marshall and Warfare Secretary Henry Stimson. Trump expressed a associated sentiment amid his ramblings when he invoked the legacies of Andrew Jackson, Ulysses Grant, Dwight Eisenhower, Chester Nimitz, and Curtis LeMay. Later, the president summoned the “unyielding energy of [Gen. George] Patton, [Gen. Omar] Bradley, and the good Gen. Douglas MacArthur.”

None of those males had been leftists. Most had been some number of conservative, they usually all ended their careers with super blood on their fingers. However what’s most notable about this listing is its disharmony. For one, the better variety of these figures despised each other. Diehard racists and jingoes like Jackson, Patton, MacArthur, and LeMay throw the relative cosmopolitanism of the others in stark reduction. Grant abhorred the Confederacy and stood in solidarity with Radical Republicans and Black Reconstructionists. Marshall was at residence with New Deal liberals and opposed escalating tensions with China, the founding of Israel (which he warned would flip the Center East into an intergenerational firestorm), and the Dutch invasion of Indonesia that accompanied the tip of World Warfare II. Eisenhower affirmed the New Deal compromise, furthered the reason for civil rights, and railed towards what he coined the military-industrial advanced. Eisenhower, together with Nimitz, deplored the usage of atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and each grew to become critics of the nuclear arms race. Moreover, these leaders welcomed the very postwar, worldwide order—from the United Nations to worldwide regulation—that the present administration is now set on destroying.

Gen. Omar Bradley as soon as warned, “Ours is a world of nuclear giants and moral infants. We all know extra about battle than we find out about peace, extra about killing than we find out about dwelling.” It’s exhausting to think about a extra becoming description of Hegseth’s worldview. A lot has been written about Hegseth’s tattoo that reads “Deus Vult,” a Latin phrase that interprets as “God wills it.” The phrase functioned as a battle cry throughout the Crusades, and Christian nationalists have taken up the decision. Hegseth himself has written a e-book known as American Campaign, which praises the unique merchandise. So possibly he and his colleagues are traditionalists in spite of everything. However their custom harks all the way in which again to Holy Warfare, to essentially the most emphatic exaltation of violence as advantage. “Nobody desires battle right here,” Hegseth instructed the gang, “however we love peace—we love peace for our fellow residents.” But the peace he describes is the peace of conquest, the quiet that follows wreck. It’s the sort of peace his commander in chief had in thoughts when he subsequently proposed turning our cities into “coaching grounds” for the navy. Each converse of peace with the identical bloody-mindedness as one in every of Kubrick’s most demented creations. An odd love certainly.