I'm reading speculation that Tubby's SECDEF has finally shat the security bed so thoroughly that Dear Leader will get shut of him.
I don't buy it.
Hegseth is precisely the sort of posturing ignoramus that Fat Nixon loves; a preening, smug, self-satisfied blowhard in love with the sort of performative "toughness" that people who are not genuinely hard find fascinating.
If competence was an issue Fatso would never have considered the ninny, or pushed him through the confirmation process. It stands to reason, then, that INcompetence at his job isn't a deal-breaker. No, if the jamoke made the mistake of praising (or promoting) someone MAGA-icky like a woman, or a darkie, or a trans-person it'd be the end for him.
But fucking things up at work?
Why should Porco Arancia give a shit?
Those guys are all losers, right? NPCs, just there to do The Leader's bidding and die. So long as Hegseth keeps doing MAGA work there the actual professional staff will keep the lights on and the munitions stockpiled enough to blow up pesky foreigners and shoot domestic opponents, so, fine.
Nope. This goober isn't going anywhere.
Which is annoying as hell, not because of that kind of shit, but because of this kind of shit:
It's exactly this sort of 12-year-old's-concept-of-"military strength" that bugged me about the guy in the first place. I knew he was a MAGA creep - with Felon47 that's baked in - whose c.v. was tissue-thin. But it was his wanktastic obsession with the Manly Men Doing Manly Things With Manly Stuff Like Rifles that made me really question his value in this particular post.
Because anyone who runs the War Department needs to understand that United States armed forces don't win wars because their minds are sharper, bodies are stronger, and mindsets are more "mission-first".
They win because their bureaucracy is bigger, stronger, more capable, and their economy is more massive.
There are a fuck-ton of smart, strong, mission-focused people in Indonesia, Dakar, the PRC, and Russia.
There's nothing remotely as sophisticated, deep, wealthy, and multitask-capable as the U.S. Defense bureaucracy and the echelons-above-reality in the armed services themselves, or as immensely, terrifyingly monstrous as the U.S. economy.
So the SECDEF's job. Their ONLY job. Is to oversee, manage, direct, grow (and prune) that bureaucracy and harness that economy to manage the steel behind diplomacy in peace and win in war.
Whatever inside Hegseth's head that wasn't pickled with Fireball has the mind of a middle schooler addicted to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. He thinks like a shavetail, and a not-very-bright one at that.
Someone like this goofball is going to be easy pickings for defense contractors, as well as completely incapable of managing an organization as diverse and complex as the armed components.
To complete the analogy it's like making that middle schooler superintendent of schools; by June you'll be lucky if the entire fucking curriculum isn't recess and lunchtime.
He's got nowhere near the ability to figure out how to manage the existing setup, let alone anticipate or respond to challenges from as-near-to-peer-foes-as-we-have, like Russia or the PRC.
Which seems troublesome to me.
But what do I know? I don't have a problem with "bureaucracy" so obviously I know nothing about military readiness like our current SECDEF.
Maybe I can get an invitation to the next Signal chat and then I'll learn something...
Update 4/26:
So, yes. It's funny, in a kind of "look at that fucking idiot!" way.
But this idiot is the boss of my Army brothers, and his boss refuses to can the idiot because owning the libs or some equally stupid shit like that.
I'm not sure if there's enough profanity in existence to explain how I think about that.
Fuck all these people.
