Pete Hegseth as the "Dumb McNamara": "Just like his Vietnam War-era predecessor...Hegseth is so obsessed with metrics that 'prove' the US is winning that he cannot appreciate the larger strategic failure. But unlike McNamara, who was objectively brilliant, Hegseth is…patently not."

the reason hegseth lobbied trump to pardon war criminals in his first term and why he has done everything possible to make war crimes more likely is that hegseth believes war crimes to be Objectively Good. war to him, in fact, consists of committing indiscriminate war crimes.

If you’re not doing war crimes, you’re not really trying. His literal philosophy on war.

"It’s not acceptable for one side of Congress to resemble a Klan cookout, and it’s also not acceptable for journalists to treat it as non-news. Because it’s getting worse all the time." Good roundup of Republican racism in this piece:

This is such a good point. One illustrative example: when Japan was trying to gain respect as a regional power in the First Sino-Japanese War, it made a huge show of trying to conform to western expectations regarding conduct of war and diplomacy, which hugely contrasted with the Qing.

A fun conversation! Thanks Thor

Western civilization includes Just War Theory and the Laws of Armed Combat. Those aren't PC niceties, they're the legacy of centuries of philosophy, religion, tradition, and the accumulated lessons of bloody experience. Hegseth doesn't champion Western civilization, he rejects the civilized part.

@davidfrum.bsky.social @billkristolbulwark.bsky.social @nicollewallace.bsky.social

Profound from @cnewman.bsky.social: The No Kings marchers and the heroic people in Minneapolis and elsewhere are telling Dems to act on their behalf. "It's power being given to them by people on the streets." On the pod, Newman is so good on Stephen Miller: newrepublic.com/article/2083...

Karoline Leavitt is playing sleazy games here. The problem isn't necessarily the act of praying or calling for prayer. It's that Pete Hegseth is suggesting he has divine sanction for maximal violence, brutality and killing. newrepublic.com/article/2083...

Sen Mark Kelly rips Hegseth sermon: "It’s not the way somebody who claims to be a person of God—a religious person—should think," Kelly says, adding that war is "ethically complicated" and that "any serious warfighter struggles with it.” Cites our Kelly interview: thehill.com/homenews/sen...

Great piece by @gregsargent.bsky.social in @newrepublic.com on the "Christian" nationalist bombast that has sorrounded the Iran war, right down to the celebration of macho power and violence... newrepublic.com/article/2083...

Crucial point in @mattpolprof.bsky.social's thread: Hegseth is drawing on a long tradition that sees war as cleansing, purifying violence of a distinctly hypernationalist kind. This is unmistakable in Hegseth's lionizing of "death and destruction" and the awesome precision of US military killing.

“What’s notable is Hegseth’s suggestion that God actively approves of as much killing as possible, and his enlistment of God in making it “overwhelming”—supremely violent and brutal.” @gregsargent.bsky.social with a fantastic exploration of Hegseth’s faith and obsession with religious violence

Wholly endorse this use of the phrase "religious violence" to describe Hegseth's real motives:

Agree with Brian that Dems should be centralizing the need to "comport themselves as people who can be counted on to fight" as the starting point for their approach in the midterms

100% of the people who claim to be “defending Western civilization” think Western civilization is Christian ethnonationalism

tough but fair

Historian of the Civil war here it’s like the “pious” Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson praying before each battle for the Confederacy. Proslavery religious fundamentalists could never understand why God was not on their side. Even their “redemption” would eventually be undone.

Pete Hegseth recited a prayer that includes this line: "I pursued my enemies and overtook them...They cried to the Lord, but He did not answer them." Hegseth genuinely believes God answers him but doesn't answer the enemy. He believes this justifies maximal violence and brutality in his war.

Excellent @newrepublic.com piece by @gregsargent.bsky.social on Pete Hegseth's violent & dangerous theology: newrepublic.com/article/2083... Nice to be included in piece to note Hegseth's recent prayer at Pentagon was “kind of a Mad Libs mash-up of biblical violence.”

Brian deserves great credit for getting us all to focus on Hegseth's prayer services -->

Pete Hegseth absolutely thinks he answers to a higher law than US law or international law.

Yes. It's as though Hegseth read Psalm 137, got to its conclusion, and said, "Yeah. That." www.biblegateway.com/passage/?sea...

"He discards this inheritance." More in Greg Sargent's thread on misguided notions of war and Christianity

Hegesth isn't praying to God, but to His opposite number.

One other thought on this: Religious Dems should do more of what Sen Kelly does here, i.e. call out Hegseth's perversions of Christianity. That would be especially powerful coming from Dems like Ruben Gallego, who has spoken publicly and powerfully about praying with fellow troops during combat.

Important piece from @gregsargent.bsky.social drawing on Reign of Error, @julieingersoll.bsky.social, @briankaylor.bsky.social, and more: Pete Hegseth Just Revealed the Real Roots of His Sadism and Rage newrepublic.com/article/2083... via @newrepublic.com

Thank you, @sarahposner.bsky.social! Make sure to check out her podcast, Reign of Error, which is enormously helpful in illuminating these issues:

Hegseth's claim that God wants us to bomb people bears a resemblance to the antebellum South's claim that God wanted them to enslave people. Terrible people use religion to defend evil. As Greg points out in his fine essay, there are more legitimate moral positions that Hegseth chooses to ignore.

--->

The version of "western civilization" that MAGA keeps invoking is highly selective and simply discards important inheritances, from international human rights law to limits on war to cosmopolitanism to the Enlightenment. (cc @frankfukuyama.bsky.social)

This is the face of Christian Dominionism/Christian Nationalism. Don’t let them win. Fight this and them with everything (nonviolent) in your power, before it’s too late. 🧵👇🏼

Important thread. Hegseth has blown a gasket. He needs to go. ASAP.

If Democrats win the White House in 2028 against a Vance/Rubio ticket, don’t sleep on Hegseth as a 2032 contender. Former Fox News star, foothold in the rising Christian nationalist faction, total psychopath.

Team of Sociopaths

Pete Hegseth just held a prayer service in which he appealed for God's help in killing our "enemies" with maximal violence and brutality. Hegseth's bloodlust and sadism are drawing sustenance from his particular brand of far-right Christianity. 1/ (new piece from me) newrepublic.com/article/2083...

Yep.

Goddamn right they’ve failed. This overreach has woken people up to how screwed up the media environment is and led to tons of growth in indie media. The more they tighten their grip, the more media systems will slip through their fingers.

The key to this is that Brendan Carr desperately needs to create the *impression* that his media crackdown is getting results, or he faces the despot's wrath. The reality is that while Carr is heinously abusing his powers, he and Trump have *failed* to squelch free and aggressive reporting on him.

In addition to all this, also note that all of a sudden, they want the "rest of the world" to help them figure this out, after going into this war without consulting our allies and after shitting all over our alliances for the last year.

When people are dehumanized, we often go back to the most recent high profile tragedies (e.g., Nazi Germany, Rwanda, Israel). But lest we forget that sometimes it has another outcome. Tiered citizenship arguments like Miller’s are awfully reminiscent of a certain country’s “peculiar institution.”

They started an illegal war of choice during an ideological, racist and sexist purge led by right wing podcasters calling targets on a sieg heiling billionaire’s website, believing their superior genes and brutality would lead to rapid victory and are now facing defeat bsky.app/profile/dunc...

Interesting if depressing thread:

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Oh dear. Looks like there's trouble in fascist paradise

We're getting REALLY close to the Nuremberg-Laws logic here: "Trans people are residents of the US, not citizens, because they do not deserve to be citizens". Anyway, to appease my critics I'll note that it couldn't possibly happen in the US because democracy or "good people" or something.

The decision of who "deserves" to be a citizen and who doesn't comes down to this one man? Is that really the MAGA position now?

"If you are a Three Mile Island 'survivor,' you can’t look away from a chart that shows over 400 people who worked on nuclear reactors and safety have left the government since Trump took office, and only 60 people have been hired." Ugh.