Hegseth has admitted to excess drinking in the past, but he has vowed that, if confirmed to lead the Pentagon, "there won't be a drop of alcohol on my lips while I'm doing it."
So he didn't even promise to stop drinking - just no drinking during work hours.
He actually just promised not to dribble.
If a guy can go from being a drunk to running the Defense Department in only a couple of months, isn't that really just a testament to the resilience of the human spirit? Who are we to say it can't be done!
I'm not worried about the drinking so much as the war crimes.
And he did it without all that woke DEI stuff.
The silver lining here is that Hegseth brings the possibility of parody back into view, after so many years of Trumpworld being beyond parody. Once we actually get a nominee who shits his pants constantly and speaks in guttural snarls, we'll be over the edge again. But I think the distance between Hegseth's level of dysfunction and an actually funny parody is just right. This is not much of a silver lining.
Also, I completely missed this when it happened:
The lack of rigor in the Hegseth investigation is reminiscent of the F.B.I.'s investigation into Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his contentious confirmation hearing, in 2018. Three years after Kavanaugh's confirmation, the F.B.I. disclosed that it had received more than forty-five hundred tips on him during its investigation, and that the Trump White House determined which ones received follow-up. (Max Stier, a Yale classmate of Kavanaugh's who had reached out to the Bureau to report witnessing gross misconduct by Kavanaugh, was among those the F.B.I. never contacted.) The Bureau has a lesser standard for background checks of nominees than it does for criminal investigations. It regards the President who appointed the nominee--in both these instances, Trump--as "the client" who determines the scope of the inquiry.
5 is correct. And he likes to call troops 'warfighters."
NYT doing the fashion editor critique thing:
Amid all the theatrics and speechifying by the many committee members and Mr. Hegseth himself, his uniform offered an argument of its own. One that had less to do with the details of leading one of the largest departments in the government than with his ability to play the part, in a show designed by the soon-to-be executive producer of the country.
Here is the guy's opening statement if anyone wants to sift through it. It's fairly bland. He says he served "in the streets of Washington, D.C." -- I don't know what he's referring to.
How is it I'm 3 paras into the NYer thing and the WHITE SUPREMACIST TATTOOS haven't come up?
8: The whole DoD talks about 'warfighters', has for years if not decades. I think it originated as interservice BS: you can't just say 'soldiers' or 'troops' because that implies Army. So, you have to say 'soldiers, sailors, marines, etc etc etc' which takes forever. So, 'warfighters'. I stand to be corrected on this.
I'm not totally clear on the tattoos, but it seems like he deflected questions by pretending the concern was about a more innocuous tattoo, when it was actually the "Deus Vult" tat that got him booted from the inauguration. I'm still not sure how concerning it actually is. It's not like he has that tattoo and also wrote a book about re-empowering white men in the military and also got shitfaced and chanted "Kill All Muslims!" in public or anything like that.
12: I don't know why, but it's certainly not just him that uses the term.
10- I think he was national guard during BLM protests? And he is reported to have said something about how he could have shut down the protests if his chain of command hadn't been such pussies*?
*The financial times informs me we're supposed to say that now.
Hmm, was not aware of the warfighter thing. I thought it just some Republican lingo.
Language Log post on it from 2012.
16.last: Can we start using "cunt" like the British do?
See, I would die of shame before crowing in public about how I wouldn't say "pussy" until Donald Trump gave me permission. I will never understand this charismatic authority thing. But whatever, it doesn't matter. As long as we're doing military terminology, is there a concise definition of "lethal" the way they're using it? Clearly it doesn't just mean "effective" or "unbeatable" or whatever, but something more schematic, right?
12. Such foolishness culminated in Army's attempts to rename Dining Facilities (DFACs) to Warrior Restaurants. Nonetheless, people still call them DFACs or even chow halls.
The DoD solution to the waddaya call em problem is the compound noun "Service member". It was the term that OSD General Counsel Office liked and with that capitalization.
19.1 is amazing. I wish I still worked with American soldiers so I could mock them. "Back in a bit, I'm just going for a pee. Oh, sorry, I mean i must hie me to the Warrior Urinatorium."
You are also not supposed to talk about American soldiers, if I remember. According to the Pentagon style guide they are Soldiers. Capital S.
Lethality is also common Dod speak, often as a dyad with survivability, going back idk how long. AIUI it means just what it says, but Hegseth and Co seem to be using it as code for antiwoke, and I excepect the wider military as code for "Don't make us do counterinsurgency again".
"As long as we're doing military terminology, is there a concise definition of "lethal" the way they're using it? "
"The capability and capacity to destroy" according to US Army FM 3-0, "Operations". It isn't a term we use much. In the hands of the British soldier any item is lethal, often unintentionally.
24.last canonically loganberries, passion fruit, a banana, etc.
"Warrior Restaurant" is just such a perfect example of tone clash. Warriors are bold men of mighty thews and sinews who say things like "By Crom!" They eat in mead halls or taverns or by the light of flickering fires on lonely steppes, not in restaurants. You can't see Thrud the Barbarian sitting down and perusing a wine list. (Hence also why the non-Tolkien line about "Looks like meat's back on the menu, boys!" in The Two Towers was so jarring; orcs have menus? Table service? Do they tip?)
Unsurprisingly, 'lethality' seems to go back to the post-Vietnam anti-COIN reaction.
https://dupuyinstitute.org/2019/07/16/trevor-dupuys-definitions-of-lethality/
I believe "warfighting" was introduced in the late 90s/early 2000s GWB reaction against "peacekeeping". It's horrible and the worst is that not only has it infected the British defence establishment, they've started using it as a verb where "fight" would do.
Apart from the sexual assaults and raging alcoholism which in a rational world should be enough to sink him, as someone put it on Bluesky:
The reason Congress should not confirm Hegseth as SecDef is that his SPECOPS-first vision of the military didn't even work where you'd have expected it to, in GWOT. Designing our military to revolve around special operations in a war against Russia and China it will very likely lead to our defeat.
The USMC have had a manual called Warfighting since 1989.
https://www.marines.mil/News/Publications/MCPEL/Electronic-Library-Display/Article/899837/mcdp-1/
Via something above, ngram fir lethality:
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5497331ae4b0148a6141bd47/1539635194666-GVY21569VRI6ZBH2F98D/Picture2.png?format=1500w
I don't mind "warfighting" because you need to have a term for, you know, fighting a proper high-intensity war, rather than humanitarian ops or COIN or MACA or peacekeeping. "Warfighter", though, is cringe.
Similarly talking about the lethality of one particular weapon or whatever is fine - it's an important metric. It's a bit weirder to talk about the lethality of an entire military (sorry, Military) but it's probably OK as shorthand for "equipped with lethal stuff".
Form the Language Log post and some searches it seems to have been used mostly in a bureaucratic sense apparently starting the 80s, and in the Pete Hegseth sense more recently (and bleeding trough to non-official uses). In fact Hegseth seems to be a significant recent promoter of the term while stanning for war criminals from his position at Fox News.
For instance, the document that mc linked in 31 does not include the term "warfighter" but seems to use "forces." However, it is a rather abstract Art of War-esque document (and looks like Penguin has published it as a book) written by the commandant (or under his auspices). He had established a Warfighting center several years earlier. But undoubtedly a lot of talk of 'warfighting' led to the back formation of 'warfighter'.
Searching the NYTimes, the first mention seems to be on an opinion piece by Stansfield Turner in 1985 arguing against the MX missile. but seems to be referring to those at high-level advocating for the missiles.
A 2003 piece has it as defense industry jargon: The plants have only two customers, the Pentagon and the person -- soldier, sailor, pilot -- the industry calls the warfighter.
But increasingly since then pops up more generally and in particular with regard to discussions around Trump clearing folks like Gallagher in 2019 (which efforts Hegseth spearheaded).
Anyway, coming from the mouth of a rancid fuckhole like Hegseth I interpret it in a negative way. A piece of useful abstract jargon turned to malevolent propaganda by a right bloody cunt.
He actually just promised not to dribble
But they weren't asking him about playing football.
The phrase "External Revenue Service" is really funny to me.
Soon I will be as forgotten as Gen X.
Apparently one of the practical ways "warfighter" has been used is as a standard term for "soldier" across all the service branches which mostly use other terms. Not sure if that makes it equivalent to "servicemember" or if it's making a tooth/tail distinction as well though.
30 is where I was hoping discussion would go (not here but everywhere, including in the Senate), and it's a little frustrating to me that they took up so much time with the "are you for fucking real, sir?" questions. Here's Tammy Duckworth with some lethality, at least.
I don't know that I'm fully on board with this take from Bluesky but I can see it:
I wonder how many people understand that Trump's attempt to push through Hegseth is a show of dominance, AND that the incompetence is part of that show.
He wants to demonstrate that establishment types will acquiesce and accept an absolute disaster of a candidate on his say-so.
Like that Orwell line about how the point of goose-stepping is that it looks silly; it's meant to make it clear that you're too afraid to laugh at something absurd.
Also incompetence ensures loyalty (Gambetta, passim)
I mean, you can infer that from the outside (we've seen it many times before), but it's not necessarily the full story. The incompetence may also be part of Trump's vision of loyalty and dependence, and there may be specific outcomes he is convinced that this guy -- and relatively few other candidates whom he doesn't want to go to the trouble of finding -- can deliver. (See that crazy exchange about "Hitler's generals" from a couple of years ago.) I care a little less about the Kremlinology and more about what is likely to happen with the military over the next few years. It seems like a surprising amount of money for "just" a show of dominance.
It seems like a surprising amount of money for "just" a show of dominance.
Maybe I missed something - how much money has been spent for Hegseth's confirmation?
I think maybe Orwell had a metaphorical point about the horses in Animal Farm.
46 to 43. (Jinx to 45.) These two paragraphs from the OP link expand on the money thing:
The amount of private money being spent on the effort to confirm Hegseth is staggering for a Cabinet nominee. The sum is rivalled only by the cash that has been spent to pressure senators into confirming Supreme Court Justices. This week, one group, American Leadership pac, reportedly plans to spend a million dollars to muscle wavering Republican senators in five states into approving Hegseth. According to the most recent F.E.C. records, the group barely exists, other than as a political piggy bank for four enormously wealthy right-wing megadonors. Federal records show that, in the 2022 and 2024 political cycles, the group was funded almost entirely by the Texas oil magnate Timothy Dunn; Thomas Klingenstein, a New York financier who runs the conservative Claremont Institute; Bill Koch, a member of the oil-and-gas dynasty and the founder of the petroleum-coke business Oxbow Carbon, L.L.C.; and the Wisconsin billionaire Richard Uihlein, the chair of the Uline packing company.
In December, a dark-money group previously backed by Elon Musk, Building America's Future, also began pouring money into the fight. It spent half a million dollars on ads pressuring Ernst to support Hegseth after she voiced doubts about him. Musk and other Trump allies have made clear that they will fund primary challenges against Republican senators who oppose Trump's nominees. (According to Fox News, several of Trump's top campaign operatives--including his campaign manager Chris LaCivita and the pollster Tony Fabrizio--are set to become senior advisers to the dark-money group, which they plan to use as a private funder of Trump's second-term agenda.)
It might not be Trump looking for incompetence precisely, but he's certainly looking for blind loyalty, and when people quail about some instruction he takes that as prompt to double down. Sufficient explanation of the Sean Spicer crowd size episode in his first week.
Essay on "Gorilla Channel governance".
Day drinking at the edge of the congestion zone.
Tin Pan Alley is just 28th Street. I feel deceived.
The Museum of Sex is too close to the Museum of Math.
Why? Guys need something to do while their wives are at the Museum of Math.
Huh, that really seemed less obnoxious in my head.
It's been a while since I got caught up on reading glass door reviews of working at the Museum of Math...
I chuckled at 55.
I presume the glass door reviews of working at the Museum of Sex are tinted.
