On MMMWA: Making the Male Military White Again for dear leader

 

A few years ago, this was a US Army recruiting poster. While I'm not much of a fan of armies, I kind of liked it when I passed it on the street.

 

Fintan O'Toole, an Irish journalist writing in the New York Review of Books, offers some insights into the role of the military cosplay and reality in the Trump regime. 

... For now at least, the primary goal of Trump’s deployment of troops on the streets of Los Angeles is not the violent suppression of dissent. It is the remaking of the army itself. Trump is instructing the troops on how they must think of themselves and of the nature of the country they are pledged to defend. 

 

[The TV-jabberer who Trump installed as Secretary of Defense Pete] Hegseth writes in his best seller The War on Warriors (2024) that he “didn’t want this Army anymore.” This army is the one that actually exists: of its 1.3 million active-duty troops, 230,000 are women, and more than 350,000 are Black. 

Trump appointed Hegseth to make many of these soldiers invisible. The War on Warriors is subtitled Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free. It offers “to recover a true vision of the value of strong men.” These are “red-blooded American men,” men who “respect other strong, skilled, dedicated men” and not “men who are pretending to be women, or vice versa.” ...

Strange posturing from a guy who installed a makeup studio at the Pentagon to prep for his TV appearances, but there we are.

The Trumpian reimagining of the US Army has nothing to do with fighting foreign wars. It is all about reasserting the innately white and male nature of America. According to Hegseth, the military’s “key constituency is normal men”: “Normal dudes have always fought, and won, our wars.” His vision, as he explains it, is to restore not just the value of strong men but also “the importance of normality.” ...

In this regard, putting troops on the streets of Los Angeles is a training exercise for the army, a form of reorientation. Soldiers are being retrained for loyalty to the president rather than the Constitution. They are meanwhile becoming accustomed to confronting that deviant and anomalous America. ... Getting soldiers used to following illegal orders and to disregarding their “duty to disobey” is a big step toward autocracy.

O'Toole sees Trump as a would-be dictator trapped in a contradiction. 

As his dithering over whether to bomb Iran showed, Trump has a problem: fascism bends inexorably toward war, but much of his appeal lies in his promise to end America’s foreign conflicts. 

Part of the solution is to mount one-off spectaculars: B-2 stealth bombers dropping 30,000-pound bunker busters. 

The other part is to repatriate the idea of boots on the ground. Like iPhones and pharmaceuticals, that kind of war will no longer be made abroad. It will be manufactured all over America. 

Let's try to get rid of our tinpot Mussolini before he blows all of us up. His Iranian adventure was bad enough. We face a test.

Jumping jacks can't replace incompetence

One wonders how members of the US military react to the bellicose, largely incompetent Trump regime. A friend who is in the National Guard reports that not much has changed during their stints of service, but that co-workers feel hopeful that at least their immediate leadership won't be doing anything illegal or immoral.

However reporting suggests there is lots of evidence that the TV-lightweight Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is not inspiring confidence in the ranks. They weren't looking for a poseur, an actor playing at being a tough guy. 

Military.com covers the armed forces with journalistic integrity. It reports that Hegseth is no inspiraton: 

Instead of the standard suit and tie, he regularly appears in khaki hiking pants, rolled-up sleeves that reveal tattooed forearms and occasionally a trucker hat emblazoned with an American flag. He often posts videos and photos of himself working out with troops.

But that carefully curated image -- so different from past defense secretaries -- may not be totally landing with the rank and file. Interviews with service members and a review of hundreds of social media posts on message boards suggest the image the Pentagon chief is trying to project is seen by some as overly manufactured and desperate for affirmation.

"He seems too preoccupied with his personal brand," one Army captain told Military.com on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation. "This is the 'vet bro' Pentagon."

Across military Reddit forums and enlisted meme pages, Hegseth has become a regular target of satire, often referred to with nicknames such as "DUI Hire," "Whiskey Leaks" and "Kegseth." The references allude to past controversies, including alleged alcohol abuse and an incident in which he shared sensitive Yemen attack plan details in an unsecured Signal group chat that included a journalist.

After the shit shows that were the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns, the military has struggled to professionalize and diversify its personnel. The Trump boys want to go back to the good old days of Abu Ghraib and no constraints from the laws of war. And Hegseth seems to yearn for a military mostly of white men that does not exist. In 2019, 17.5 percent of enlisted personnel were women; a little over 30 percent were non-white. (Some overlap there, obviously.) And he's kicking out perhaps some 15,000 successfully serving trans folk.

Hegseth is not in tune with the force he is supposed to lead:

Many who spoke with Military.com remarked that the military, especially the rank and file, don't have time to be focused on the kind of policy moves that Hegseth is making. They are more concerned with their day-to-day lives in the military -- an area that Hegseth and his team have largely been silent on in their view.

"It's a lot of 'look at me' stuff. He has said nothing about quality of life," Rob Evans, an Army veteran whose Yelp-style app Hots & Cots collects reviews of housing and dining facilities on military bases. "If he's for the troops, why has he not touched on quality-of-life challenges, whether that's food or housing?"

... Ultimately, several service members told Military.com they feel Hegseth's idea of what a defense secretary is expected to do doesn't line up with what the job actually requires of him.

"He'd make a great company commander," one officer said. "But that's not the job he's in right now."

Meanwhile, online, one Reddit member who is widely known on the Navy’s forum as a recently retired Navy captain, recently wrote that Hegseth and others in the Trump administration “are not the leaders we need or deserve.”

“If you are left leaning, Hegseth only serves to poke at and antagonize you. If you are right leaning, he only serves to embarrass and demoralize you with his incompetence,” they added.

Hegseth's antics are not a hit with people who take their missions seriously.

What a country!

Air Force General Charles Q. Brown has just been elevated to chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the nation's highest military officer. The video, from back in 2020, shares his reaction to the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter uprising. 

I never thought I'd be posting something like this here -- in part, I think, because I never thought a U.S. general would be sharing what Brown shares here. And most certainly, if he did, that he would then continue to rise in his career. 

But he has risen. As he says, he's "living in two worlds." I assume he still is. What a country!

Generational sea change

This old queer feminist never thought I'd see this.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby on Monday passionately defended the Pentagon’s policy of paid leave and travel reimbursement for abortions, calling it the right thing to do for Americans who volunteer to serve in the U.S. military. 

... “It can have an extremely, extremely significant impact on our recruiting and our retention,” he added. “It’s just the right darn thing to do for people who raise their hand and agree to serve in the military.”

... “When you sign up and you make that contract, you have every right to expect that the organization — in this case, the military — is going to take care of you and they’re going to take care of your family. And make sure that you can serve with dignity and respect no matter who you are or who you love or how you worship or don’t,” he said.

“Our policies, whether they’re diversity, inclusion, and equity or whether they’re about transgender individuals who qualify physically and mentally to serve to be able to do it with dignity,” he added. “Or whether it’s about female service members, one in five, or female family members being able to count on the kinds of health care and reproductive care specifically that they need to serve.”

If you are going to have an all-volunteer army, you have to pay attention to the attitudes of the generation you are trying to recruit. The US military knows this. Most likely life in the military isn't as welcoming of the culture of young people as Mr. Kirby might insist, but reality forces change and improvements.

Pollster Celinda Lake and filmmaker Mac Heller (gift article) explain a great deal about how Gen Z coming of age will change us all. 

Gen Z voters say their motivation is not a party or candidate. It is, instead, strong passion on one or more issues — a much more policy-driven approach than the more partisan voting behavior of their elders. ...

For Republicans, the message is obvious: Listen to the voices of this soon-to-be-dominant group of voters as you formulate your policies on climate, abortion, guns, health care, inclusion and everything else. Unlike some older voters, they are listening to what you say — and to how you say it. Change your language and style from the unmitigated male id of “Never Back Down” and “Where Woke Goes to Die” to words of community, stewardship, sharing and collaboration. That’s the new patriotism, and young voters believe that approach will solve problems more effectively than what they’ve seen over the past two decades. ...

There are stark messages for Democrats too. Meet young voters where they are: on social media, not cable news. Make your messages short, funny and somehow sarcastic yet authentic and earnest at the same time. Your focus should be issues first, issues second, candidates third and party identity never.

This is the United States that is ... and the country we are becoming. Kind of scary the military understands this before so many politicians, but I am thankful for any clear sightedness this embattled nation can muster.