Authenticity and performative masculinity

I’m finally caught up in reading the news. I saw various notices about Senate confirmation hearings of cabinet nominees. Committees scheduled several of them at the same times. I didn’t watch any of them (though links are posted), though I read summaries that I saw. The big hearing over the last few days was of Pete Hegseth, nominated for Department of Defense. On Tuesday, the day of his hearing Emily Singer of Daily Kos reported that Republicans are covering up his disqualifications. They accepted an inadequate FBI report, which “didn’t interview people who have accused Hegseth of improper and even illegal behavior.” They also planned to limit questioning that would mean not all of his alleged bad behavior will be discussed. And when Hegseth did his rounds of individual meetings with senators Democrats were left off the schedule. Republicans said Democrats had scheduling conflicts. Democrats said, no we didn’t. Singer wrote:

Democrats are aghast at their GOP colleagues for ramming through Hegseth’s confirmation hearing while ignoring that Hegseth is completely unqualified for the job.

Singer’s article got into some of the questioning by Democrats on the Armed Services Committee hearing. Sen. Jack Reed listed many reasons why Hegseth is unqualified. Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi defended Hegseth on accusations of sexual assault by saying most of the people making those accusations are anonymous. Singer described more of the hearing in a second post. Republicans ran defense or asked easy questions. So Democrats asked the tough ones. Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia didn’t buy the idea that anonymous sources meant there was nothing to the allegations. Kaine noted many accusers are bound by nondisclosure and confidentiality agreements. He also got into the sordid details of wives (there have been three) and mistresses. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a veteran who lost her legs in combat, asked Hegseth basic questions about the military. Hegseth could not answer. Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona asked about the drinking and sexual misconduct.

"Which is it—have you overcome personal issues, or are you the target of a smear campaign? It can't be both. It's clear to me that you're not being honest with us or the American people because you know the truth would disqualify you from getting the job,” Kelly said. “And just as concerning as each of these specific disqualifying accusations are, what concerns me just as much is the idea of having a secretary of defense who is not transparent.”

Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan said Hegseth has talked about raising the minimum standards (in an attempt at disqualifying women from combat?). Peters asked:

Do you think that the way to raise the minimum standards of the people who serve us is to lower the standards for the secretary of defense, that we have someone who has never managed an organization more than 100 people?

Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Elizabeth Warren focused on Hegseth’s misogynistic comments that have changed since his nomination. As an example of defense Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma asked how many senators have shown up drunk for a vote? How many senators have gotten a divorce for cheating on their wives? They aren’t asked to step down. Singer responded that senators doing that does not “render Hegseth’s alleged actions meaningless.” And those senators were not nominated for Secretary of Defense.

Ultimately, Democrats laid bare how unqualified Hegseth is to lead the Pentagon. But Republicans are set to confirm Hegseth anyway, kowtowing to Trump’s demand that they all roll over and accept his deeply unprepared and corrupt nominees.

Alex Samuels of Kos reported that Sen. Jodi Ernst of Iowa now says she will support Hegseth.

Part of what makes Ernst’s raving endorsement notable is her history as a combat veteran and sexual assault survivor who previously raised concerns over Hegseth’s ability to lead the Pentagon. In December, she cited unease over Hegseth’s past opposition to women serving in combat roles, though he walked this back during Tuesday’s hearing.

There is a lot of speculation about what prompted her to change her mind. Perhaps it was pressure from the Republican base.

After meeting with Hegseth in December and voicing doubts about whether she’d vote in his favor, she was relentlessly bullied by hardcore MAGA adherents. Not only did some of Trump’s most ardent supporters run ads in Ernst’s home state of Iowa, but they also questioned her conservative bona fides on social media. Mega-billionaire Elon Musk also pledged to bankroll primary challenges to Republicans who went against the president-elect.

Yeah, that could do it. With Ernst ready to approve, confirmation of Hegseth is quite likely. In Wednesday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare:

You can see in it so many of the central tenets of Trump’s approach to governance: the contempt for expertise and traditional qualifications; the insistence that the only real qualification is authenticity—and that authenticity is somehow wrapped up in performative masculinity; the belief that sounding tough and being tough are the same thing; and the conviction that complexity necessarily reduces to weakness. It’s all right there in the nomination of a proudly unqualified individual [Pete Hegseth] who frames his lack of qualifications as qualification of a different, more authentic, variety that reflects what he calls a “warrior ethos” America has somehow lost in its infatuation with equity. And this idea has the apparently silent assent of all of the Republican members of the committee and a few, at least, enthusiastic takers.

In today’s roundup Dworkin quoted Holly Berkley Fletcher of The Bulwark:

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) raised a subject relevant to Hegseth’s character, personal stability, and potential vulnerability to blackmail: Hegseth’s repeated adultery and other sexual indiscretions—including sleeping with someone (who alleged assault) two months after his child was born to his mistress with whom he cheated on his second wife. Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) then rose to Hegseth’s defense. Mullin, who is a member of an evangelical Pentecostal church, began by thanking the third Mrs. Hegseth, present in the hearing room, for “loving him through that mistake.” Mullin went on, “The only reason I am here and not in prison is because my wife loved me, too. ... I’m not perfect, but I found somebody that thought I was perfect ... but just like our Lord and Savior forgave me, my wife’s had to forgive me more than once, too.” He then gave Hegseth the opportunity to awkwardly gush about how smart, capable, and beautiful his wife is. Mullin’s mini-sermon was a lasagna of problematic messaging—the lauding of a woman for sticking with an abusive man, more generally giving women responsibility for men’s redemption, and calling longstanding patterns of behavior a “mistake.” Oh, and there was also the obligatory reference to poor Jesus—whom Hegseth also repeatedly invoked to get out of every jam free. (I seem to remember a commandment about not taking the Lord’s name in vain.)

I’ve been thinking about the nasty guy’s infatuation with Greenland and the possibility he might invade to take it. Might the military refuse? Might the Joint Chiefs of Staff simply tell him that’s a bad idea and we’re not going to do it? Then I got to be thinking with Hegseth in charge of the Pentagon the possibility of refusing has gone down. Hegseth weeding through reluctant generals is also likely before the nasty guy calls for invasion. On to another nominee, this one is Pam Bondi for US Attorney General. She was part of the nasty guy’s legal team to attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that at her hearing she claimed to know nothing about it. And other responses were lies. Not surprising. Singer also reported on the hearing, noting that Bondi wouldn't say who won the 2020 election, only saying Biden is president. Singer concluded:

It’s no surprise that Bondi refused to say Biden won. Trump demands total loyalty from his Cabinet picks, and admitting that Biden was the victor goes against Trump’s narcissistic delusion that he didn’t lose in 2020. But it’s terrifying that Republican senators are set to confirm an attorney general who not only can’t admit basic reality, but will readily lie to stroke Trump’s fragile ego.

On Wednesday Samuels reported there is a deal to end the Israel/Gaza war after 15 months of destruction in Gaza. Since Samuels’ post the Israeli security cabinet has approved the deal, though the far right members threatened to pull out of the cabinet and perhaps even the coalition government, meaning elections would have to be called. Last I heard the full Israeli cabinet is in the process of approving it. Back to Samuels’ post: Shortly after the deal was announced the nasty guy tried to take credit for it, that it only happened because he won in November. Of course, that ignores (as the nasty guy frequently does) that Biden laid out the basic terms of the agreement at the end of May and has been working steadily for its acceptance since then. Agreeing to the plan became necessary for Hamas when Israel made a deal with Lebanon and the Syrian regime collapsed. Is the nasty guy taking credit simply because he said “all hell will break loose” if a deal wasn’t done by his inauguration? In Thursday’s pundit roundup Chitown Kev quoted Hamilton Nolan of his How Things Work on Substack. Nolan wrote about the estimated cost of the Los Angeles fires and that in 2024 disasters around the world caused $320 billion in damages. Also, 2024 is the hottest on record and we have exceeded the 1.5C level of warming that is said to be a hard limit by climate scientists. And CEOs of America’s most powerful finance companies announced they are withdrawing from the climate coalition. Then Nolan wrote:

For Americans, the hardest part of what is coming is going to be giving up on the grand American myth of infinite material abundance. The classic vision of the American dream—the house, the yard, the driveway with a big car for everyone—is going to have to go away, by necessity. It will not go quietly. Americans regard these things not as temporary byproducts of a particular age of global capitalism that cannot last, but rather as human rights. Much of the confounding Trumpian tendency to celebrate big trucks and more oil drilling and other things we know are bad for us is simply a child’s gut reaction to being told that we cannot have that lollipop, after all. Politically speaking, we are in the tantrum phase of the climate transition. This is understandable, on an emotional level; the sweet promise of abundance has long been the thing that soothed the public’s disgust with inequality. But we can’t allow ourselves to linger in this period. The longer we wallow in resentment and denial, the longer we put off the hard work of adaptation, and the more difficult and costly the adaptation becomes. Every time you see a politician telling voters they can damn well have a big McMansion with icy air conditioning and a Ford F-450 and cheap gas and a new highway to reach their new suburban development, take a moment to imagine how those voters will feel when the AC bills skyrocket, and the gas prices soar, and the heat kills the grass, and the overloaded electrical grid flickers, and the defunded public services mean that there is no one to come save them when the trees catch fire. We are not doing anyone any favors by denying reality.