He'd been an underdog his whole life!

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2024

Lake Wobegon native fights back: Is it possible that Nominee Hegseth staged a bit of a rally on Thursday?

We almost sense that vibe. The nominee made a defiant, street-fighting speech to members of the press. You can see the tape, and read the transcript of his remarks, as part of this report by Mediaite:

Defiant Pete Hegseth Tells Reporters He Doesn’t Answer to Anyone But Trump, Senate, His Wife, and Jesus Christ

Former Fox News host Pete Hegseth gave a defiant statement to the press Thursday, telling them he only answers to President-elect Donald Trump , the Senate, his wife, and Jesus Christ.

Hegseth is currently embroiled in a variety of scandals surrounding allegations of sexual misconduct and alcohol abuse. Some senators have expressed hesitation supporting Hegseth through his confirmation, including Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA).

To our eye and ear, the defiant statement was cosmetically effective—and this morning, none other than Donald J. Trump gave the nominee a somewhat surprising re-endorsement in a Truth Social post.

Is it possible that Hegseth is regaining ground? We have no idea. That said, Carlos Lozada describes the contents of Hegseth's books in an essay in today's New York Times. A few weeks ago, Jonathan Chait performed the same service in an essay for the Atlantic.

We haven't read Hegseth's books. We can't be sure just what we'd think if we read them ourselves.

That said, Lozada offers this account of the nominee's latest book, The War on Warriors. We apologize for one of these words:

Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth See the Same Enemies

[...]

Throughout his latest presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly warned Americans about “the enemy within,” an amorphous collection of left-wing ideologues who he said pose a greater danger to the country than Russia or China. Sometimes he was specific, calling out Democratic politicians like Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff. At other moments he spoke broadly of “radical left lunatics” and “very smart, very vicious people.”

Hegseth invokes the same concept in his recent book, “The War on Warriors.” He is eager to wage war against that enemy within. He believes that the battle has already been joined—and that his side is losing.

“America today is in a cold civil war,” Hegseth asserts in the book, which was published in June. “Our soul is under attack by a confederacy of radicals.” While his generation was fighting wars abroad, he writes, “we allowed America’s domestic enemies at home to gobble up cultural, political and spiritual territory.”

[...]

Hegseth does not use the term “enemies” as hyperbole for ideological rivals or competing policy visions. He reminds readers that his oath of service is to protect the Constitution “against all enemies—both foreign and domestic. Not political opponents, but real enemies. (Yes, Marxists are our enemies.)”

In particular, he calls out politicians such as Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and President Biden for manipulating weak, foolish generals, such as Wesley Clark, Mark Milley and Lloyd Austin. “This unholy alliance of political ideologues and Pentagon pussies has left our warriors without real defenders in Washington,” Hegseth writes. (Yes, his writing is packed with tough-guy insults and expletives; his favorite weapon is the F-bomb, which he deploys against Biden, Milley and others.)

Lozada won't repeat the F-bomb; he leaves the P-word in. At the age of 44, the very angry nominee seems to think that both these words are part of civil discourse.

Regarding the call to defeat the Marxists, we've often mentioned the way the Fox & Friends Weekend crew can spend a substantial amount of time spotting all the Marxists and Communists, with the pagans sometimes thrown in. This sort of thing never goes away, and neither does the high degree of ideological certainty behind such ruminations.

If Lozada and Chait can be believed, it can sometimes get worse in Hegseth's books. Here's an excerpt from Chait's essay for the Atlantic:

Donald Trump’s Most Dangerous Cabinet Pick

[...]

[E]vidence 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. Hegseth is not just hyperventilating about the 1619 Project, Howard Zinn, or other left-wing fads, as conservatives often do. Instead, he argues that the system’s design is a Marxist scheme with roots going back to the founding of the republic. The deist heresies of Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, he writes, laid the groundwork to implant communist thought into the school system. Then, “American Progressives in the late 1800s blended the idea of Marxist government with aspects from the Social Gospel and the belief in an American national destiny in order to make Marxism more palatable to Americans.”

The nefarious plan to turn America communist involves steps that appear anodyne to the untrained eye. “Yes, our modern social sciences—like ‘political science,’ previously known as ‘politics,’ and ‘social studies,’ previously known as individual disciplines like ‘history, economics, geography, and philosophy’—are byproducts of Marxist philosophy,” he writes. “Let that sink in: the manner in which we study politics, history, and economics in American schools—public and private—today is the product of Marxists. That was always the plan, and it worked.” Hegseth will no longer sit back and allow communist indoctrination to sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids.

We haven't read these books ourselves. That said, as on Fox & Friends Weekend, so too here. It sounds like there's a Communist, a Marxist or even a socialist under every bed.

Yesterday, we told you that we're inclined to feel sorry for Hegseth. Today, that impulse holds. And no, we haven't read the books, but we've seen the author on Fox & Friends Weekend, and we continue to wonder about the source of all the furious self-assurance and all the sturm und drang.

Before the weekend is through, we'll link you to a report about Hegseth's religious affiliation. It's a report we found quite striking, although its journalistic blocking and tackling may seem to be a bit loose.

Where did all the anger come from, along with all the certainty? We feel sorry for "grown men" who, at age 44, are still tossing the P-bomb around. We feel sorry for the loss of human potential suggested by such antique swagger.

One final point:

Yesterday, we described the demographics of the Minnesota community where Hegseth got his start. It reminded us of the Minnesota towns Garrison Keillor used to poke fun at—the towns "where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average."

The Forest Lake of Hegseth's youth sounded a great deal like that. Just for the record, he was valedictorian of Forest Lake Area High School, then headed off to Princeton.

It almost sounds like the nominee grew up with a few advantages! For that reason, it's somewhat surprising to read this passage from Chait's review of his books:

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...

Hegseth’s demand for greater respect grows out of his belief that he personally succeeded in the face of forbidding odds. “I had been an underdog my whole life,” he writes. “I persisted. I worked my ass off.” But the woke military, he complains, doesn’t reward that kind of individual merit and grit. Instead, it has grown so obsessed with diversity that it promotes unqualified minorities and allows women in combat...

He'd been an underdog his whole life, the Lake Wobegon native alleged. He'd been condemned to spend four years at Princeton, then to land a job with Bear Stearns!

No, we haven't read the books. It's always possible that the quoted passage would seem different in context. Yesterday, we wanted to close our whimsical piece with that passage, but we couldn't remember where we'd seen it and we couldn't Google it up.

We feel sorry for this nominee. Also, we hope his nomination fails, and that he someday calms the F down. 

Is it possible that yesterday's fiery speech won him some points with Donald J. Trump? We don't have the slightest idea. Like everyone else in Blue America, we're condemned to wait and to watch.