It Would Have Been Infra-Dig for Gen Brown to Have Served Under Hegseth, Trust Me

At the time of his widely reported dismissal by the tattoo-graffitied, fascist Norwegian-descended Trumpian-”misappointed” self-infatuated and self-inflated US Secretary of Defense - the self-classd Secretary of War - to wit, Mr. Peter “Pete” Brian Hegseth, I was visibly shaken by the apparently sinister turn of political events precipitated by the strategically avoidable twice, nonconsecutively elected half-Scottish and half-German (Bavarian) Mr. Donald John Trump as the 47th President of the United States of America and, before the latter, the 45th American President but absolutely not the least bit flabbergasted.

The proverbial doomsday handwriting was always on the wall. Now, the prim, trim, proper and impeccably dignified man that we are talking about here, who is also almost about the same age as Yours Truly is, of course, only the second, first-rate African American to have been named as Chairman of the Joint-Chiefs-of-Staff of the United States Armed Forces (USAF), namely, Four-Star General Charles Quinton Brown (2023-2025). After all, hadn’t the Trump-chaperoned Agenda-2025 Gravy-Train Kleptocrats and the Make America Great Again (MAGA) Democracy-Demolition Squad already alerted the country well beforehand that they intended to reverse the progressive gear of the fast and the healthily evolving democratic and the constitutional rule of law, equity, diversity and justice, so as to have the yeomanly likes of the San Antonio, Texas, born and North Carolina-resident Four-Star General returned to the Ante-Bellum Plantation South of the history books. Fat Chance, of course!

Anyway, as was to be logically expected, the politically fraught expulsion of General Brown also had a characteristically sexist twist and tinge to it, with the concomitant and the concurrent dismissal of Admiral Lisa Marie Franchetti, at the time Head of the United States Navy and the First Woman to serve on the Board of the Joint-Chiefs-of-Staff and a native of Rochester, New York. Which is why when General Brown gravely inveighs against the patently and the scandalously indiscriminate and the unprofessional abuse of the US Military institutional establishment for traditionally civic duties, such as law enforcement in American cities and municipalities, such as was recently witnessed in our nation’s capital of Washington, DC, General Brown cannot be reasonably impeached of have his professionally authoritative and sagacious judgment called into question (See “Top General Fired by Trump Administration Criticizes Use of Military for Political Missions” CNN Politics 7/3/26).

It is also significant to hear Major-General Randy Manner, the Deputy Head of the National Guard’s Bureau in Washington, DC, at the time that a then-Major Peter Brian Hegseth was strongly encouraged to resign his commission from the Infantry Division of the Army National Guard, expressly for wearing or sporting a tattoo reminiscent of the Medieval European Crusaders’ Motto of “Deus Vult,” which translates from the Latin original into English as “God Wills,” an obviously Anti-Islamic and Anti-Semitic mantra and an insignia expressly envisaged to be incompatible with the moral and the cosmopolitan code-of-conduct of any civilized and a modern professional military establishment. Which makes the appointment of the 46-year-old Minneapolis, Minnesota-born self-classd United States Secretary of War or any such key cabinet member of the second Trump Administration all the more strategically suspect.

Which is also why when Major-General Randy Manner calls the professional caliber of Mr. Hegseth, as a Trump cabinet appointee whose sole qualification for being named to the very cranially exacting and mature adult portfolio of the Defense Secretary of the United States of America into question, and as one that is purely and almost exclusively based on Mr. Hegseth’s “extremely blind loyalty” to the pathologically narcissistic and megalomaniacal Vietnam War Draft-Dodging President Donald John Trump, General Manner’s judgment call can absolutely not in any way be credibly impugned.

As well, Mr. Hegseth’s widely alleged remark that personnel of the United States Military deserve to be afforded free rein beyond the universally accepted standard rules of combat or military engagement, so as to enable MAGA-”Rapepublican” controlled US Military commit untold atrocities in foreign wars, in particular in the Trump-provoked War on Iran, could not be a more convincing testimony of the possibly deliberate use of the US-made Tomahawk Missiles that caused the blatant and the at once morally despicable and untenable slaughter of some 200 female pupils and their teachers, guardians and administrators at an Islamic school in the Iranian capital of Tehran several months ago.

Now, some five months later, the Hegseth-headed Pentagon which initially vehemently denied any involvement, directly or indirectly, in the barbaric slaughter of the Tehran Schoolgirls, as they have globally become known, still claims to be “investigating” the real source and the cause of this morally most reprehensible act of heinous human depravity. At another time and place, a tattoo-uglified Peter Brian Hegseth would not have been granted a National Guard Commission, much less be confirmed by the United States Senate as Secretary of the putatively most powerful military ever to be established in the Modern World.

But then, so would Mr. Donald John Trump not have twice been consecutively or nonconsecutively elected President of the most technologically and socioeconomically advanced country in the so-called Free and Civilized World. Put in simple terms and language, both Messrs. Trump and Hegseth deserve one another and their godforsaken respective families, absolutely without question. But the question of whether Americans as a whole, regardless of political party affiliation and/or ideological suasion deserve these vision-bereft and strategically incompetent men as our leaders, is a completely different species of animal altogether. The crystal clear answer here may definitely be a resonant no.

So, how come that one of these two fascist goofballs got legitimately elected and the other equally legitimately appointed to their respective cardinal political portfolios? Dear Reader, your guess is as good as “Get Me Some Eleven-Thousand, Seven-Hundred-and-Eighty Votes, which is one more than we have, [My Dear Brad]” Raffensperger. And such a moral scumbag and a pathologically impenitent and unspeakably unconscionable political scam-artist would have the rest of us believe that, somehow, the 2020 Presidential Election was “stolen” from him by the then-Candidate Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., of the left-leaning “Dumbocratic” Party!

At any rate, not only does it bear heavily underscoring the fact that Major (Ret) Peter Brian Hegseth would clearly not have qualified for his appointment as a United States Defense Secretary, even if the most lenient DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) criteria had been applied, and that is hypothetically assuming that both General Charles Quinton Brown and Admiral Lisa Franchetti had been so named to their respective portfolios by an Affirmative Action-intoxicated Biden Administration. Which is why when General Brown, who presently serves as Executive-in-Residence with Joint Appointments at the Sanford School of Public Policy and the Pratt School of Engineering, at top-notch Duke University, cryptically remarks that Hurricane MAGA is about anything except merit - and, by the way, the Replacement Theorist and MAGA Cardinal and veteran media maven, Mr. Tucker Carlson, unreservedly agrees; talk of strange political bedfellows - the credibility of this most lambent-witted assessment could absolutely not be objectively and scientifically contradicted.

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
E-mail: okoampaahoofekwame@gmail.com

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