The Most Dangerous Nominee
Partha Nag
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Dont for a moment think Matt Gaetz is the worst nominee,
From the Atlantic, ( Excerpts)
Hegseth complains that society no longer gives veterans like him their proper measure of deference. “Being a veteran no longer demands respect of the coastal elites or reverence from large swaths of the public,” he writes—an observation that will sound strange to anybody who has ever attended a football game or listened to a speech by a politician from either party.
The treatment of women by Hegseth specifically happens to be the subject of a recently disclosed police report detailing an alleged sexual assault of a woman at a 2017 political conference. Hegseth denies the allegation and says that the encounter, which took place while he was transitioning between his second and third wives, was consensual. He paid the alleged victim an undisclosed sum in return for her signing a nondisclosure agreement.)
n any case, evidence of Hegseth’s extremism does not need to be deduced by interpreting his tattoos. The proof is lying in plain sight. In his three most recent books,
Hegseth puts forward a wide range of familiarly misguided ideas: vaccines are “poisonous”; climate change is a hoax (they used to warn about global cooling, you know); George Floyd died of a drug overdose and was not murdered; the Holocaust was perpetrated by “German socialists.”
Where Hegseth’s thinking begins venturing into truly odd territory is his argument, developed in Battle for the American Mind, that the entire basic design of the U.S. public education system is the product of a century-long, totally successful communist plot.
Fire any general who has carried water for Obama and Biden’s extraconstitutional and agenda-driven transformation of our military.”
In The War on Warriors, Hegseth makes plain that he considers the very idea of “rules of war” just more woke nonsense. “Modern war-fighters fight lawyers as much as we fight bad guys,” he writes. “Our enemies should get bullets, not attorneys.” He repeatedly disparages Army lawyers (“jagoffs”), even claiming that their pointless rules are “why America hasn’t won a war since World War II.” (Ideally, the secretary of defense would be familiar with historical episodes such as the Gulf War.)
American Crusade calls for the “categorical defeat of the Left,” with the goal of “utter annihilation,” without which “America cannot, and will not, survive.” Are the Crusades just a metaphor? Sort of, but not really:
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“Our American Crusade is not about literal swords, and our fight is not with guns. Yet.” (Emphasis—gulp—his.)
Hegseth’s idea of illegitimate behavior by the domestic enemy is quite expansive. Consider this passage, recalling his time advocating for the Iraq War: “While I debated these things in good faith, the Left mobilized. Electing Obama, railroading the military, pushing women in combat—readiness be damned. The Left has never fought fair.”
The most remarkable phrase there is “electing Obama.” Hegseth’s notion of unfair tactics used by the left includes not only enacting administrative policies that he disagrees with, but the basic act of voting for Democrats. The inability or unwillingness to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate political opposition likely endeared Hegseth to Trump, who shares the trait.
A defense secretary with a tenuous grip on reality, who can’t differentiate foreign enemies from domestic political opponents, and who seems to exist in a state of permanent hysteria is a problem that the United States has never had to survive.
The main question I was looking to answer when I started reading Hegseth’s collected works was whether he would follow a Trump command to shoot peaceful protesters. After having read them, I don’t think he would even wait for the order.
About the Author
Jonathan Chait is a staff writer at The Atlantic.