'Hegseth also cheered the Iraq War…and advocated for children receiving “strong discipline” from their parents “in the form of spankings, moving next to soap-in-the-mouth.” ’
The guy comes from that slice of the spectrum of “normal” heterosexual males that promotes child abuse as divinely righteous. It’s abuse.
Ok, ok, ‘heterosexual’ males.
As Josh Marshall notes in his editors blog, he is not coming off an investigation of statutory rape, that’s something.
Hmm, plausible public deniability (Senate’s fault!), or yet another loyalty test?
I need to read up on steroid side effects.
I’m a crusades historian, so I have to point out the anti-semitism too. Deus Vult was the war cry for the First Crusaders, and for the people who heard about a call for a crusade to Jerusalem and decided to clean things up at home. There were nasty anti-Jewish incidents, as well as massacres, in Europe as the first crusaders headed east.
And that tat on his chest is the emblem of the Hospitallers, aka the Knights of St. John, who were vitally important for the Crusader States in the early 12th century.
I think we may reside on a planet of endless recycling and reincarnation. It’s a tidy set-up if you think about it; or don’t live here.
And they invariably start talking about “spanking.” Self hatred is a bad drug.
Well met, fellow medieval historian! (I study popular medieval heresy).
I always want to ask them what about the Crusades they admire so much? Pogroms? Murder of fellow Christians? Cannibalizing terrified villagers along the way? Or perhaps eating their own dead when they ran out of food? The excommunication of Crusaders who sacked the Christian city of Zara (as payment to the Venetians for sea transport)? The Children’s Crusade that likely ended in slavery for those who made it to the sea? The 3rd Crusade that was a giant hissy fit between Kings Philip and Richard (sorry Barbarossa, if only you hadn’t slipped off your horse and drowned)? The 4th Crusade that didn’t even make it to the Holy Land and sacked Constantinople instead?
So much winning!
But we know, they like the Alpha Medieval Christian Warrior myth precisely because of the anti Semitism and Islamophobia.
What is it Hans Gruber says in “Die Hard”? " And Alexander ‘wept,’ seeing as he had no more worlds to conquer." Perhaps there’s a switch that goes off if someone becomes worth $300B. What the fuck is the point of doing anything? Imagine it. Every pursuit must seem empty and pointless and just dead. I mean once you own half the world, what possible incentive can you have for putting effort in? They’re like junkies, and need to go after a bigger hit, a bigger fix to have a purpose. It’s actually quite terrifying for the rest of us because that kind of power has to end with wiping humanity off the planet. That, or controlling us all like toys.
Send him back to the 19th century.
I did Nazi see the connection, but it makes sense.
“Hegseth contributed to that debate in a March 2002 issue with a column where he blamed the case of “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh and other terrorist sympathizers in the country on the “absence of a male disciplinary figure.”
Fun fact: John Walker Lindh aka Johnny Taliban was released from prison during the Trump administration after serving most of his 20 year sentence.
Read up on “Tom of Finland”…
The conservative worldview holds water, and then the conservative movement makes water.
Clownish, Distracting. Right? It’s as if Stalin, the last big cult of personality leader in the USSR was getting the gang together for his last big politburo in the early 1950s. Included of course is faithful sidekick Lavrenty Beria, sexual predator and purger of the Red Army. Trump is already talking about a third term, so we should expect him to die in office with his boots on. Gaetz, now tapped to lead the purges, could leave long trail of human wreckage and finish up his career like Beria a few months after he loses his protector.
Trump is also a sociopath. He likes to let the fox in the henhouse to see what happens, despite the fairly predictable outcome. Gabbard is a Russian asset, well, there’s a Burl Ives poultry-protest song The Fox that ends:
They never had such a supper in their life and the little one’s chewed on the bones-o, bones-o, bones-o. They never had such a supper in their life and the little ones chewed on the bones-o.
I guess thats one way to avoid the ethics committee
Mike Johnson Says Matt Gaetz Has Resigned From Congress | Watch
He put mid-century tropes of masculinity in a blender and came up with something new and seductively marketable: an ad campaign for joyful male homosexuality in a homophobic world. His men have Ken-doll jawlines, superhero bodies, the puppyish smiles of Disney princes. Many wear Nazi-inspired uniforms (Finland fought alongside Germany in WWII). I guess you could argue that the sexy-Nazi thing is an act of subversion. The gay male gaze feminises authority figures, softening their harshness into bulging curves and willing smiles. Instead of defying uniformed officers, Laaksonen’s characters submit to violence – and dare to enjoy it. One drawing zooms in on a man’s face as he licks the boots of unseen officers.
In fact, Finland only sided with Germany for part of WWII. The end part involved removing the Germans forcibly from Lapland, which meant a lot of farms were burned. Ultimately, Finland ended up fighting Russia and Germany and still got through the war with 89% of its territory.
