The Hollow Men: Hegseth, War Crimes, and the End of American Empire
The criminal regime's acts are wearing thin, which puts us all in incredible danger
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The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
- T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men, 1925
On September 2nd, SEAL Team 6 fired a missile at a fishing boat off the Trinidad Coast. When the smoke had cleared two men were clinging to the wreckage. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had made his orders clear. No survivors. A second strike fulfilled his wishes.
The fallout has been swift in a way that feels almost nostalgic in these times. Scandals erupt and disappear within a matter of hours, leaving social media to shout a chorus of complaints and then sink deeper into the muck of resignation. Here is a rare thing: a crime that holds the attention. In this moment of decline, military transgressions still hold weight because, as the veneer flickers, the legitimacy of our fighting forces is one of the last load-bearing pillars.
Hegseth and the White House have quickly and predictably shifted the blame, focusing on the actions of Admiral Frank Bradley, head of Special Operations Command. Always a sniveling coward, Hegseth posted backhanded praise of Bradley to make it clear where the responsibility lay.
If there is an accurate history of this time period written, Hegseth’s incompetence and pitifulness will stand as a testimony to these rank times. His tenure as a Fox News personality showcased a definitive lack of talent or awareness and was consistently hampered by a life defined by addiction, abuse, and a total lack of self-awareness. For this failure, he was raised up by a D-list reality-TV “star” to a post he had no business ever holding. His performance has been defined by an obvious and undeniable energy: he is out of his depth and desperately flailing.
It’s almost impossible to fully wrap our heads around his time in the Pentagon. He was caught, early on, leaking national security secrets in group chats. His addresses of the armed forces have been so disastrous that it brings into question whether this whole farce might end in a military coup. His only use to Trump and the people who fund him is a willingness to engage in wanton cruelty without hesitation and to stand for photo-ops and post cringe content calling for a new American crusade.
Hegseth is a perfect avatar for this age. He, like Trump, is a failure who has failed up and up and up until he stood at the zenith of power. He is adorned with tattoos that try so very hard to express to the world that he is something he most assuredly is not: a warrior. And, now that he is in power, he is attempting to put into action the many platitudes and meaningless slogans he’s peddled in past books destined for the discount bin, including the telling More Lethality, Less Lawyers.
This is the reality of Trumpism, which has always been based in selling a consumer cult with promises of what they would do with power if they were given power, and then, when the con succeeds, floundering. That faltering is not met with self-reflection, of course, because for Hegseth to truly look inward at himself the entire veneer would crumble. Instead, true to his past, it is violence that erupts.
I have seen some remark that Hegseth leading the Pentagon and the United States military is a historic shame, but it is fitting. He is, after all, the product of what they have wrought, a generation of operators who have conducted themselves with wanton violence befitting a force that has accomplished little but been fed gloriously on propaganda and jingoistic lies. In the past, the lie could behind a facsimile of competence. It is little surprise that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are being rehabilitated, as if there isn’t a direct line between that corrupt administration and this one, because the story needs, in order to keep any unearned integrity, to sane wash torture, war crimes, and the type of actions that should have brought endless shame to the nation and necessary reform that was held at bay.
These are the results of a long and predictable chain of events all tied to the American hegemonic project. From the post-World War II era to this one, the narrative has always been heading in this direction, it merely took the complete capture of resources and power by a class that destroyed any meritocracy to birth this stain. Of course our leaders are not the most talented or responsible or even serious. They’re moving forever upward, riding the tides as they are crashing forward, all of it making this country worse and weaker and more vulnerable.
I find it interesting that this story ever appeared in newsprint considering this is far from the first time the United States has engaged in these activities. To even parse the drone era of the 21st century is to glimpse at some of the most overt war crimes imaginable. The first strike should have never happened, but that can be said for one strike after another that hit weddings, apartment buildings, homes, cars, and everywhere any human being could find themselves.
Hegseth’s open lack of respect for the military opens a new door. Surely it offended the top brass that he would even take this post, let alone his sanctimonious and tiring lectures on their physical shape or grooming. In September, he forced these leaders to descend on Virginia to listen to his ramblings and then Trump’s drivel, offending likely the entire assembly and reinforcing a feeling that they were being led by an imposter and being charged by a demagogue to commit crimes in offense of their own oaths. Since, the anonymous comments have been blistering. Now that we are on the precipice of an unnecessary war in Venezuela and even possibly Mexico, and more and more military forces are flooding American streets, you have to wonder what they are thinking, and what they will no longer brook.
Authoritarian regimes rely on the military for enforcement of their oppression and I am left wondering if that reality has already set in for these military leaders. Watching Hegseth so blatantly throw one of their own under the bus to save his own skin only deepens the suspense and seeing a half dozen Democratic politicians messaging armed forces that they have a duty to disobey unconstitutional orders is yet another chapter in a developing story that none of us can guess the end.
When I discuss my analysis for where this is heading nowadays, I have to communicate a plethora of outcomes, including economic collapse, democratic capture, growing oppression, but also the potential for these military leaders, like many before them, to say enough is enough. I will not argue that this would be a positive development. We’ve seen time and time again where military takeovers end terribly for populations waiting to be delivered from authoritarian regimes. But we cannot rule that possibility out at this time because any shred of credibility or competence is completely and utterly gone.
Hegseth’s hollowness is a warning. The criminals operating this criminal regime are cowards and wildly incompetent. Their posturing is transparent. Hegseth and Trump and the people who surround them will continue to fuck up. The scandals are already too numerous to count and they are obscenely large and pathetically small, ranging from treason and the breaking of the constitution to participating in a child-trafficking sex ring to using government jets to watch their wannabe-country star girlfriend sing the national anthem before a sporting event.
The more they are exposed, the more dangerous they will become and the act isn’t wearing thin.
It has positively evaporated.
Is there any reason—any reason at all—to believe that this wretched remnant of what once was a great nation, a Shining City on a Hill, an example to all the peoples of the world that—if they made the effort, if they believed in themselves as a free people, if they could be kind and generous and caring to those who had suffered from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune—they could govern themselves in peace and prosperity in a land where everyone could sit under their own vine and fig tree with none to make them afraid—that we, the fat and lazy and cowardly and dishonest and cruel and utterly vile and unworthy descendants of all the Americans who put their country above everything—even above their own lives, who were willing to go out of their way to help those who needed their help—not because there was something in it for themselves, but simply because it is right and just for those who have to care for those who do not—is there any reason, I say, to believe that modern America even DESERVES a second chance at greatness and simple human decency? Permit me to doubt. Will a just God ever be willing to accept what we have become over the last forty years as a nation worthy of His love and care? Why should Donald Trump’s and Pete Hegseth’s America NOT be thrown onto the ash heap of history, to decay and rot into something that might serve as fertilizer for something better to grow in its place?
Jared, thank you for this absolutely gorgeous -- and tragic -- piece of writing. You put it right there on the page. Everyone should read this.