Secretary Hegseth's address to the military leadership yesterday shows what can go wrong if you do not consider the rhetorical situation.
Hegseth, like many in the Trump administration, do not value words. They value power and authority, theorizing these things as more important than words or perhaps have no relationship to words other than to demonstrate power and authority. Words are the measure of deference to authority - when the king speaks, everyone must listen attentively even if it is total nonsense.
An alternative theory of words, one that works in a democracy is the idea that words are the best expression of what the speaker feels is best. They can be used to direct, unite, excite, comfort, and motivate the audience not only to do certain things but to be certain things.
And it's very odd: Trump's January 6th speech really seemed to reveal an understanding of this. Trump's amazing speech had a crowd of regular people take on the role of members of a coup attacking police and destroying buildings, walking into secure areas of the U.S. Capitol ready to attack members of the government. But in that speech he never suggests this is what should happen. He only continuously "describes" the audience.
Compare that to Hegseth, who really failed to develop any energy and identity with or for the leadership of the American armed forces. Hegseth comes off as someone who absolutely loves the military as a performance of a kind of masculinity he really admires. Speaking in front of people who have made a career out of the study of how to attack,defend, and neutralize enemy armies - many of which are very well disciplined and trained - one should be referencing a lot of the intellect in the room and arguing that what they are doing is clearly working, and that he stands with them as they face a very murky world ahead.
But Hegseth decided to discuss aesthetic appearance and gendered norms. Troops should not be fat. Troops should shave. Everyone should pass the most rigorous physical fitness tests. These are all very strange, unless you realize that Hegseth thinks he has a better understanding of what the U.S. military is than the generals, admirals, and other leaders in the audience. That understanding is simply this: Being a U.S. soldier is a performance of a very particular, valorized kind of masculinity.
The other comments during the presentation that have worried people such as U.S. troops should train and practice in U.S. cities against American citizens are strange to us. To U.S. Military leaders, this sounds out of bounds or a court-martial experience to them. It's simply not part of being in the Military to them. It reveals what we already know: Trump and his supporters have a perception of what an American citizen looks like. Anyone who doesn't fit that image is fair game. Look at how ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection operate today. They take a look at those videos online to see what the Trump administration and their supporters believe non-valuable bodies and people look like. They deserve force, injury, and degradation. The military, for Trump supporters, is the performative image of what America is - scary, muscle-bound authority that cannot be stopped, like an action movie.
The military, the way the military perceives it, is providing a necessary service of protecting a way of life, one that soldiers also enjoy. This is a life of freedoms, choices, associations, and security. They do not want to live in a world of authoritarian control. The military has a rigorous structure not because it's awesome, it's because this rigor is necessary to keep a clear head and clear perspective about where the threats lie.
How should we perceive it? Hegseth and Trump have revealed that they hold the perspective of teenage boys, idolizing a fantasy film narrative of the military being an ideal sort of masculinity, ready to kick ass and destroy lives because they have been ordered to do it. Nobody in the military is there because they want to do this, and they certainly realize they might have to make tough choices. But Hegseth's rhetoric was nowhere close to this. I feel in closed rooms of high ranking military members there is a conversation about how to placate him without ruining the system we've developed to protect a very threatened democracy.