Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who we assume gets incandescently angry any time someone refuses to call him the “secretary of war,” is continuing his rampage through the American military. In his latest move, he’s killed the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services.
Because you are probably not a misogynistic rage baby who failed upward, you probably don’t really have any issue with a decades-old committee whose purpose is to encourage more women to enlist and to expand the role of women in the military. But Hegseth does, which is why we now have to endure DOD flack Kingsley Wilson whining that the committee was “advancing a divisive feminist agenda that hurt combat readiness, while Secretary Hegseth has focused on advancing uniform, sex-neutral standards across the Department.”
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The committee was created back in 1951 by noted woke social justice warrior George C. Marshall when he was secretary of defense. Sure, the five-star general was instrumental in winning World War II, but he probably lacked a true warrior ethos, amirite?
Look, Hegseth is always going to figure out a way to pretend that what he’s doing is about meritocracy when all he’s really doing is fueling misogyny and racism. The entire Trump administration is pockmarked by guys like him.
Look at Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, for example. Along with Hegseth, these are three people who, in a normal administration, wouldn’t even be allowed to be in charge of a bake sale for fear they’d light the building on fire.
It’s a faux-meritocracy where you remove everyone except the most pudding-headed and thuggish white straight dudes from the equation and then just say that it was just all a totally neutral assessment and these folks are the cream who rose to the top.
This follows Hegseth axing the Women, Peace, and Security Program back in April, because he said efforts to increase women’s participation in conflict prevention roles are “yet another woke divisive/social justice/Biden initiative that overburdens our commanders and troops — distracting from our core task: WAR-FIGHTING.”
Hell yes, brother! Which ridiculous president ever even authorized this program, anyway? That would be Donald Trump, in 2017. Watching Trump’s second-term appointees trash Trump’s first-term efforts seems apt, honestly, because we’ve fallen so far even when compared to that awful first term.
Of course, Hegseth doesn’t reserve all his ire for hating women but pretending that it’s “neutral.” He also really hates Black people, hence his new “neutral” grooming standards that male soldiers must be clean-shaven, except for a mustache. Soldiers could previously get medical waivers for conditions like pseudofolliculitis barbae—aka razor bumps—but now must participate in a medical treatment plan. If, after a year, the soldier still needs a shaving waiver, the military will involuntarily separate him—aka throw him out.
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You know where this is going, right? Some 60% of Black men suffer from painful razor bumps and ingrown hair when forced to shave frequently, a rate far higher than that of white men. This isn’t a neutral standard. It’s a racist one, just as eliminating even the most anodyne efforts to ensure women’s military participation is a misogynistic one.
Hegseth is going to continue to cut away everything he can, based on his dumb “warrior ethos,” until basically all that’s left is a bunch of Hegseths.
