Photo: Video screenshot, Pete Hegseth X account
Photo: Video screenshot, Pete Hegseth X account
Pete Hegseth is the very worst kind of being America can produce: a vapid, narcissistic walking monument to White mediocrity who has been handed every benefit and privilege while believing he deserves more.
Republished with permission from John Pavlovitz
It’s fitting that just a day before Veterans Day, House Republicans at least temporarily exempted Pete Hegseth from an impeachment he has fully earned by every available metric.
He has left a two-year stinking slime trail of illegality, overreach, reckless violence, and innumerable crimes against humanity that under any normal U.S. Administration would have him currently on trial or rotting in prison, at the very least.
It’s completely on brand that on the eve of a day honoring the courageous men and women who’ve valiantly stood between this nation and its enemies, these morally inverted GOP sycophantic disciples of a wannabe despot would, would do what they’ve been doing since commandeering Congress in 2024: urinate all over them.
As America languishes in a costly, deadly, unconstitutional war conjured up solely to protect the vile, damaged Serial Rapist-In-Chief, and as our servicemen and women find themselves in constant unnecessary peril throughout the world, the fact that their fates lie in the hands of a posturing, petulant disgraced TV personality should boil the blood of every patriotic American.
Pete Hegseth is the very worst kind of being America can produce: a vapid, narcissistic walking monument to White mediocrity who has been handed every benefit and buffer his privilege affords while believing he deserves more. He is the most dangerous combination of staggering incompetence and stratospheric arrogance.
Hegseth is a craven, sniveling, traitorous Olympic-level coward who has failed up his entire life, this time all the way to the pinnacle of leadership over our troops, and this historic travesty is doing irreparable harm to our sovereignty, our safety, and our standing in the world. It’s also getting Americans killed.
In the wake of an election that brought a searing nationwide repudiation of the domestic terrorism of ICE, the genocidal collaboration in Gaza, the wanton brutality against civilians at home and abroad, the Republican Party’s doubling down on Hegseth reminds us how treasonous these people are and how dangerous they will be until they are driven out of our Government.
While he helms our Armed Forces, we will continue to find ourselves in existential crisis and at the brink of catastrophic international conflict because he, like the party who coronated him, exists only to bend the knee to and kiss the ring of this parasitic president.
Despite their incessant, showy displays of performative patriotism, all their star-spangled, flag-waving, chest-thumping, rockets’ red glare histrionics, these Republicans are the most anti-American collection of grifters, thieves, and predators to ever sully our highest seats of power.
They are bereft of respect for the Rule of Law, pledge no allegiance to the Constitution, and have complete contempt for the very people they are charged with protecting.
No more is this sociopathic disregard for this nation more apparent than in the flailing, clueless, mortally insecure man-child who’s cosplaying Super Soldier and toying with the lives of our Military members with no regard for the collateral damage.
He stands as a strident middle finger from the Republican Party to the Military.
When this murderous regime is soon beaten back to the depths of hell from which it sprang, Hegseth should and hopefully will face tribunals for the prolific death he has personally authored, along with the hundreds of millions of human beings who have endured suffering, sorrow, and unimaginable grief at his soft, manicured, jittery hands.
In the meantime, those of us throughout this nation who truly respect the men and women who so bravely and steadfastly protect and defend us should be sick to our stomachs that their lives are being disregarded, their sacrifices are being squandered, and their courage is being mocked by a man without valor or dignity of any kind.
Pete Hegseth is a national danger and a national disgrace.
Our Military deserves better.
We all do.
John Pavlovitz is a writer, pastor, and activist from Wake Forest, North Carolina. A 25-year veteran in the trenches of local church ministry, John is committed to equality, diversity, and justice—both inside and outside faith communities. When not actively working for a more compassionate planet, John enjoys spending time with his family, exercising, cooking, and having time in nature. He is the author of A Bigger Table, Hope and Other Superpowers, Low, and Stuff That Needs to Be Said.
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