Donald Trump wants Pete Hegseth to be secretary of defense — why, I don’t know, he’s not qualified at all, but he is a minor Fox News celebrity and Trump seems to be selecting contestants for a reality TV show — but the nomination is running into trouble. He has a history of sexual abuse, and has even been accused of rape; he also has a history of drunken partying and skimming funds for charity. His own mother wrote to him and said, “I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around and uses women for his own power and ego. You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth.” He’s the perfect Fox News host, but anything else…nuh uh. Nope.
What do you do when your own mother tells you it’s time for a come-to-jesus moment? If you’re Pete Hegseth, you enlist in the leagues of Satan, that is, Doug Wilson.
In the years since, Hegseth — now on his third marriage — has claimed that he rediscovered Christ, saying “faith became real” to him in 2018. He became deeply involved with the Association of Classical Christian Schools (ACCS), moving to Tennessee to enroll his children in a branch of this fundamentalist organization. He also joined the associated denomination, the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. Both are led by Doug Wilson, an untrained and self-proclaimed pastor who advocates for Christian nationalism and has become famous for his trollish promotion of his far-right political views. At the center of Wilson’s philosophy is a misogyny so overt that it’s sometimes hard to believe he’s serious.
Instead of changing his behavior, Hegseth joined a church that rationalizes and justifies it.
“Wilson holds the most extreme views of women’s submission found in any form of Christianity,” Julie Ingersoll, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Florida, told Salon. “Women are taught that submission to their husbands (and other male authorities) is submission to God. Independence of any kind is cast as sin.”
In one famous passage from his book on marriage, Wilson suggests that sexual violence is women’s fault for not being submissive enough. “[T]he sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party,” he writes. “A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts.” The alleged failure of women to submit, he continues, leads men to “dream of being rapists,” deprived of the “erotic necessity” found in women’s submission. Nancy Wilson, Doug Wilson’s wife, backs this view, comparing a wife to a “garden” cultivated for the husband’s pleasure: “But of course a husband is never trespassing in his own garden.”
Right. He joined a church that thinks slavery was a good thing, and that believes women should be slaves to men. I don’t think this is going to help Hegseth’s attitude, to think that life is lie a Gor novel.
Also, god damn Christopher Hitchens for promoting Wilson with a lecture tour, a book, and a terrible movie, and also for saying this:
I haven’t yet run into an argument that has made me want to change my mind… However, I have discovered that the so-called Christian right is much less monolithic, and very much more polite and hospitable, than I would once have thought, or than most liberals believe.
I think Hitchens may have found Wilson “polite and hospitable” because he was a fellow male with the ability to popularize his evil church.
Well by contrast Desantis doesn’t seem quite as bad a choice?
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-considers-replacing-pete-hegseth-embattled-secretary-defense-pic-rcna182777
But there was stuff like this that seemed to have gone nowhere:
https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/ron-desantis-prison-guantanamo-bay-b2419393.html
Jesus Christ…
After leaving my church in disgust, I spent time looking for a religion that actually conformed with the values I was raised to believe in, but that’s not quite the same thing as what Pete did there.
Interesting to learn a bit about Gor from Wikipedia. They’ve got a movie adaptation of Outlaw of Gor that went through the MST3K treatment I might pay closer attention to, to see how much creepy stuff gets through (and if the Joel and the bots riff on it.)
Recursive Rabbit @3: Haven’t seen that particular MST3K episode, but the series has always been quite consistent about both pointing out and mocking any of that sort of behavior, especially in modern seasons.
As far as Hegseth goes: creepy serial abuser with no respect for anyone who isn’t a white Christian male? Seems like he’ll fit right in with Donny.
The only good thing about nominating DeSantis is that it would take him out of the Florida governorship.
This is a classic example of a common pardox.
Can god, who is omnipotent, make a rock so big that even he can’t lift it?
Can Trump pick a person as Defense Secretary who is so horrible that even the GOP won’t vote for him?
Peter Hegseth reminds me of Andrew Tate, except without the warrants out for his arrest. Yet.
Doug Wilson, the uber creep isn’t quite as clever as he thinks he is.
He has set up a toxic cult that manages to attract misogynistic slime molds like Peter Hegseth.
He has also set up a toxic cult that is going to disgust and repel most other people, especially…women.
His cult has nothing whatsoever to offer to women.
This is the latest pattern in US fundie xianity.
Women are leaving those churches in higher numbers than men, for the first time in recent history.
This excerpt from a Reddit comment explains it well.
“It’s because the church as a whole don’t care about women. They don’t care about our rights, feelings, or safety. Women are breeders that need …” Just say no.
@3, 4
I see that tubitv.com has both the original Outlaw of Gor and the MST3K treatment of it.
I don’t know why you are so shocked at Wilson, he sounds like an average church leader.
His religion of choice became real because someone told him what he wanted to hear.
It kind of sounds like social media with millions and millions of people being told what they want to hear.
What they want to hear may be monkeyhouse-shit-fight crazy, but they still want to hear it.
It might be why this guy gravitated to the prestige media of the lowest form.
Sounds like a perfect Trump pick, another sicko.
I’m unsurprised by Wilson, I was shocked at Hitchens.
The one thing I kinda like about Hitchens is what his views on Israel and Zionism were. Aside from that I see a neocon slide on Iraq and other problematic stuff. He did lay into Kissinger and into Slick Willie, for better or worse. Can’t say I’ve done a deep dive into his years of works.
Hitchens was my exact contemporary at Oxford (different college, same course). He was a dick. Admittedly many Balliol men were, but he stood out even then, which seemed to be his main concern.
About Hitchens, I have seen the clips of the movie and the debates and pretty much anyone he could have chosen would have had the same points of view. I personally am not a fan of this type of second degree bashing of someone, Hitchens had flaws and going to a debate tour with a typical religious scumbag doesn’t really rank high in my list.
Well, being shocked by Hitchens implies that it was a surprising event.
Not what PZ expected.
(So, at that point, he still had cred with PZ)