Piggies, I measure my success as a white, cis-gendered male in his 40s by how many podcasts I’m invited on. To date, officially, I’ve been on one and one alone, episode 13 of the A Better Way 2A podcast.

I love Jordan and Andrew, we talk often. I was supposed to be their guest twice now, but due to scheduling, it just hasn’t happened. The topic: Fascism in the US Military (Part 2). And given how the Trump inauguration is nigh, some of the topics I wanted to talk about might no longer by relevant by the time the three of us can get together to discuss what I consider, an important topic.

So! You Dispatch Piggies™ are getting my show notes, with some commentary I was going to provide. As of the posting of this Dispatch, I’m scheduled to record an episode with the boys on 9 Feb 2025, so fingers crossed. Some of these topics might be brought up on that episode, maybe new topics will be added, who knows! You’ll just have to tune in to find out.

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The Rise of Fascism in the US Military (Part 2):

If you listened to Ep 13 of the ABW2A podcast (or are a long time Piggie) you know a bit of my background: 17 year US Army veteran, most of that time spent in Special Operations with missions to Ukraine, Lithuania, etc etc, doing all sorts of wild shit. On January 6^th, 2021, I watched the J6 Insurrection live with some of my fellow operators and overheard the comments they were making. Most, if not all, the comments were very much in support of the attempted coup. Between this event and pointing out that Kyle Rittenhouse was involved in what many would consider a “bad shoot” earlier that year, I was labeled as the “office antifa” and marked as a “liberal cuck” by some of my fellow soldiers. I knew my time at this particular Special Forces Group was very limited, and made myself scarce.

Fast-forward to October of 2023, and the unit I was assigned to (a conventional Corps HQ) began planning operations in support of Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people. Between this and some other markers, I no longer felt I belonged to the organization as a whole and dropped my Release From Active Duty (ReFrAD) packet in January of 2024.

As of today, I have literally two weeks left on Active Duty, I’m using my remaining PTO (we call it “Leave” in the biz) thru my “final out” date, which allows me to work as a civilian and get the fuck on with my life. I have my DD214 in hand and I start nursing school next week.

But enough about me, that’s just getting you caught up. Let’s get to the episode.

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US Secretary of Defense-Nominee, Pete Hegseth.

Shortly after Trump won the 2024 Presidential Election he began throwing around names of some of the worst fucking people imaginable to head the most important departments of the US Government, and Ol’ Petey’s name was one of the first floated for SECDEF.

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Who is Pete Hegseth, you might be asking? Well, if you’re reading my Dispatches you probably aren’t spending a ton of time on your weekends watching Fox News, and who could blame you, you have a life and at least some taste (you subscribed to my Dispatches, c’mon).

Hegseth is the Fox News Weekend anchor. He is also a US Army National Guard Infantry Major with deployments to Afghanistan and, I’m not making this up, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2004. Yes, as a little 2LT, Fox News Pete was deployed to fucking GITMO to do, what I can only imagine, terrible things. Even more terrible than what the rest of the US Military was doing during the GWOT.

There’s a ton of huge red flags about Pete Hegseth, but the one that stands out to my smooth brain is his lack of a Ranger tab, despite being a field grade infantry officer. Now, this is super nuanced, but it just sticks in my brain like a fucking splinter.

I was an infantry officer early in my Army career and obtained my Ranger tab after recycling the Mountains phase of Ranger School in the dead of winter (Real Rangers Recycle, hooah?). Now, there are plenty of really good leaders WITHOUT tabs, and there’s more than a few shitty leaders WITH tabs. The tab doesn’t make you a better leader, it just helps you learn how to motivate your soldiers and yourself when you’re tired, beat up, cold, wet, hot, wet, starved, wet, and suffering from an infected foreskin (not me, but a guy I recycled with).

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And another wrinkle is, for National Guard guys, the state your unit belongs to foots the bill for Ranger School, not like the federal government does for the Active Duty side. Again, this is super nuanced, feel free to skip ahead.

But Pete is high profile enough that he could go to Ranger School literally anytime he wants, he just has to ask. So he hasn’t. I’m sure he has a million excuses. But honestly? I wouldn’t trust an infantry officer who makes excuses to skip out on the Army’s premiere leadership school.

But that’s just Pete right? He wants you to THINK he’s some bad ass mother fucker, right? He’s got a Deus Vult tattoo, so, you know, he’s probably stacked a bunch of hajj, right? It’s right next to a stupid looking M4, hooah-hooah.

No one mention that the Deus Vult shit is white supremacist-coded ok? He probably is NOT a white supremacist. Probably. Maybe.

There’s also his fucking office at Fox News. Now, this is a little nuanced too, but less so, so bare with me.

By the time you’re a field grade officer in the Army, you’ve acquired a bunch of nicknacks and plaques from the various units you’ve served in. They’re like little tchotchkes. I’ve actually thrown a bunch out because they just take up too much space and I don’t need a constant reminder of my service (I’ve kept a few special ones, like this viking short ax and plaque). You don’t make it to Major/O4 without acquiring this junk.

In Pete’s office at Fox News, he has the most generic US Army wallhanging on his wall, right by his liquor bottles. It’s simply the Army™ logo. It looks like it was printed from the internet and framed. It’s not unit specific at all. It’s literally just the logo of the Army. What psychopath chooses THAT to hang up on their wall??
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Someone who wants you to ask him about his service so he can probably lie about it. That’s who.

As far as policy is concerned, Pete has been very vocal about “woke-ness” in the military and made remarks about “stomping it out” like a trash bin fire. He’s also talked about revoking the service of trans service members, and re-renaming the Army bases. Those bases that once had been named for confederate traitors and renamed after some of the first non-white male generals in US history. All very normal Fox News host behavior.

Hegseth was also very much on the record of removing women from combat roles, like Special Operations/Special Forces, infantry, armor, and field artillery. Roles that female service members have been performing for the last 15 or so years, and our international partners performing for longer than that. Hegseth changed his tune slightly after meeting with Iowa Republican Senator Joni Ernst, a female combat veteran, who threatened to vote against his nomination. According to Sen. Ernst’s public affairs person, the senator is inclined to vote in favor of Hegseth’s nomination after being reassured he would not remove women service members from their combat roles. Time will tell. No potential nominee for a department head or the Supreme Court, has ever lied to a senator before, so, fingers crossed.

After all of this, some damning allegations of sexual assault surfaced around Pete, followed by a leaked email from Pete’s own mother, giving credit to the allegations. When your own mom is calling you a philandering, grabby piece of shit, you know you fucked up. For a short while there was talk about removing Hegseth from the SECDEF nomination, but Pete’s mom went on Fox News and did PR damage control.

But for a short time, there was another potential SECDEF nominee in the wings, Florida Governor Ron Desantis.

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Ron Desantis:

Ol’ Meatball Ron, Trump primary opponent-turned-bootlicker, was being floated as a possible replacement for Hegseth. This was at a time where the incoming Trump admin had just quietly booted former Florida 1^stDistrict US Represenative and human trafficking pedophile-turned Newsmax host Matt Gaetz from the Attorney General nomination.

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Desantis is a former US Naval Reserve Judge Advocate General, or in common parlance, “lawyer.” Go take a sec, text your boomer parents and ask what a “JAG officer” is and I bet they get real excited and give you every plot point to that stupid fucking CBS tv show.

Ron was ALSO at GITMO during a time when the US Government was definitely torturing prisoners of war. He even drafted and signed off on the legal aspects of “enhanced interrogation” techniques for use by the Naval Special Warfare department (SEALs).

Talk of Desantis taking over as SECDEF has faded and Governor Meatball has said that he’s not interested in the position, since it won’t allow him to ban books for school children or infringe the rights of Floridians during another hurricane.

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Director of National Intelligence-nominee Tulsi Gabbard.

You may remember Tulsi Gabbard as being the 2015/16 “Anti-Hillary” democratic choice. Her appearance on the stage during the 2016 primaries was short lived and she subsequently left politics to meet with dictators around the world.

The former US Representative from Hawaii grew up in an anti-LGBQT+ cult run by her parents, but mostly her father, because this cult also believes women should not be allowed to have any decision-making agency.

In the years after leaving office, Tulsi met with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and got him to “totally promise” not to use chemical weapons on defenseless civilians (spoiler, he did) and Russian president Vladimir Putin to get him to “totally promise” not to invade Ukraine (spoiler, he did).

Tulsi has also been caught spreading Russian propaganda, smearing Ukrainian president Vlodymyr Zelinsky as a “Nazi” and advocating for Russia to have the Donbas and Crimea regions, since they are “historically Russian” (her words).

Gabbard is also a US Army Reservist Lieutenant Colonel attached to the United State Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command (USACAPOC “use-a kay-poc”). You can’t make this shit up.

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Director of Veterans Affairs-nominee Douglas A. Collins.

Here’s what you need to know about Doug Collins: He’s a Georgia pastor, US Air Force Reservist Colonel, and doesn’t believe in same-sex marriage. As a Georgia state representative, he cut funding for scholarships that would have helped minorities achieve higher education. He’s a 2020 election denier and vocally supported Trump during his many sexual assault allegations.

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What this means exactly for the Department of Veterans Affairs, I don’t know. What I DO know is Collins is a fucking toady and will do whatever Trump tells him to do. And speaking of…

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Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency.

The Department of Veterans Affairs has been funded through legislation that hasn’t had an actual floor vote in close to 15 years. It’s one of those things that’s allowed to be sort-of rubber stamped, because who the hell is going to vote AGAINST funding veterans? That would be 1) awful, and 2) politically unpopular.

But enter the Department of Government Efficiency, or, … sigh… DOGE, a completely made up government department with TWO heads… equally unqualified Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon “My Mom Also Went on Fox News to Vouch for Me” Musk.

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These two tits have railed about so-called inefficiencies, pointing to the VA’s rubber stamp funding, as “waste.” Given how Trump has zero concept of how anything in government works, and will believe the very last thing he heard, I can see a potential future where the DOGE boys cut VA funding or obliterate the department altogether.

And look, I’m no fan of crushing bureaucracy, but the VA provides services to nearly 5 million former service members, and many of those service members wouldn’t be thriving without assistance from the VA. I mean, how the hell do you think I’m affording to go to nursing school?

Ok, I could keep going, but this was the crux of what I wanted to talk about (I haven’t even gotten into the whole Greenland/Panama shit, or the Cybertruck bomber or Loyalty Tribunals… piggie if you’ve been reading this on a toilet, I pray you haven’t developed a blood clot, stand up slow!). In hindsight, this has less to do about fascism in our ranks and more to sound a warning call that our US military (the machine that keeps our economy afloat, really) and national security are in grave danger. I’m out here trying to sound the alarm.

Who knows what lies ahead, but whatever it is, it’s not great.

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