The Crusade against America

Handmaid Fails 3/3

How does America end? 

Novels can expand the imagination to fit the things that are happening around you.  In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, a few men who wish to oppress women are able to organize a Christian Reconstructionist coup and establish a new regime under what they present as God's law.  In the story, they are able to destroy the United States of America and supplant it with Gilead, which battles against former Americans, never fully controls all former territories, and ultimately falls.

Thanks to Donald Trump, we now must contemplate the possibility of a misogynist Christian Reconstructionist secretary of defense.  Pete Hegseth lacks the normal qualifications for such a post.  He has never run a large organization and has no view of national security.  In none of his books does he have anything much to say about the world.  Reading him, one would have no way to understand why the United States has a military at all.  Hegseth has two ideas about what the armed forces are for: a site to express Christian Reconstructionism and gender ideology; and a means defeat other Americans inside America.

For Hegseth, gender ideology more important to him than the world itself, let alone the security interests of the United States.  He wants us to believe that the two are the same thing: that women in uniform prove the existence of a Leftist plot to destroy America.  This case is not really made.  Hegseth is right that the purpose of the armed forces is to make war, and that politics can distract from this.  But what he is offering is precisely politics.

Hegseth is no doubt correct in many of his critiques of the armed services.  But he himself has no proposals about how the armed forces should be deployed, or in the service of what goals and interests.  He does not believe in the alliance with Europe and Canada that has kept the peace: in his view, “NATO is a great example of dumb globalism.” But he is absolutely sure that our existence depends upon everyone agreeing with his views about women in uniformed service.  But why is this so important?  His arguments for his gender ideology are self-referential and circular: he thinks so, other men think so, nature. 

Women have fought and killed men in combat throughout history, as customs and technology permitted.  It is a modern prejudice to deny this.  Hegseth tries to sweep the board of history clear by claiming that even the Spartans, whose society was organized around war, did not have women fighters.  But our source on Sparta, Herodotus, reminds us that the greatest warriors of the age, famously undefeated by Persia, were the Scythians.  And the Scythians did have female warriors, cavalry armed with recursive bows.  Custom and technology permitted them to fight, and they did.  Judging by the archeological finds in today's southern Ukraine, about one in five Scythian warriors was female.  It took a while for archeologists to realize this, because of the male-ego-preserving prejudice that all warriors are male.  It was only the DNA evidence -- nature, as it were -- that forced the conclusion that was in fact obvious from the female skeletal remains.

Hegseth writes that "to create a society of warrior women you must separate them first from men, and then from the natural purposes of their core instincts."  This is pure gender ideology.  He is just making this up.  Women who have seen combat have not been separated from men or their instincts.  They are sometimes traumatized.  As are men.  Armies fight with women when and because it works.  Women can kill men and then raise children and, historically speaking, have done so.  They are doing so right now.

Hegseth does not confront his broad claims about women in warfare with the evidence from the most important war of our time, the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  He has little to say about Russia and its Chinese backer: how, for example, would dissolving NATO help, when that is exactly what Russia wants? The lesson he draws from the war in Ukraine is that women can assist in logistics, which is certainly true. But he dodges what for him should the central issue. In the Russo-Ukrainian war, an much smaller apolitical mixed-gender army, the Ukrainian one, has held back a much larger, politicized, patriarchal, anti-woke, anti-gay, and anti-transsexual army, the Russian one.  This would seem to be relevant; Hegseth ignores it. 

On the same lands once controlled by the ancient Scythians, the contemporary Ukrainian army includes women, and in roughly the same ratio, one in five or one in six soldiers.  Roughly five thousand Ukrainian women serve in combat roles.  This is not the result of some leftist ideology.  Indeed, Ukrainian women in the army have to deal with a great deal of sexism.  But they fight because they want to defend their country.  Their government wishes them to because there is a war to be won.  The other day a kindergarten teacher shot down a Russian cruise missile with an Igla manpad.  She is a woman, and she had to train and train to learn to use the Igla, just as Scythians had to train to use their recursive bows.  When custom and technology permit, women can fight.

On the other side, the Russian army is explicitly modeled on a gender ideology that resembles Hegseth's.  The Russian army is just what Hegseth believes the American army should be: male, patriarchal, deployed in what leaders explicitly describe as an anti-woke war for traditional values and Western civilization.  This Russian army carries out war crimes on the lands that it occupies, including the murder of civilians (a behavior that Hegseth defends when Americans do it) and the rape of women.  Hegseth might not care about any of this.  But we all should.  And we should note that this Russia army has vastly underperformed all expectations on the battlefield.  Nearly three years into a war that was expected to last for three days, Russia has called in ten thousand North Koreans to try to retake Russian territory in Kursk region that is occupied by Ukraine. 

Again, the point is not that Ukraine is woke; it is not, whatever woke might mean.  It is a country suffering a horrific war; Ukrainians do not need our culture wars superimposed on them.  There is a real world, a real history of war, a real war going on now in Ukraine:on a greater scale, with greater losses, with greater stakes than Iraq and Afghanistan -- and that Hegseth puts the evidence aside in the service of propagating his gender ideology.  Hegseth complains that Europeans do not defend themselves. But Ukraine’s defense budget almost three times greater than America’s as a percentage, and its people are engaged in war on a scale greater than anything Americans have experienced. Why do they get no credit from Hegseth?

Hegseth served in a combat role in Iraq, and usefully and colorfully shares details from his time in combat.  What he does not share is any evidence that women made things worse; nor does he show any appetite for such evidence.  He has not been to the front of the Russo-Ukrainian war; amidst writing multiple books, he has not found the time to see what large-scale modern combat looks like on the defining battlefield of our time.  Given that one side has women in combat and the other espouses something very much like his ideology, this is a serious omission. 

It suggests that Hegseth has an ideological commitment which is not in fact related to military reality.

Perhaps not incidentally, Russia's hope for victory rests in people like him: gender ideologists who side with Russian gender ideology.  Hegseth, although he condemned Russia at the beginning, seems to be taking steps in that direction. By early 2023, he was following a standard MAGA formula of changing the subject from Ukraine to the border with Mexico. By 2024, he presented the war in Ukraine as the fault of the Biden administration.  Never does he acknowledge the work Ukrainian resistance does for American interests: it holds back both Russia and China, the countries Hegseth presents as threats when he briefly changes the subject from his gender obsession. Ukrainian resistance defends an international order based upon law. It makes nuclear proliferation less likely. And it gives hope to people who support democracy.

That might of course be the key: Hegseth is not one of those people. He does not believe that United States should be a democracy, and says so: we are “not a pure democracy, instead a constitutional republic predicated on the fact that our rights come from God.” Like Putin, Hegseth seems to know personally what God wants. During the war, Putin has militarized Russian schools, making them propaganda machines. Hegseth believes that American schools should be “boot camp” that prepare children for “spiritual battle.”

Russian propaganda again and again claims that invading Ukraine makes the world safe from gays and transsexuals. Hegseth is snide about the people he calls "trannies," claiming that anyone gender fluid or non-binary could be nothing more than a useless diversion: "Men who are pretending to be women, or vice versa, are a distraction. It might be your thing, but it’s weird and does not add substantive value to anyone."  These kinds of clear statements make certain kinds of men feel better about themselves, no doubt.  Like gender obsession generally, they tend to be cues about pro-authoritarian politics.

And then of course there is history and what actually happens, which tend to defy the cofortable simplifications of Hegseth’s identity politics. Hegseth's claim is belied by the history of the origin of the United States.  The Polish officer Casimir Pulaski is credited with reforming the American cavalry and with saving the life of George Washington at the Battle of Brandywine.  Pulaski was killed in action at Savannah.  It is hard to imagine an American victory in the Revolutionary War without Pulaski.  And so without Pulaski it is very possible that there would never have arisen an American republic.  That would seem to be something of “substantive value.”  And yet it seems that Pulaski was either intersex or a biological female who dressed as a man.

Hegseth does not need to know early American history, though, since he disavows the American republic.  He is a Christian Reconstructionist who believes that God's law should prevail.  The Constitution has to be understood, Hegseth claims, as subordinate to a broader unwritten Covenant with God, the meaning of which is of course known to him personally.  He thus opposes the constitutional structure of the United States as it figures in the actual text. 

Hegseth denies the rectitude of the First Amendment, which separates church and state: "without God, America is not America."  He says explicitly that "the diminished role of Christ’s Kingdom in America’s founding" is to blame for the malaise that followed.  Switching his metaphysics for a moment, he claims that the separation of church and state opened "the gates of Mordor."  Constitutional patriotism is not a good thing, since it can "untether us from the timeless truth, from the Bible."  Of course, as is always the case, God's law turns out to mean what Hegseth and his friends say that it means.

The enemy within, broadly defined as "the Left," is presented as already having a plan to annihilate everyone else.  This is, of course, what fascists always say: it is legitimate to destroy the other side, because however invisibly and conspiratorially and secretly, it is planning to kill you first.  Thus for Hegseth, the Left has the goal of "erasing America’s soul, culture, and institutions. We are the ones standing in their way—and have been targeted for annihilation."  Hegseth does not dwell, for some reason, on the actual countries that actually want the American system to break.

Only the “enemy within” captures his imagination. Hegseth enjoins his readers to "remember the plan the Left has for you—utter annihilation."  And again: "In more ways than you can imagine, leftists have surrounded traditional American patriots on all sides, ready to close in for the kill: killing our founders, killing our flag, and killing capitalism. The only option for survival in a near ambush is to charge; to close with, and destroy, the enemy."

Trump's nominee for the position of secretary of defense seems to believe that we need a cleansing civil war.  He instructs us that "we are not only fighting a battle against foreign enemies."  "Sometimes," he writes, "the fight must begin with a struggle against domestic enemies. Those who would violate the Covenant that binds us as a community of faith and that grants us blessing.”  

For this view he obscurely calls upon the Book of Judges and the story of Gideon, although how this biblical citation helps his case is unclear.  It is not obvious from the story which god was Gideon's, or who the internal enemies would have been, or what the point was, since Israel collapsed right afterwards anyway.  Gideon collected gold which his people then worshipped, and he had many wives and concubine.  It is that polygamous aspect of the Bible that seems to draw in people like Hegseth: the dream of patriarchy, the fantasy that controlling women somehow means a safer society or a safer country. 

Hegseth has a tattoo that reads "Deus vult," which means "God wills it" in Latin.  JD Vance has defended Hegseth's tattoo's as Christian; we are all supposed to feel guilty, Vance instructs us, because if we query the tattoo we are simply ignorant bigots who disrespect Christianity.  Specialists of course know that the tattoo is associated with far-right nationalism and terrorism. It was one of the slogans at the Nazi rally in Charlottesville. And of course the history of Christianity is rich and open to many interpretations: for example, Hegseth's idea that God's law, as interpreted by him and his friends, should apply here on Earth, superceding the Constitution, and justifying a holy war against Americans.  "Deus vult" is a direct and explicit invocation of the medieval Crusades, which Hegseth believes should continue inside the United States in the twenty-first century.  This is, interestingly, also an echo of Putin. His whole rationale of the invasion of Ukraine has to do with an invocation of the middle ages and the Putin’s claim that God wills that Russia and Ukraine be together.

In Hegseth’s view, "America cannot, and will not, survive otherwise.  This time in our history calls for an AMERICAN CRUSADE.  Yes, a holy war for the righteous cause of human freedom."  Although Hegseth ritually mocks "triggered" Leftists for understanding him literally, and drops the word "metaphorically" into his prose from time to time, it is quite clear what he means: "We cannot outsource or delegate our crusade. Arm yourself—metaphorically, intellectually, and physically. This is, by the way, why the Second Amendment exists." 

Historically speaking, of course, Hegseth is wrong about the Second Amendment: it was written to allow the United States to prepare for war against actual foreign enemies, not to enable Americans to massacre one another in a holy war.  But Hegseth's invocation of the Second Amendment and "physical" weapons makes his attitude unmistakable.  As with citizens, so with the army: the purpose of "America’s military might" is "the defeat of our enemies, internal and external."  The "internal" always comes first for Hegseth.  Trump, who regularly talks about “internal enemies,” is the occasion: "Let’s make the crusade great again.” And, in closing: "See you on the battlefield.  Together, with God’s help, we will save America.  Deus vult!"

It is not hard to see why Trump wants Hegseth as his secretary of defense. Trump plans to purge the armed forces of high officers who care about the United States and leave only loyalists. Trump wants to use the armed forces in operations inside the United States, including the oppression of “enemies within,” which is to say, his political opponents. Hegseth gives every sign of being a person who would embrace such actions as an American crusade.

In fact, they would amount to a crusade against America. What would thus look like? Where would it lead?

In the novel The Handmaid's Tale, people very much like Hegseth come to power, oppress women, and turn the armed forces into domestic shock troops who fight a civil war.  It is important to see accusations of sexual assault and Hegseth's persistent polygamy in this light: the notion that women are just objects goes hand in hand with the idea that the real fight for American soldiers is against other Americans. 

Misogyny is not the elevation of masculinity but its collapse, both as morality and as politics. 

Although the richness of Atwood's story is in the exposition of a modern patriarchy, I find it important to note that Gilead, the Christian Reconstructionist state, does not endure for long.  The Christian Reconstructionist coup attempt of the story corresponds to the purge of the armed forces announced by Trump and the subsequent use in domestic actions suggested by all of Hegseth's writings.  Such a thing would wreck America rather than rescue it. 

There is a danger of oppression inherent in giving power to incompetent misogynists who claim to know God's will.  But the more immediate danger for our republic from such men is chaos and collapse.

All quotations are drawn from Hegseth's books The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free (2024); Battle for the American Mind: Uprooting a Century of Miseducation (2023, with David Goodwin); and American Crusade: Our Fight to Stay Free (2020) except for the rejection of constitutional patriotism, which is from "From Patriotism to Classical Christian Education w/ Pete Hegseth," Crosspolitic, September 21, 2023.  For his views on Ukraine and Russia see “What Donald Trump's Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth Said About Russia, China.” Newsweek, November 13, 2024; “Fact Check: Did Pete Hegseth Call Putin a ‘War Criminal?’” Newsweek, November 13, 2024.