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Daniel W. Drezner: Pete Hegseth, American Man?
Daniel W. Drezner - Pete Hegseth, American Man?
What Hegseth means about American masculinity.
Daniel W. Drezner
Dec 03, 2024
In his second go-around as president-elect, Donald Trump has displayed peculiar taste in cabinet appointees. It would be difficult not to notice just how many of them have been accused of various crimes and offenses against women. Or, as Axios’ Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen put it last week: “[Trump] has unabashedly surrounded himself with men who've said, done or been accused of things that would disqualify them under any other U.S. leader in our lifetimes.”
Why is this? Allen and VandeHei serve up their armchair psychoanalysis of Trump:
Trump has a very 1950s view of powerful men. In this view, the successful ones are rugged, often handsome, tough and flawed. Polite men, who often dominate politics, are too soft and fake to confront the harsh realities of real life. It takes daring men to do the hard things in fighting crime or illegal immigration, or confronting China, or negotiating with stone-cold killers like Vladimir Putin….
We're told Trump's gains in the election fueled his bad-boy instincts. "He knows and intuitively understands that men voted for him in huge numbers in part because they reject the notion that all male behavior is toxic," the insider said. "He wants to drive home the message that he is discarding the old norms and he is setting the new ones."
There is no denying that Pete Hegseth is a norm-breaker. The former Fox News weekend anchor is not remotely qualified to run the largest bureaucracy in the world has been nominated to be Trump’s next Secretary of Defense. The dude’s actual policy preferences are at best controversial and at worst disturbing as fuck.
/snip
What Hegseth means about American masculinity.
Daniel W. Drezner
Dec 03, 2024
In his second go-around as president-elect, Donald Trump has displayed peculiar taste in cabinet appointees. It would be difficult not to notice just how many of them have been accused of various crimes and offenses against women. Or, as Axios’ Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen put it last week: “[Trump] has unabashedly surrounded himself with men who've said, done or been accused of things that would disqualify them under any other U.S. leader in our lifetimes.”
Why is this? Allen and VandeHei serve up their armchair psychoanalysis of Trump:
Trump has a very 1950s view of powerful men. In this view, the successful ones are rugged, often handsome, tough and flawed. Polite men, who often dominate politics, are too soft and fake to confront the harsh realities of real life. It takes daring men to do the hard things in fighting crime or illegal immigration, or confronting China, or negotiating with stone-cold killers like Vladimir Putin….
We're told Trump's gains in the election fueled his bad-boy instincts. "He knows and intuitively understands that men voted for him in huge numbers in part because they reject the notion that all male behavior is toxic," the insider said. "He wants to drive home the message that he is discarding the old norms and he is setting the new ones."
There is no denying that Pete Hegseth is a norm-breaker. The former Fox News weekend anchor is not remotely qualified to run the largest bureaucracy in the world has been nominated to be Trump’s next Secretary of Defense. The dude’s actual policy preferences are at best controversial and at worst disturbing as fuck.
/snip