WSJ op-ed contributor Peggy Noonan, when she's in the zone about Trump and his lapdogs is incomparable. Such was the case with her recent column ('The Embarrassing Pete Hegseth', Oct. 4-5, p. A15). Basically skewering the pompous little dry drunk (Bill Maher's term) who delivered an absurd spiel to 800 top military brass last week, e.g.
As Noonan writes about this former FOX loser's performance:
"It was, as a former general said by phone, 'just flat out bizarre'. It was embarrassing to watch. He made everyone in the audience look smaller, which made their profession look smaller. How does that help America?"
Of course, it solidifies the sentient world's opinion that we're a bunch of uneducated rubes and Philistines for putting the orange traitor and felon back in the White House. Because he, after all, is the moron who nominated Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense, and as Noonan notes:
"Hegseth has always had bad press, from the scandals that emerged after his nomination through fairly constant reports about chaos in his office. I said early on he was a poor choice - a television host playing a culture warrior - who lacked the weight and gravitas the Pentagon needed."
True, but it wasn't what Captain Bonespurs needed. This 5-time draft dodger needed a compliant lapdog who'd follow his orders without question - whether militarizing Democratic cities, or ordering attacks on Venezuelan fishing boats and calling them "narco-terrorists".
As Edward Luce observes in his recent Financial Times column (Venezuela is Trump's Useful Ally):
"In July Hegseth halted U.S. weapons shipments to Ukraine only to discover Trump did not yet want that. He suffered a humiliating reversal. Since then Hegseth has been falling all over himself to please Trump, including ordering four televised air strikes on unidentified Venezuelan boats. Trump is so pleased with the optics of the apparently risk-free fireworks he is developing a taste for them."
But Peggy wasn't done with this arrogant little pissant, wannabe Sergeant York by any means, writing:
"Hegseth could have reiterated all his fulminations about 'DEI offices' by secure video conference, or just sent a video. Instead, he dragged commanders from their stations to be his personal audience. So he could pose with a giant American flag behind him like George C.Scott in 'Patton'. Only Scott delivered a great speech. Hegseth gave a Ted Talk and paced the stage like a strutting, gelled bantam. Like an amped up actor with rehearsed gestures, expressions and voice shifts."
In other words, like a fraud, a pretender, like his master Trump. Back to Peggy's take down of the imp:
"He used 'lethal' and 'lethality' a lot, like a young Hollywood script writer dreaming up some made right wing Army officer because he maybe watched 'Platoon' too much as a child. Then spouting 'We became the WOKE department. It's completely unacceptable to see fat generals."
Noonan adding:
"The retired general on the phone later sighed and said: "I would like you to know Norman Schwarzkopf, his hero, was fat. And George Patton wasn't exactly a gazelle. Sound military leadership has little to do with physical fitness and everything to do with strategic judgment."
And finally, Peggy's most substantial point:
"What are we doing in this dangerous world having the head of the Defense Department prance around like this and embarrass the generals he used as a backdrop. Why do his highly placed defenders in the administration think this is good for the White House?
When you are driven by a sense of urgency you must still try to act like a normal person. Not like some pumped up drama queen who makes everything more jarring and fevered...It should have crossed his mind that he himself, when in service, never reached anywhere near the rank of those he was talking down to."
From my perspective Hegseth's posturing was all about creating the illusion of fearsome strength and threat. In line with Trump's threat of using blue cities as military "training grounds" or blasting small fishing boats out of Caribbean seas when they pose no threat at all to U.S. interests. As AOC noted on ALL In last week, this is the performance of frightened cowards who need the projection of strength to try to intimidate citizens into preemptively giving up their rights, e.g. ceding their free speech rights out of fear. In Hegseth's case, he wanted to instill in the generals this bogus "warrior ethos" and that if they opposed his (and Trump's) anti-Woke, anti-DEI agenda, they "should do the honorable thing and resign."
No reference to this sorry ass goofball letting out the Pentagon's war plans (for an attack on Yemen) in a Signal chat some months ago. A genuine dishonorable deed if there ever was one, for which he never resigned. Or was held accountable.
As Noonan writes at the end:
"There are recent reports the Pentagon is putting forward new rules that journalists have their work approved before publication. Where that stands is unclear but it's nuts. It makes America look like what our foes say we are, a place of make believe freedom in which even the press is controlled by the government."
As Timothy Snyder told Velshi on Saturday, it's time the American nation wakes up and begins massive resistance against these fiends - or we may soon find ourselves without any voice of resistance at all.
See Also:
by Thom Hartmann | October 7, 2025 - 4:48am | permalink
Remember the old TV crime/drama shows? A cop would bang on a suspect’s door and the suspect would say, through the door, “Do you have a warrant?” The officer would then walk away, promising to come back later with the requisite paper signed by a judge.
No more. Now they’re kicking in doors, shooting pepper-gas balls into the open windows of cars driven by reporters, smashing windows and furniture, and concealing their faces and identities like the Klan did in days of old. In Chicago, they’ve shot two unarmed people, killing one. And there wasn’t a warrant signed by a judge to be seen anywhere.
People ask, “Are we there, yet? Has America gone fascist? Are we now in a militarized dictatorship?”
And:
by Jaime O’Neill | October 6, 2025 - 5:11am | permalink
From The LA Progressive
5 October 2025
Dear Mr President,
I found your hour-long speech to the nation’s generals and admirals this week clarifying in the way that I suppose psychiatrists find that the script-free, order-free, grammar-free, image-filled rambles of their sicker patients illuminate the dark recesses of their troubled minds. Like those silently listening psycho-analysts that we imagine sitting beside their proverbial couches, the brass was content to listen and slowly assemble the clues that would tell them when to summon the aide with the butterfly net and the nurse with the hypodermic needle.
Doubtless they were mildly amused to note how compulsively you repeated the reverential “sirs” by which your staff, the press, your generals, governors, and foreign heads of state address you; to be assured that you don’t want to win the Nobel Peace Prize, but that “it will be a big insult to our country” if you don’t; and to learn that you had $31 billion stashed on your “tariff shelf” – not, apparently, a metaphor, but a real shelf. By then they were probably thinking . . . idle chatter? . . . disturbed? . . . nuts? . . . bat shit?
And:
US Military Discovers It Is Led BY IDIOTS
And:
No comments:
Post a Comment