“You kill people and break things for a living. You are not politically correct and don’t necessarily belong always in polite society.” I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t be particularly pleased to be called any of that. It appears neither would the top generals of the United States, when they remained deathly quiet during Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s 45-minute speech to General and Flag Officers in Virginia on Sept. 30.
The violent mindlessness suggested in this quote was not exclusive to it alone — the whole rant had a rather hostile attitude to it. Though this is pretty characteristic of Hegseth’s tonal style, this speech was especially frightening — and yet, still a little bit silly.
As he outlines in this address, Hegseth’s priorities in his new job seem to be reinstating the military as “anti-woke” by ridding it of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) programs, LGBTQ+ personnel — attacking in particular the transgender women of the military— eco-friendly military technology, and the voting privileges of “our enemies” in regard to military policy. Furthermore, he calls for stricter fitness standards for all the members of the military, declaring they all meet the “highest male standard,” and that restrictions on rules of engagement and treatment of troops be weakened for higher-ranking military officials.
In other words, he is focused on removing safe spaces for marginalized soldiers, making it harder for women to sign up, allowing military leaders to enact cruel, violent action to “enforce standards,” preventing soldiers from reporting offenses, and fear-mongering. He frames the previous administration and the “woke left” as ideologically oppressive, almost explicitly calling them “the enemy” and the origin of all the issues in the military. Hegseth wants to make the military white, male, cishet, and conservative by making it more difficult for those outside of that niche to enlist, and more unsafe, grueling, and terrifying to be marginalized in the military. He is preparing the soldiers that are left to have a trigger finger and to think of “the enemy” as subhuman, just as Trump deploys troops in American cities.
Hegseth is clear in his intentions, but dresses them up with buzzwords that make it easy to brush him off. The Trump administration has a real gift for saying very scary things in the most ridiculously disarming ways — remember to not get wrapped up in the phrasing. Keep questioning, keep thinking.