Pete Hegseth, Apostle of the Neanderthal Revival
His views/behavior were well known before nearly every Republican Senator voted for him...The Party owns *all* his corruption, cruelty & incompetence
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By David Shuster
By all rights, the modern world should have consigned the medieval mind to the trash heap of history – along with phrenology, witch dunking, and bloodletting by leech.
And yet, out of calcified garbage emerged our U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Holding a flaming-incense burner of theocratic lunacy like Torquemada in a tactical vest.
Earlier this week, Hegseth, who this year swore to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America, took to the sewer of social media to share a video. It was of two-wild-eyed pastors in mid-ecclesiastical spasm, calling for the repeal of women’s suffrage.
Their message? That women should not vote. They should instead submit themselves to the lordship of their husbands—like chattel blessed by Christ.
Hegseth, never one to miss a chance to pander to the howling fundamentalist fringe, affixed to it the Orwellian-like slogan: “All of Christ for All of Life.”
What’s next? “All of Paul for All of Congress”?
The fact this screed came from a clique of Christian nationalists is not surprising. These are people who see the Enlightenment as a historical blunder, and who eye democracy with the suspicion of a person forced to use indoor plumbing for the first time.
But this screed was amplified by the man who oversees the most powerful military on Earth. Who holds in his hands the lives—at the very least—of hundreds of millions of human beings.
And it is a symptom of a deeper rot, a cancer in the brain of our republic.
Hegseth, an eternal frat boy, proven drunk, alleged rapist, and serial adulterer turned holy crusader, now views himself as a warrior for Western Civilization. But his definition seems to rest not on the principles of Athens or Philadelphia, but the musty hierarchies of 14th-century feudalism and Baptist basement Bible studies.
Hegseth’s boozy vision is not one of liberty, equality, or even tolerable governance. It is a demonic conception of a divine sausage-fest where men lead, women perpetually kneel (including those who are not your wife) and voting is a masculine rite.
This is not “traditional values.” It is not “faith in the public square.”
It is brute, unreconstructed, low-IQ misogyny dressed up in its Sunday worst. It is a sledgehammer swung at the Nineteenth Amendment by a man too drunk with power (and, one suspects, more than his fair share of whiskey) and too ill-read in history to understand its implications.
The same man who has dropped bombs and missiles abroad while simultaneously posting the attack plans on an unsecured Signal chat, now wants to wage holy war at home against the Constitution. And our wives, daughters, sisters, grandmothers, friends, neighbors and, yes, citizens—in case he’s forgotten—of his own country.
One wonders what the women of our armed forces—those who have lost blood and limbs for this country while proudly donning its uniform—must think of a Defense Secretary who sees them as electoral accidents with disposable rights.
One shudders to imagine Hegseth’s ideal America. Likely a Christo-fascist, plantation-state run by beer bellied, boozed-up patriarchs and their dutifully silent Stepford wives.
One can picture Pete—cocktail in hand, third wife, a Fox News producer he was dating while still married to his second wife, on the sofa sitting next to him—cheering like it was a college football game for the Sons of Jacob as he watched each new episode of The Handmaid's Tale.
Men like Hegseth who think women should “obey” their husbands are nothing if not habitual hypocrites.
And yet this Hegseth horror show is not drinking moonshine in a dirt-floored shack in the Deep South. He is not writing manifestos in a heavily fortified survivalist bunker in Montana.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegeth, with his “Deus Vult” (God wills it) tattoo and Christian nationalist war cry, is publicly promoting his neanderthal fantasies as a member of one of the most important positions in the Trump administration’s cabinet.
There was a time when any man who suggested stripping voting rights from women would have been removed from the public square, pelted with eggs, and shamed into a rightfully-earned oblivion.
In the Trump era, such a douchebag—one removed from his National Guard duty to protect President Biden’s inauguration, because his superiors were so concerned about his extreme views—is invited to anchor weekend shows on Fox News.
And then handed the keys to the Pentagon. Perhaps it’s time that Democrats and all decent people stand up and aggressively say enough.
Pete Hegseth has applauded a sermon whose theme is the political extinction of more than half our nation. He has resurrected the darkest impulses of our country’s past, instead of speaking out for the democracy for which he’s sworn a solemn oath to protect and defend.
This is no innocuous theological debate. It is a direct salute to regression, a delinquent middle finger to every woman in America, and a dagger in the back of modern humanity.
Pete Hegseth is beyond despicable and disgusting.
David Shuster is an Emmy award winning broadcast journalist who is best known for his work at NBC News and as an anchor MSNBC. He is a contributor to Blue Amp Substack and co-host of our weekly show (Thursdays, 2pm et, on Substack), “Amped Up w/ Cliff Schecter.”
Another data point to illustrate how completely we are circling the drain....
Hegseth is just another example of the completely unhinged nut jobs who make up this absolutely corrupt regime. "Everything Trump Touches Dies" and so does everything else his sycophants touch. They are a CANCER that must be removed or America will fall...........