Pete Hegseth The Crusader Reveals the Two Truly-Madly-Deeply Lethal Loves of His Life

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.”

Or like a winning hand of cards, the nouns can be shuffled: “Warfighting, lethality, meritocracy, standards, and readiness. That’s it. That is my job,” he later announced to the Armed Services Committee.

On his home turf, at Fox News, it was headlined more starkly: “Pete Hegseth wants warriors, readiness, lethality above all else.”

Lethality above all else.

And in his latest book, The War On Warriors, he further bares his soul, underlines and expands on  how he received that four-word epiphany and revelation:

Hegseth taking aim

This mission [Iraq combat] was my life. I thought daily: if I could have my family over here, I wouldn’t leave. Ever. You always miss family, but the men I served with were my new meaning and purpose.

Two years ago, almost to the day, I had deployed to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with the New Jersey National Guard’s 42nd Infantry Division. Those guys were family, but that was a cute camping trip compared to this. This was war.

Everything I had ever done in my life led me to this moment. . . . (War, 148)

After the first couple of informant leads led to bad guys at room temperature [i.e., dead] I felt like we had found the right team. After a dozen more, I knew I was good at this.

Our team was good at this. Relationships lead to trust, trust leads to intel, intel leads to dead bad guys. Rinse and repeat.

After twenty-five, I realized that perhaps my planetary purpose was to proactively, politically, and then militarily destroy Islamist radicals.

Feeding a well-oiled killing machine, now that’s my jam. My talents were appreciated. (Crusade, 149)

That’s the plain speaking definition of “lethality”: a well-oiled killing machine. That was his jam. That is, in fact, what he became. Soon, he says —

There was nothing left of the old Pete Hegseth.

I was part of something bigger and better. I was only one soldier, but our team was powerful. At that moment, I would never allow myself to be tired again —at least not here. My body never again registered the privations of my service as a burden or a sacrifice. I was not collecting stories to share with my grandchildren one day around a glowing fire. This was my purpose. (Crusade, 151)

Thus: In creating and operating a “well-oiled killing machine,” at a frenetically lethal rinse-and-repeat pace of house-to-house fighting that piled up the “room temperature” quarry, Pete Hegseth discovered “this was my life”; and “my planetary purpose” and personal summit. It does not feel exaggerated to say that in “his jam,” he found the joy of killing.

The years since have been, until recently, largely a slide down, marked by all the tawdry series of marital and  managerial misdeeds he and his supporters so staunchly ignored and denied at his hearing. That beloved “well-oiled killing machine” was receding steadily into a memory hole made hazy by self-medication. As he wrote in Crusade:

There is a reason many soldiers who come back from combat become depressed. I did. I drank way too much and didn’t want to leave the couch. It’s often because when veterans come back to a modern society that’s largely purposeless, they cannot find the sense of meaning and brotherhood that fulfilled and sustained them on the battlefield.

It’s understandable for all the reasons this book has outlined: our culture is becoming distracted, shallow, and trivial.

However, when you get back to first principles, love the people around you, and love the pursuit of a cause that’s bigger than you, it sets you back onto a “deployment” mind-set. You’re back on the battlefield, here at home, with people you love and a clear sense of purpose.I believed in the mission we had in Iraq and loved the daily grind. It was purposeful, focused, and fulfilling. Thankfully, I was able–eventually—to find similar arenas on this side of the pond. (Crusade, 302)

The “arenas” he found, in which he claimed renewed purpose, were Fox News, the MAGA right, and then, a fateful phone call from Mar-a-Lago two months ago.

This call delivered a double dose of redemption for Hegseth. Not only an unimagined leap into the highest circles of the military elite. Even more staggering, it brought a chance to grasp again his ecstatically remembered Iraq lethality, now as a giant Arthurian Excalibur, a mystic blade for a Crusader’s mission. And he was to wield it to vanquish a foe he sees as even more deadly than the Taliban or Isis, the very Hounds of Hell, to wit:

“The left.”

The American left. I noted in a previous post how broad his definition of  “leftism” is, from vaccines, to climate “stupidity,” anything DEI/woke, Drag Queen story hour, trans soldiers, public schools, plus just about every military general on active duty–all for him are under the sway of a near-irresistible mix of Islamism and leftism/Marxism.

It would seem an incongruous, not to say oxymoronic alliance, but to Hegseth it is basic, and its poisonous tentacles are everywhere:

Richard the Lionhearted – Early Crusades superstar

It pains me to say this about my fellow countrymen, but the American Left is an existential threat to freedom. I swore an oath to defend our Constitution against all enemies–foreign and domestic.

< An existential threat..Mark those words. >

. . .  If leftists succeed in turning America into something else, then—as strident as it may seem—divorce is imminent. If they turn into King George III, find me a town square in Lexington or a bridge in Concord to stand on. I believe millions of Americans-properly prepared and organized–would do the same.

Our great flag means nothing without freedom. Better to go our separate ways—a new freedom-loving country and all–than be complicit in the destruction of America. This is not a call to violence; not at all. And it’s not what anybody wants. It is simply a recognition that freedom-loving Americans will not stand idly by and watch our blessed freedoms be trampled. (Crusade, 33-34)

His last two books, American Crusade and The War On Warriors, speak often of the  dangerous Islamic extremists Hegseth fought in the Middle East. But even more often, indeed in almost every paragraph, they blare urgent warnings about how these forces, and their domestic leftist/Marxist allies are (or, until mid January 2025, were) almost on the brink of total victory.

Allow me (he writes) to put our task into army infantry terms. For decades, the United States has been lured into a giant L-shaped near ambush— the most deadly kind, with almost no escape. In more ways than you can imagine, leftists have surrounded traditional American patriots on all sides, ready to close in for the kill: killing our founders, killing our flag, and killing capitalism. The only option for survival in a near ambush is to charge; to close with, and destroy, the enemy.

Now, while President Trump gives us cover fire, is our moment to reload, fix bayonets, and charge toward the enemy. Attack! (Metaphorically, of course, for triggered bed wetters.) Only that way, by regaining the initiative and closing with an exposed enemy, will we be able to survive, let alone win (Crusade, 24)

American Crusade was published for the 2020 election. Soon enough, Hegseth’s Owellian doublespeak about his cries for a climactic  “Attack” being  only a “metaphor,”  was exposed and exploded on January 6th 2021, when real weapons appeared under its banners and authentic excrement was dumped, not in a wet bed, but on a Capitol desk, while a portable gallows nearby trembled in the smoke, awaiting its wriggling prey.

This thrust at domestic Armageddon by a MAGAfied militia had to be put off on that occasion, since police reinforcements arrived just in time on January 6.

But as the more clear-eyed analysts saw, an initial coup attempt can either be a failure — or a rehearsal. Today, after the mass pardons of its perpetrators (and the triumphant return of the Instigator-in-Chief), it abruptly looks more like the latter.

And that brings Hegseth much closer to his other guiding fantasy, his other great love, the one, three key symbols of which he now has tattooed on his body. It’s a revival of an idealized version of the medieval crusades and their long, destructive (and ultimately fruitless) effort to conquer & re-Christianize the Muslim Middle East. His new version is more aimed at what he terms Islam’s new de facto colonies in Europe and the USA.

Furthermore, his new Crusade has a counterpart to legendary Crusader king Richard the Lionhearted, in Donald the Bulletproof, to whom Hegseth has pledged eternal fealty.

In short (and the following all caps chapter title is his) we are commanded to:

MAKE THE CRUSADE GREAT AGAIN

Whether you like it or not, you are an “infidel’ —an unbeliever— according to the false religion of leftism. You are marked for annihilation. Just like Islamism, you can submit now or later; or you can fight.

Enjoy Western civilization? Freedom? Equal justice under the law? Thank a crusader.

Let’s make the crusade great again. . . . (Crusade, 289)

If the new crusade weaponry is more lethal, he insists that the spirit is in tune with that of the original crusades of a millennium ago:

Biblical tenets of freedom, equal justice, and personal responsibility forged the American culture. Not so for leftists or Islamists, who share the goals of dependency, control, and submission. Islamism in Europe, aided by willfully blind leftists, is creating de facto “no-go zones” for infidels. Leftists say that this is a lie, but they are in denial of what is happening on their streets. . . .

I’m not asking you to paint your shield with a crimson cross, but I am asking you to paint your shield with the American flag, understanding fully what that flag stands for. Our American Crusade is not about literal swords, and our fight is not with guns. Yet.

Until our crusader in chief, Donald Trump, showed up, our leaders were not seriously confronting the leftist invasion. Yes, voting is a weapon, but it’s not enough. We cannot outsource or delegate our crusade.

Arm yourself-metaphorically, intellectually, and physically. This is, by the way, why the Second Amendment exists. Let me repeat-slowly—for the benefit of leftist readers: I am not advocating any sort of violence in this book. The American Crusade is a war against destructive ideas. We are not calling for violence. [NOTE: again, this doublespeak was published just prior to the 2020 election; the “not yet” and “no violence” gaslighting ended on January 5th 2021]

I am saying that our founders would have compelled you to be prepared, because the clash is ongoing and only going to get nastier.

We didn’t start this war. But we must win it. . . .  (Crusade,293-294)

And now Hegseth, whose “planetary life purpose” reached its first peak in a halcyon period of leading a “well-oiled killing machine,” in the back streets of Iraq is on the cusp of getting his hands on the controls of the largest existing version of such an apparatus of global lethality. At he enters, he salutes and genuflects to a divinely anointed leader who has ordered a crusade to pursue, subdue or “utterly annihilate” almost every real or fancied challenger or heretic.

Pete Hegseth is ready to live his dream.

For the rest of us,  welcome to the nightmare.

 

 

3 thoughts on “Pete Hegseth The Crusader Reveals the Two Truly-Madly-Deeply Lethal Loves of His Life”

  1. I attended the Banff Mountain Film festival last night. Some of the films showcased the human desire to take on ever more risk, accompanied by ever more terror. To mere mortals this desire to place oneself ever closer to death seems folly, because most would not gamble a 30 second rush against a lifetime. But those who do become addicted to that rush, need an ever bigger rush to get the same high. Your article presents a warrior but describes someone who can’t live without that adrenaline rush.

  2. Thank you for having waded through these books and showing us the real belief system of at least one of the people who will lead the country for a while.
    While Hegseth says he wants to annihilate Islamic fundamentalists, his methods and aims appear to be much closer to theirs than to evolving liberal Western society and thoughts.

  3. You’ve done it this time for real, Chuck. This scares the liver out of me. Thank you for this Friendly Letter, but how do I get to sleep?
    Maybe I won’t even try.

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