Trump has a real masculinity issue. After running his campaign on how tough and bro-like he is, he is stuck with two problems. One seems silly and is only relevant to his ego and his belief that he has to be the physically toughest dog in the pack; the other shows that he is a reprehensible coward who lied and used his daddy’s money to get out of military service when many of his fellow citizen’s were drafted and came back from Vietnam in coffins.
I guess the size of your genitalia is important to you if you worry that a small one makes you less manly. Or maybe you subconsciously worry that it is a sign of your cowardice and total absorbtion in yourself to the detriment of any patriotism or sense of equality with your fellow citizens. Lots of people had moral reasons to not want to go war and possibly be killed. Our future president didn’t have any of those compunctions; he just didn’t want to put himself in harm’s way, comparing his lack of STDs to his own Vietnam. He belittled those who went for not being able to exploit the system. 58,220 of his fellow Americans died since they didn’t have the luxury of buying their way out.
Does it matter? Or is the new masculinity so shallow that cowardice, disparaging veterans, and draft-dodging are acceptable, especially if your bro is well endowed and treats women as objects to be used, whether they like it or not (listen to the tape)? Are sexual assault and a multi-million-dollar judgment part of this new male culture? Is demeaning dead soldiers and sailors as suckers and losers something to be proud of? Is disdain for injured veterans OK because they don’t look good in photo-ops? Is it a sign of male superiority to make fun of disabled people, or to suggest that someone captured and held and regularly tortured is not acceptable to you as a hero? Is it a sign of manly culture to not honor dead Americans in a French cemetery because your hair would be mussed up if you had to travel there?
Trump used to love “his generals” when he appointed lots of them to various senior posts during his first term, bragging how they looked like they came from central casting. Then something happened: His appointees were not only competent, they were patriotic. They resigned and described their boss as a threat to democracy and a potential fascist. Apparently his new bros don’t seem to care about policy or the reality of his first term but are also are obsessed with appearances and have no care about substance.
Trump’s new candidate for secretary of defense, Peter Hegseth, has been a longtime supporter of Trump and conservative causes. He had been describe as a Christian nationalist and has written a book claiming that America is not really a democracy but a constitutional republic and our founding fathers did not want us to be a democracy. He has a white supremicist tattoo and was removed from a list of volunteer National Guardsmen for an assignment to guard the inauguration of Biden. He has written a best-selling book decrying the verdicts of military courts in finding certain soldiers and sailors guilty of war crimes for, among other things, arbitrarily killing civilians. The cases were tried with numerous witnesses describing the conduct. The cases were reviewed repeatedly in the chain of command, but our new secretary-to-be thought the verdicts were improper. Trump pardoned three of them after months of lobbying by Hegseth, who never revealed his contacts with Trump on his FOX News broadcasts.
Hegseth has defended those who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, as patriots and has regularly opposed and belittled NATO. He has said that the Russian invasion of Ukraine pales in comparison to “wokeness” and crime. He fervently believes “Islamists” intend to conquer the West and that secularists intend to destroy our nation’s Judeo-Christian roots. The candidate to oversee our military has views directly antithetical to American values and policy.
Hegseth particularly doesn’t like the diversity initiatives in the military, as well as women in the combat arms. He thinks Charles Brown, the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs (also the first Black chairman), should be fired for endorsing the diversity programs (as should all senior officers who did the same) and infers that General Brown would not have gotten the job if he wasn’t Black. Just as an aside, as a TV commentator, Hegseth also praised Trump’s comments after the riots in Charlottesville, Va., when he said there were good people on both sides.
How this troglodyte could be confirmed is beyond me, but he is danger both to the United States and to the world. I think his main qualification for Trump is that he looked good on FOX News and agrees with Trump’s wildest fantasies of how a dictator should be able to govern and act with no restraints. This time, Trump does not have “his generals” to try to rein him in. Hegseth’s self-proclaimed religious messianic view of the world is terrifying, especially coupled with the power and influence he can exert on Trump.
