In official statements, Pete Hegseth calls the first one, “Lethality.”
Usually it’s a dry, abstract word. A term that’s launched a thousand PowerPoint slide shows. It’s ideal for air-conditioned classrooms, lit by rows of long tubular fluorescent bulbs. Under the lights, as it is repeated, rows of men in uniform listen, many taking notes, or (if it’s shortly after lunch, struggleto keep their eyes open).
Or at a crowded congressional hearing. “If you’re confirmed as Secretary of Defense,” asked a U. S. Senator, “what would be your mission, Mr. Hegseth?”
It’s the first significant noun he emits (after, of course, the name Trump), in a crisply-memorized litany:
“He, like me, wants a Pentagon laser-focused on lethality, meritocracy, war-fighting, accountability and readiness.”
On Monday, January 20, if you need someFAST Relieffrom Inaugu-rama overload, you can get some at, not one but TWO podcasts, featuring thine truly.
I’ll put the links below; they’re free, and won’t try to sell you anything (well, maybe a book of mine will be hyped). Together they’re that one weird trick that can get you through the swearing-in (but won’t disturb the swearing-at).
First, I talk about Eating Dr. King’s Dinner, (from my book of the same name), a true tale of time in jail in Selma, Alabama, 1965.
This session will be with co-hosts Daniel Ayers (of Spring Friends Meeting in NC) and Quinn Ray, on The Hometown Holler, a dynamic and fast-growing podcast. The Holler usually focuses on North Carolina politics, but this program is for MLK Day, which is what all the Monday fuss should REALLY be about.
Then you can turn to a scintillating conversation on Tell It Slant — the biography/autobiography of Chuck Fager, published last summer, by Emma Lapsansky-Werner, with Chuck — reviewing his prophetic eighty-plus years of adventure, activism & writing on religion, war, justice, love and laughter.
It’s on Northern Spirit Radio, hosted by Quaker Mark Helpsmeet.
Northern Spirit Radio
(There are two versions of this conversation: one is 57 minutes, the other 68 minutes, which includes more on Chuck’s and Emma’s religious influences.)
If those aren’t enough to get you through the worst pangs of oligarchs’ indigestion, you could go back and start over, check grocery prices (they’re UP), see whether the cease-fire is holding and hostages are still being released, and/or — like I might do myself — take a long nap.
(I’m setting my alarm for 2028.)
PS. The Almighty Algorithm tells me this post is too short for its super standards.
So I’ll meekly add a brief poem I found, to fill it out. I read that it was one that Winston Churchill frequently repeated in speeches to encourage the Brits during the worst months of World War Two. Now I know Churchill was a stone imperialist, racist, and some other bad stuff, but his encouragement worked, and today we need all we can get. I’ve edited it a bit, but here goes:
Say Not The Struggle Nought Availeth
Arthur Hugh Clough, 1819-1869
Say not the struggle nought availeth,
The labour and the wounds are vain.
The enemy faints not nor faileth.
As things have been, things will remain
Say not the struggle nought availeth,
Though we must battle constantly:
Exposed to light the darkness fadeth
For those who have the eyes to see.
The labour and the wounds are vain,
The human heart resilient,
In time will overcome the pain.
And better truth comes clear to millions.
The enemy faints not nor faileth.
We have to trade them blow for blow
Although his malice he sustaineth
He dare not let his terror show.
As things have been, things will remain;
The night goes on continually.
Despite the hardship and the pain
One morn we’ll claim the victory.
The post deals with aspects of Hegseth’s program that were hardly mentioned in his Senate hearing on January 14: his public targeting of the one top-level Black officer, Air Force General C. Q. Brown, to be fired, based on a four-minute video he made after the George Floyd murder.
Brown has had an honorable & successful 40-
General C. Q. Brown, Jr. Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Target #1
year military career. It’s clear Hegseth can’t tolerate that. He wants to make Brown the first, highest-ranking scapegoat in a projected anti-woke, military-wide “crusade” to eradicate anything he considers “woke” (it’s a very long list), first from the military, and then from American society at large.
Why this crusade plan was not taken up seriously in Hegseth’s Senate hearing is not clear. Voices can still be raised about it.
In 1992, I spent much of my free time planning a murder.
I mapped it out it out to the last detail: victim, weapon, motive, opportunity, covering the tracks, the whole meticulous homicidal mess. In the end, it went almost exactly according to plan, and was a complete success.
Almost.
Fortunately for all concerned, the murder was fictional: the plot of a mystery novel, Murder Among Friends, published in 1993. It sold out two printings; that was the successful part.
But I’m remembering it now for a different reason. One of its central plot elements, indeed the underlying theme — the reason I wrote it —was not the homicide, but the context: the murder was a portent, a forerunner of a larger real-life conflict, with a grim history and an ominous future. I could feel it coming then; two decades later, long after the novel ended with this part unresolved, it has moved from fiction to perilously close to fact.
Its history was our American Civil War (the first one): my tale was set in one of its most contested killing fields, the splendid and fertile Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, near Winchester. The Valley was fought over repeatedly, and changed hands between Blue and Grey dozens of times. Today its landscape is dotted with battlefield memorials and war cemeteries.
It seemed an apt locale for early warnings of a potential repeat catastrophe. Further, the Valley had the other feature I wanted for my story: a long and turbulent, but little-known Quaker presence.
Every Democrat who won a state-level race in North Carolina this week ought to be tossing at least a fiver into a common hat.
Then that wad of bills should be plunked down at Greensboro’s greasiest pizza parlor, to have at several dozen steamy pies delivered to the front porch of Chez Mark Robinson, topped by an oversize “Thank You” card. On it will be a PS hinting broadly that Robinson should consider making a second run at the state house in 2028.
On Monday, January 20, if you need some FAST Relief from Inaugu-rama overload, you can get some at, not one but TWO podcasts, featuring thine truly.
In 1992, I spent much of my free time planning a murder. 
Then that wad of bills should be plunked down at Greensboro’s greasiest pizza parlor, to have at several dozen steamy pies delivered to the front porch of Chez Mark Robinson, topped by an oversize “Thank You” card. On it will be a PS hinting broadly that Robinson should consider making a second run at the state house in 2028.