Thread by @LauraJedeed

OK I finally had time to sit down and watch Hegseth pretend to be George C Scott pretending to be Patton

Cutting through the bullshit: here's what he wants to change (and my analysis as a veteran):

1) Hegseth wants to have the same physical fitness standards for combat arms MOSs (jobs). Currently, women and men have different physical fitness standards

I don't actually hate this. Physical fitness standards should be tooled to the jobs themselves

Observe, however, that Hegseth is getting rid of gender differences but not age differences. 40 year olds will still have a lower physical standard than 18-year-olds

So don't tell me this is about combat readiness, because it's not. It's about reducing women in combat arms

2) A "combat field test" for combat arms MOSs that resembles Army Expert Fitness Test or Marine Corps Combat Fitness Test

Not sure why he changed APFT standards AND introduced a new test, but these are more practical skills than pushups/situps/2 mile run, so: fine. Whatever

3) Everyone has to do PT every duty day, which was already a de facto thing but it did allow Hegseth to say "If the Secretary of War can do regular hard PT, so can every member of our joint force" and then presumably cum in his pants, so hooray I guess

4) No more beard profiles. Some men -- mostly Black men -- get serious skin irritation if they shave every day. Nothing says military readiness like open sores and/or kicking out a bunch of trained troops who have a skin condition

This is old news though

military.com/daily-news/202…

5) Bring Back Hazing!

Yes really. "Nasty bullying and hazing" aren't allowed, per Hegseth, but Drill Sergeants are allowed to hit recruits. Verbal abuse is awesome

Because nothing says military readiness like abuse and its consequences

sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

6) No more "toxic leadership" complaints -- or at least, not woke ones

Per Hegseth: "Toxic leadership is promoting destructive ideologies that are an anathema to the constitution and the laws of nature and nature's God."

7) "No Walking on Eggshells Policy"

Troops used to be able to complain to the Inspector General's office if they felt they'd been wronged or discriminated against, but that woke shit is over. No more anonymous complaints, so enjoy getting the shit beat out of you if you complain

If that sounds like carte blanch for officers and NCOs to be racist, sexist, and generally fucked up, don't worry!

Per Hegseth: "being a racist has been illegal in our formation since 1948. The same goes for sexual harassment." This means no enforcement mechanism is necessary

8) Erase records of wrongdoing for "forgivable" infractions

Of course he didn't say what those were, just that we need "risktakeres and aggressive leaders" who, presumably, aren't scared to haze or sexually harass people

9) Merit-based promotions. No more quotas

There were never quotas but who fucking cares, the war on woke does not care about your facts

10) An endorsement of already-enacted policies that ban bitching on social media

This is very funny because if we're truly Retvrning, bitching is a storied and time-honored tradition passed from generation to generation of bored and bitter troops

11) Fewer mandatory powerpoint trainings

OK honestly that's pretty solid. Yes, he probably means anti-sexual-harassment and anti-racism training, and the implications of that are bad, but those training are performative nonsense that don't do anything so whatever, fine

12) Fuck the Geneva Convention

Hegseth: "No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement. Just common sense, maximum lethality, and authority for war fighters"

That's it. That's Hegseth's 12-point plan to dewokify the Military. It is, he has declared, "Liberation Day"

Folks, I'm pretty tired of liberation days

Everything is very dumb. The end

Epilogue: here's YouTube's automatic transcript interpreting the post-speech military march's horn section as the words "Heat" and "Oh Yeah"