This post was originally published at Evan’s other joint The Moral High Ground. OMG, he writes in the first person there? He does. The royal we recommend you subscribe to that one too!
I have explained, and surely will have occasion to explain again, that it is usually cheap to make closet case jokes about right-wing conservative Christian men, and often misguided. Are some of them actual closet cases? Sure! Is Hunter Biden probably telling the truth when he talks about a “closeted gay mafia” of mostly Republican men? Yep, almost certainly, definitely.
It’s not that I think there’s anything wrong with outing anti-LGBTQ+ politicians and public figures, who spend their work hours hurting vulnerable LGBTQ+ people and yet are living double lives. That’s totally fine and acceptable, if that hypocrisy angle exists! If it does, and if you’ve got the goods, out them!
But “Haw haw! It’s because they’re secretly gay!” is usually the lazy way out, especially if they really aren’t. (AND I would add that going directly to that joke every time after a while can come off as homophobic if you are not, yourself, a member of the LGBTQ+ community.)
As I wrote several months ago in a note on Substack:
Some conservative Christian men are closet cases, to be sure. But that’s not the thing that animates all of them, And assuming they’re closet cases sometimes obscures this much larger issue.
The thing they all have is DADDY ISSUES. And what I mean by that is that these men are raised with a deep, deep need to be deeply subservient to other (white) men. The flip side of that coin is that they are raised with a deep need to overpower/rule over those they have been taught are lower in the hierarchy than they are.
Does that make sense?
These men’s lives fall apart completely if they don’t understand at all times who they get to abuse, and who they are supposed to take abuse from.
So when you see the sniveling obedience of somebody like Pete Hegseth when he’s next to Donald Trump, and then you see the tantrums he throws when he feels like those he’s been trained to believe are inferior to him are not respecting him, you can see how he fits inside that structure.
When you see his obsession with order and hairstyles in the military, not only is that an outward reflection of the structured hierarchy he needs in order to feel valuable as a man — especially since he has nothing else of any discernible value to offer, especially from a military perspective — the way it panics him suggests that he absolutely loses it if he feels like somebody else’s male hierarchical structure is out of whack. I wouldn’t be surprised if he has literal panic attacks about it.
A man like Pete Hegseth has never had any value as a man outside this kind of structure, and if it were taken away, he suspects — probably quite correctly! — that nobody would have any reason to ever respect him again.
Make fun of them for this. The closet case thing is usually a lazier way out unless it’s just undeniable.
I stand by that, and I especially stand by it with Hegseth.
But then Hegseth goes and says shit like this, and I am sorry, but I cannot be responsible for what sorts of jokes the internet makes about this:
Oh, goddammit, Pete. Jesus Christ. Fuck.
That first clip: “It’s worth saying again so that the fake news understands it. We are no longer the woke department or the weak department. Simple translation of that: no fannies — fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals. Just warriors.”
Beyond the anti-trans slur, which I’m sure makes him feel very naughty and manly every time he says it, I cannot emphasize enough how much of what Pete said is a parody of an early days racist white guy Grindr profile. Or Adam4Adam, if you’re from pre-Grindr days (it debuted in 2009). Or Gay dot com.
Point is, either Pete has a white supremacist MAGA gay guy writing his speeches for him — entirely possible — or there are other reasons he speaks like this. Reasons I will not lazily and cheaply speculate about.
The second clip: “The ideological clowns are out. The patriotic cowboys are in, with testosterone testing on top.”
I … Jesus Christ, dude.
Patriotic cowboys, with testosterone testing on top?
Hey, remember that thing lesbian Vermont Democratic Rep. Becca Balint said about how everything about Pete screams “I secretly looked at Tom of Finland books at Barnes & Noble when I was in high school”? (My words. She made the Tom of Finland reference. I placed it at Barnes & Noble.)
Well, the Defense secretary I like to call Secretary Shitfaced hasn’t done anything to disabuse me of that notion today. Would love to hear what kind of jokes they’re making in Balint’s office right now.
This was of course part of Pete’s annual State of the Force speech. Last year, he brought all the generals who are smarter, higher-ranking, and superior to him together so that he could priss at them about hairstyles and shaving and WARFIGHTER! This year, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Pentagon emailed commanders asking them to nominate troops to attend the speech who “fit certain ‘physical standards,’ to attend the event: passing the Army’s waist-to-height ratio and the Army fitness tests, and having ‘impeccable grooming and uniform standards (no exception).’”
They added that the lucky ducks would also “have the opportunity to work out with the secretary.”
Just a normal email from Secretary WARFIGHTER! demanding the presence of some really hot guys with Ken doll proportions, who would have the opportunity — “opportunity” — to get hot and sweaty with Pete.
Totally normal!
Much more will be written about this weird-ass speech. There were the usual Pete moments, the “this is what you get when you nominate a pampered Fox News weekend host with an unimpressive military career and Daddy issues to lead the Pentagon” things. He flaccidly tried to pretend he hasn’t completely lost the Iran war faster than the US has lost a war in the past 60 years. Oh boy, and he is maaaaad that the press has reported about that.
Then he started announcing new things with fancy flamboyant WAR! names, like Fortress America! and Autonomous War Command, or AutoWarCom!
And then this, which wasn’t supposed to be a laugh line?
Listen to the “applause” on that one, those perfect waist-height ratios couldn’t contain themselves.
Project Meridian, by the way, is some goddamn thing about the “battlefields of the future,” I’m sure it’ll be a big success and won’t be entirely scrapped by the next Defense secretary, in a maximum of just a little more than two years from now.
Of course, wasn’t Pete just up there saying no weirdos and beardos and soft dumpy boys, and now he’s putting Elon Musk in charge of FUTURE FORCE WARFIGHTER? And Newt Gingrich? Nimble, athletic, 83-year-old Newt Gingrich, who looks more dead every time we see him on TV? And oh boy, check out Palmer Luckey.
For quick reactions to that announcement, we go live to r/Military — that’s Reddit, for the uninitiated — which is currently pissing itself laughing at this:
“Yes, master code-monkey, infosec ninja, and tech infrastructure guru Newt Gingrich age 83. Our enemies are so fuct bro! /slapsdickstogether”
“If there’s pne thing Newt Gingrich is known for, it’s his ability to code artificial intelligence. He programmed the battle AI in the original Pokemon games, both Japanese and English. /s”
“Idk why, but I thought he was dead lmao”
“Pretty sure that takes an act of congress. You can’t just give command of US troops to your favorite oligarch.”
“oh fuck this fucking nazi-loving fuck the fuck outta here, for fuck’s sake.”
“omg, we are fucked”
“I just reenlisted today…takesies backsies?”
I commend all the patriotic testosterone cowboys who were forced to be present for this for making it through Pete’s big speech with a straight face.
Keeping your composure in the face of a joke like Hegseth is indeed a heroic act.
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Temu Patton strikes again
~There's been a load of compromisin'
On the road to my horizon
But I'm gonna be where the boys are likin' me
Like a testosterone cowboy
Riding out warfightin' in a combat zone
Like a testosterone cowboy
Getting catfished and doxxed by AI Hotties
While I come on the phone
(Apologies to Glen Campbell)