The world today is certainly screwy and frightening. I keep getting shocked, so many people keep getting shocked, and asking ourselves, “what is going on here beyond the obvious?” What is going on in me? What more can I do to make things better?  It would be easy to just dull the shock of this administration’s politics of hate, cruelty, and corruption and lose ourselves in games, streaming shows, or whatever. But many of us honestly can’t do that. And the models of humanity provided by the men leading the nation today, of what it is to be a male human being, are malignant, frightening, painful to listen to. And insulting.

 

On 9/30 Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth gave a State of the Force speech at the Pentagon. If you didn’t hear it, or didn’t hear quotes from it, he spoke about how he’s transforming the military. “We are no longer the woke department, or the weak department. Simple translation of that, no fanny—no fatties, no trannies, no beardoes, no weirdoes, no wimps, no radicals, just warriors… The war Department is color-blind, gender-neutral, and merit-based. The ideological clowns are out. The patriotic cowboys are in with testosterone testing on top.” Is he looking in the mirror when he speaks about “ideological clowns”?

 

As Nicolle Wallace pointed out on MSNBC Deadline White House, he announced a 20% cut in senior military officers, including generals and admirals, when we’re in a war that drags on and on. And which he, and his boss, Mr. DT, started with no clear, justifiable reason or plan, and have no idea how to end. He’s cutting the very people who might have the true expertise to get us out of the crisis, and it seems advised them never to get into it.

 

What also stood out from the speech was not just the disturbing content; it was the beauty pageant that he demanded for his audience. According to emails reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, not the home of radicals of the progressive sort, the troops nominated to attend the speech had to meet certain “physical standards” including “waist-to-height ratios, [and] be impeccably groomed…” —so, as Wallace said, the ones who didn’t measure up, “literally, the less attractive or fit ones stay on the battlefield” to fight the war without end while, according to Hegseth’s standards, the more fit perform for the media?

 

And earlier, on September 18th, near the time that Pete Hegseth was calling for the shaping of a MAGA, male beauty pageant of a military, a lawsuit was filed in Ithaca, NY, detailing allegations from 2024 of a gang rape of a woman by fraternity brothers. As reported by the Cornell Sun, a woman described being raped by seven men after being coerced into consuming drugs at a Chi Phi frat house on the Cornell University campus. She is suing the University, several Chi Phi fraternity organizations, sorority organizations, the men who allegedly raped her, etc. The defendants deny the allegations.

 

The plaintiff reported the rape to Cornell Police almost 3 weeks after it occurred. She was later deeply disappointed in the initial lack of support by the student community. The local district attorney declined to file charges, saying there wasn’t sufficient evidence to do so. Cornell’s Office of Civil Rights and Student Conduct and Community Standards held a title IX investigation. They suspended the Chi Phi fraternity chapter and expelled two students, suspended others. That’s it.

 

What do we do with these events? Especially viewed through the lens of the Epstein files and a president continuously talking in demeaning, dismissive, even predatory ways about women? A president talking, in the Hollywood tapes, about “grab[bing] them by the pussie.” A secretary of the Defense Department who was investigated for sexual assault in California.

 

There’s been a great outcry against Hegseth and Cornell and the Ithaca District Attorney.  But will the outcries result in any real and substantive action? Will the demonstrations and outcry about the Rape at Cornell and lack of an appropriate, just, and compassionate response lead to change? Change not just at Cornell, but nationally, and at the ballot booths? We need changes in how institutions treat rape, change in national leadership, and changes in models of and understanding of how we should be with each other.

 

The New York Times published an article detailing how Jane Doe went from a shamed victim to a powerful, courageous actor. What will we do? What will we learn from these events?

 

Sometimes, a negative model can be helpful, if it’s short term….

 

*To read the whole post, please go to The Good Men Project.