Defense secretary’s speech touching on physical fitness and doctrine of lethality was seen as ‘egotistical’ and ‘dangerous’
Naveed Shah, a veteran and activist who served as an enlisted public affairs specialist – an army journalist – uncharacteristically found himself searching for words to describe the address of the newly styled secretary of war to flag officers on Tuesday.
“A lot of the words that are coming to me aren’t fit to print,” said Shah, policy director for Common Defense, a veterans advocacy organization. “The people in that room who have served for 20, 30-plus years in uniform do not need Pete Hegseth to tell them about warrior ethos.”
Hegseth’s hour-long Ted talk-style address touching on physical fitness, the doctrine of lethality and the perils of DEI certainly drew more attention than a policy memo might have, and perhaps more than Donald Trump’s rambling, politically charged hour-long speech that followed.
Hegseth’s hour-long Ted talk-style address
This is an oxymoron. TED talks are twenty minutes long because that is how long people can pay attention, even if the content is interesting.
Therefore, Hegseth’s address was not TED talk-style.
There needs to be a new definition…
Heg Talk: A long-winded, egotistical rant in which someone who is not qualified for a job lectures those who are far more knowledgeable and experienced about stupid topics.
Hegsplaining
It was full of narcissism, self importance, and unnecessary solutions to problems that are made up or don’t exist… So pretty much a TED talk.
I don’t watch a lot of TED talks, but that’s not been my experience. It sounds more like TEDx to me.
That’s not what oxymoron means.
You can’t treat a room full of leaders like a room full of followers and expect it to be in anyway productive…
trump treats everyone as a followerer, which is why the wealthy and powerful only like him when they’re grifting him.
“Basically, he’s saying that we’re no better than Hamas because people are joining because they want to break things and they want to kill people,” she said. “I mean, for anyone that’s been in the military, he’s not qualified to be secretary of defense. He’s barely qualified to be a host on Fox News.
“But to say these things in front of the preeminent generals and admirals leading our military? Has he no honor, to say that we don’t belong in polite society? Maybe he doesn’t.”
He’s barely qualified to be a host on Fox News. 🔥
Are they going to stop following orders though?
We’re going to find out.
I think their lack of applause and total silence speaks volumes.
Trump even commented that it was the quietest room he’d ever been in. Someone laughed. Trump told them not to laugh and that if they didn’t agree they could leave and lose their rank.
I think it went absolutely terribly for them.
Here’s hoping.
He really said that to the person who laughed? I mean, I should not be surprised.
Absurd times, man. Wow.
Right? I’m sorry but the words of Bill Hicks still being true years after his death. Fuck the military.
The people of the US are experiencing internally what most global south country have experienced heavily since WW2.
We have normalized violence against targets we label as “terrorists”. The only difference now is the “terrorist” happen to have been born on/live on the dirt we call the USA.
These Joes are use to killing innocent people. We’ve normalized it for generations. Don’t be shocked when a bunch of hired killers start doing their job at home.
miss the dark poet to this very day, always spot on
Reminder that 70% of veterans voted for Trump and Republicans so I doubt that this is the majority opinion of the DUI hire and his dementia buddy’s speech.
Living up to the moniker of ‘suckers and losers’.
It’s always good to try and set up a fascist regime while pissing off all your high ranking military officers. Having the military by your side is woke !
They’re setting up for a purge of anyone loyal to the US over Trump
I wouldn’t be surprised obviously, but it feels more like they’re setting themselves up for a military coup. You can’t piss off pretty much all your high commandment like that and expect them to be loyal.
Perhaps Democratic candidates should pledge to reinstate any military officers, with full pension, that get dismissed by the Trump regime – when/if the winds change. Or a blanket pledge to reverse every executive order made by Trump. People need a way to see light at the end of this narrowing tunnel.
I figured the same, but now I’m of the mind we’ve once again given the fools too much credit. Maybe that was the impetus for the event, but this embarrassment is far from the test of loyalty many were expecting. As always, incompetence is their strongest characteristic.
They may be following the detailed recipe of those that came before them, but they’re using spoiled ingredients.
That’s not how this works. Fascism is a constant stream of filtering those that will stop following its orders one step at a time. This is just more of that. By the time they are gunning down protesters in the streets there won’t be one Joe left that is willing to stand against it. That’s the point. Don’t hope the military is gonna be “honorable”.
All that honor crap is just a means of keeping them following orders. They’re not your saviors. They’ve always just been the people that kill people for those in power.
This jingoism brought to you by Carl’s Junior and the NFL.
I’ll be honest. Never heard that term until now. Had to look it up. I guess in America we literally have always had the aggressive foreign wars so having a separate term from Nationalism isn’t really too helpful.
Its etymology is not North American in origin.
One thing every general knows is that appalled silence looks and sounds exactly like respectful silence, and can also be a two hour eyes-open nap.
So how much did it cost to drag all of them to his special Ted talk? Government rules sure, but he just dragged all of the flag ranked official he could get his hands on and they are likely to be in hotels not barracks, and most probably flew commercial or use the VIP transports.
I’m less concerned about the cost than I am about putting the entire military leadership from POTUS on down into one room at a specific location even if it is Quantico
It’s looks like nothing happened. So that was kind of a moot point even if there’s always a chance.
The ends don’t justify the means
Oh I agree. I think I didn’t explain my point well. Bringing them all in one place was fiscally, operationally and securely stupid, however though people were freaked out that someone was gonna blow them all up or get shot up, and that didn’t happen so it was a moot point in that regards. It was still stupid though.
I mean, it’s the War budget we are talking about, Cost is not a factor. The Defense budget was so completely out of control, they could afford building a total electronic surveillance machine that records and stores everything anyone says or write on the Internet, all of that with the pocket change in the Pentagon’s couches.
they are likely to be in hotels
Not just any hotels, Trump branded hotels. Gotta keep the grift going.
