Does Peter Hegseth have a peter problem?
Our Secretary of War and other Trump weirdos seem obsessed with members of the male anatomy: peckers, pricks, putzes, or whatever else you want to call the male organ of copulation. Strange, given that an Alabama woman was arrested at a No Kings rally last fall in the southern town of Fairhope for sporting an inflatable penis costume while waving a sign proclaiming “No Dick-Tators.”
You’d have thought she would have received a medal, or at least a Trump pardon.
The sight of a seven foot phallus presumably should have delighted Pistol Pete, who this past week ordered all U.S. troops over the age of thirty to have their testosterone levels checked and then supplemented on a voluntary basis to create a “High-T Department of War.” This from the guy with the pomaded hair who installed a make-up room in the Pentagon. (In a believable if not strictly verified report from the gossipy Daily Mail, Hegseth got a series of botox injections last fall to smooth out any wrinkles that might mar his otherwise smooth-as-a-baby’s-bottom Fox TV host features.)
MAGA is many things: a grift, a power grab, and a white Christian Nationalist revival. But it is also a cult of toxic masculinity that measures a man strictly by the bulge of his biceps and prowess at sexual conquest. Of the classical virtues (Wisdom, Justice, Temperance and Courage) none describe the manosphere's ideal male, where even courage is reduced to braggadocio, bullying and projecting a bad boy image.
And this is a problem for our military. Hegseth wants a fighting force composed of he-men with “maximum lethality.” And there’s nothing wrong–in fact everything is right–about having troops physically fit and trained for the rigors of combat.
But modern warfare requires more than strong pectorals. It requires strategic thinking. It demands an ability to work with allies and form coalitions of the willing. It needs foresight and premeditation to map out exit strategies and a potential end to the conflict before the bombing begins. It requires intelligent leadership that knows soft power is sometimes just as effective as guns and hardware when it comes to getting results.
But these truths seem lost on our Pete Hegseth and our current Commander-in-Chief, who have led us into a losing war with Iran and are now left with nothing to show, holding their dicks in their hands.
