Scorching Irony is needed

51-50 is hardly a mandate to lead

I have to begin this by acknowledging this is the first overtly political post of the second, and final, Trump administration. I would much rather not veer into politics, but the times have forced it upon me, and upon all of us, really. And because silence equals complicity, and I have no intention of being complicit in anything that’s going to happen in this country in the coming months and years, the time to speak is now.

I went looking for a picture of Pete Hegseth to open this post, as his confirmation to be defense secretary—by the narrowest of all possible margins—was the impetus for writing this post. But I decided that I could not elevate him in this regard. Rather, I decided to hold up one of my historical guideposts, Frederick Douglass, and explain the genesis of the title for this entry.

On July 4, 1852 Douglass gave a speech about the scorching irony of human bondage, in a nation that held itself out to be dedicated to the notion of human equality. And while I admit that nothing in Pete Hegseth’s known history rises to such a horrific abuse as what existed in 1852, I will say that his life’s story is directly at odds with the principles of the organization he has just been elevated to be the leader of.

America’s motto is E Pluribus Unum, or “Out of many, One.” But when a man with a variety of tattoos linked with Christian nationalism is running the Pentagon, it’s not hard to imagine that Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and Agnostics/Atheists would feel unwelcome in uniform. Likewise, a man who has been accused of raping a woman and who then paid $50,000 from his own pocket to silence his accuser, is not going to be the type of leader that a female will want to sign up to serve and one day put herself into harm’s way, whether on the battlefield or in a military facility.

It’s no secret that the military is having an increasingly difficult time with attracting recruits, and Pete Hegseth’s confirmation seems to appeal to the kind of a gung-ho mentality that might not be enough to offset the loss of other types of recruits as described above. It will likely result in a whiter, more male military in the mold of the Cybertruck Rambo that exploded a vehicle in Las Vegas on New Years Day. And is that what we really want? As a citizen and a taxpayer, I say no.

The Scorching Irony that Frederick Douglass would call out here is that a nation that prides itself on being diverse—even aspires to it, at least in its own motto—can’t put its weapons and tactical training exclusively into the hands of one group of people. And as much as I always want to hope for the best, it’s hard to imagine what that might be in this situation.