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The Pentagon's Cosplay ConventionSo Pete Hegseth got a few hundred generals and admirals... The Pentagon's Cosplay Convention
So Pete Hegseth got a few hundred generals and admirals together in a room in Virginia on Tuesday. The press release probably called it a "historic summit" or some other focus-grouped nonsense. Let's call it what it was: the inaugural meeting of the U.S. Military Historical Reenactment Society.
The new Secretary of the "War Department"—because offcourse that's what we're calling it now—stood up there and basically announced he's rebooting the military and setting it in 1985. He’s the director, the casting agent, and the star of this new straight-to-video action flick. And his first order of business was canceling the 21st century.
Out go the "DEI offices," "identity months," and "gender delusions." In come the "shark attacks," the screaming drill sergeants, and a physical fitness test from 1990. Nineteen. Ninety. An era when the most advanced piece of tech in a soldier's pocket was probably a Walkman.
This is a bad idea. No, 'bad' doesn't cover it—this is a five-alarm dumpster fire of tactical nostalgia.
The Dangerous Delusion of "Looking the Part"
The New Costume Requirements
Hegseth’s big, bold plan to make the military "lethal" again is to make sure everyone, from the 19-year-old grunt to the 58-year-old logistics officer with three decades of experience, can pass the exact same physical test. The "highest male standard only."
Think about that for a second. We’re not fighting with spears anymore. The next war is probably going to be won by some kid in an air-conditioned bunker in Nevada who can pilot a drone with the twitch of a thumb, or a cryptographer who can break an enemy's entire communications network before breakfast. But Hegseth is convinced that national security hinges on whether that cryptographer can run a six-minute mile.
It’s pure performance art. It’s about looking the part, not being effective. It reminds me of these tech CEOs demanding everyone return to the office. It has nothing to do with productivity; it’s about the boss wanting to see his little worker bees buzzing around the hive. It’s an aesthetic choice, a power trip dressed up as a business strategy. Hegseth doesn't want a modern military; he wants a military that looks like the one from the movies he grew up with.
He’s even bringing back "tossing bunks" and letting drill sergeants get "physical" with recruits. For what? Does getting your mattress flipped over by a screaming man in a funny hat make you better at analyzing satellite imagery? Does it improve your ability to maintain a nuclear submarine? Or does it just satisfy a deep-seated boomer fantasy about how "men were made" back in the good ol' days?
This ain't about combat readiness. It’s about creating a very specific, very outdated, and very fragile brand of masculinity.
Welcome to the New, "Merit-Based" Boys' Club
Recasting the Lead Roles
And if you don't fit the look, you're out. Hegseth made that clear on day one.
He fired Gen. CQ Brown Jr., the second Black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He fired Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead the Navy. He fired Adm. Linda Fagan, the first woman to lead any military branch. You see a pattern here? It's not about merit; its a purge of anyone who doesn't fit the casting call for "Central Casting: Generic General #4."
The new promotion process will be based "solely on merit," he says. This is my favorite piece of corporate-speak, the ultimate tell. Whenever a guy in a suit says he’s making things "merit-based," what he really means is he's making it easier for people who look and think exactly like him to get ahead. He’s taking a system that was, at the very least, trying to be objective and replacing it with one based on his gut. And his gut, I suspect, has some very specific preferences.
He's gutting Military Equal Opportunity policies, reviewing the definitions of "bullying" and "hazing"—which I can only assume means he wants to make them legal again. For the nearly one in four women in the military who report sexual assault, and the half who report harassment, this isn't just a policy change. It's a signal. It says: "You're on your own. The guys are in charge again."
They're dismantling the guardrails, all so they can play-act a version of the past that never really existed, and honestly...
Diversity is Dumb, But Cosplaying is Peak Strategy?
The Dumbest Phrase in History?
Hegseth once called "Our diversity is our strength" the "single dumbest phrase in military history."
Really? Dumber than "Mission Accomplished"? Dumber than "We have to destroy the village in order to save it"?
The thing is, diversity is a strength, just not in the way a guy like Hegseth understands it. He thinks it's about checking boxes and hitting quotas. He doesn't get that different life experiences lead to different ways of solving problems. A military that recruits from every corner of society, that values a wide range of skills—from the powerlifter to the programmer—is a military that can't be easily out-thought. A monoculture is predictable. It's brittle. It has blind spots a mile wide.
But you can't quantify that on a spreadsheet. You can't test it with push-ups. So, to him, it doesn't exist. All that exists is the "warrior ethos," this vague, chest-thumping slogan that’s more about feeling tough than being effective.
Maybe I’m the crazy one here. Maybe the future of global conflict really will be decided by a series of arm-wrestling matches. Then again, maybe we’ve just handed the keys to the world's most powerful military to a guy who read a book—his own, by the way—and decided to turn it into a national LARP event. This whole pete hegseth meeting with generals feels less like a strategy session and more like a casting call.
The world is getting more complex, more technological, more reliant on intellect. And the American "War Department" is getting ready for it by practicing its 40-yard dash.
And the Award for Best Historical Reenactment Goes To...
At the end of the day, this isn't about strength. It's about fear. Fear of a world that’s changing. Fear of women in positions of power. Fear that the old, simple, black-and-white world of good guys and bad guys is gone forever. This isn't a plan to win the next war; it's a desperate, pathetic attempt to cosplay the last one. And we're all going to pay the price for their fantasy.
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