Our national degeneracy

PLUS: Join Rep. Seth Moulton and me TODAY at 1:30 pm ET on Substack Live + check out my latest conversation with Joanna Coles on The Daily Beast podcast

Pete Hegseth, the self-appointed “Secretary of War,” is living proof of our national degeneracy and rot.

He is a fool, whose character is so loathsome that he was condemned by his mother, in a letter she wrote to him:

Son,

I have tried to keep quiet about your character and behavior, but after listening to the way you made Samantha feel today, I cannot stay silent. And as a woman and your mother I feel I must speak out..

You are an abuser of women — that is the ugly truth and 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.

I am not a saint, far from it.. so don’t throw that in my face,. but your abuse over the years to women (dishonesty, sleeping around, betrayal, debasing, belittling) needs to be called out.

Sam is a good mother and a good person (under the circumstances that you created) and I know deep down you know that. For you to try to label her as “unstable” for your own advantage is despicable and abusive. Is there any sense of decency left in you? She did not ask for or deserve any of what has come to her by your hand. Neither did Meredith.

I know you think this is one big competition and that we have taken her side… bunk… we are on the side of good and that is not you. (Go ahead and call me self-righteous, I dont’ care)

Don’t you dare run to her and cry foul that we shared with us… that’s what babies do. It’s time for someone (I wish it was a strong man) to stand up to your abusive behavior and call it out, especially against women

We still love you, but we are broken by your behavior and lack of character. I don’t want to write emails like this and never thought I would. If it damages our relationship further, then so be it, but at least I have said my piece. [Redacted]

And yes, we are praying for you (and you don’t deserve to know how we are praying, so skip the snarky reply)

I don’t want an answer to this… I don’t want to debate with you. You twist and abuse everything I say anyway. But… On behalf of all the women (and I know it’s many) you have abused in some way, I say… get some help and take an honest look at yourself…

Mom

His brittleness is shocking to witness because it seems like he was produced in a laboratory to give a flesh-and-blood example of unbecoming.

Hegseth is unsteady, emotional and constantly aggrieved.

He is a truly awful leader by any definition.

America is at war, and led by fools.

Every American must recognize the danger of this moment. It must be a starting line for demanding the excellence in the Democratic aspirants for the 2028 presidential nomination. America has been weakened by a collapse of public character that is shocking.

When General of the Army George C. Marshall, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, died President Harry Truman said the following about the great statesman and soldier:

Honor has no modifying adjectives.

A man has it or he hasn’t.

General Marshall had it. Truth has no qualifying words to be attached to it. A man either tells the truth or he doesn’t.

General Marshall was the exemplification of a man of truth. Ability can be qualified. Some of us have a little of it and many have moderate ability, some men have it to the extreme. General Marshall was a man of the greatest ability … He was a man of honor, a man of truth, and a man of greatest ability.

He was the greatest of the great in our time.

I sincerely hope that when it comes my time to cross the great river, General Marshall will place me on his staff so that I may try to do for him what he did for me.

Here is what President Dwight Eisenhower said of him in 1960:

First of all, he was selfless. Secondly, he was a great student. Third, he had great self-confidence in his judgment of people and sometimes he had a rather odd way of deciding upon this competence. One of them was, he liked them to speak up their own minds in his presence.

I think of course, he (had) moral courage—that includes his readiness always to take responsibility for his own decisions and his own actions. He could not abide, people that were either afraid to make their own decisions, or the fellow that was careless in security.

The fourth Secretary of Defense and a recipient of the presidential medal of freedom and West Point’s Sylvanus Thayer Award Robert Lovett memorialized Marshall like this:

I was happily aware that his greatness was indeed enriched by rare personal traits. I noted that he had reverence for the great tradition of the past yet felt no fear of change or of the future.

He was a man of extraordinary compassion, of most sensitive and discriminating instinct, and was completely without affectation.

There was an air of natural elegance about him which was unassuming and a quality which Dean Acheson correctly identified when he wrote:

“The moment he entered a room, everyone in it felt his presence. It was a striking and communicated force.”

Until the day I die I will never cease to marvel how, under almost unbelievable pressures and strain, General Marshall remained steadfast and unchanging—a warm-hearted, considerate, generous, and modest man who reached the heights of greatness without losing his sense of being, first and always, a private citizen in the service of his country.

Medal of Honor Recipient Admiral James Stockdale understood war like few men did as the commanding officer of the POWs in Hanoi. There was no man John McCain revered more than Stockdale.

I have been thinking of this line from a Stockdale address to US Marine officers as 2,500 US Marines head to the Middle East:

“What kind of a racket is this military officership? Let’s go right to the old master, Clausewitz. He said: “War is an act of violence to compel the enemy to do your will.” Your will, not his will. We are in the business of breaking people’s wills. That’s all there is to war; once you have done that, the war is over.

And what is the most important weapon in breaking people’s wills? This may surprise you, but I am convinced that holding the moral high ground is more important than firepower. For Clausewitz war was not an activity governed by scientific laws, but a clash of wills, of moral forces.

He wrote: “It is not the losses of men, horses, or guns but in order courage, confidence, cohesion and plan which come into consideration whether the engagement can still be continued; it is principally the moral forces which decide here.” Moral forces! Conviction! Mind games!

I had the wisdom of Clausewitz’ stand on moral integrity demonstrated to me throughout a losing war as I sat on the sidelines in a Hanoi prison.

To take a nation to war on the basis of any provocation that bears the smell of fraud is to risk losing national leadership’s commitment when the going gets tough.

When our soldiers’ bodies start coming home in high numbers, and reverses in the field are discouraging, a guilty conscience in a top leader can become the Achilles heel of a whole country.

Men of shame who know our road to war was not cricket. are seldom those we can count on to hold fast, stay the course.

American politics has been overwhelmed by the small, petty and brittle. Narcissists and sociopaths elbow each other for power and attention in a system that punishes integrity and rewards negligence, malice and corruption. It is an appalling hour. A nation cannot stand without any concept of the importance of character. It is fundamental.

The absence of perfection, and the fact that people fall short, doesn’t mean that the summit isn’t worth striving for.

America needs a revolution in character.

The lowest of the low hold high office in 2026, and they are pulling us into an abyss.

We must oppose it.

Pete Hegseth is the antidote to MacArthur’s summons to “duty, honor, country.”

Hegseth is an abomination and an embarrassment.

We are losing the war in Iran.

It’s Trump’s war, but always remember that the Americans who come home in boxes aren’t video game characters.

They are us.

It is a terrible irony that the men and women who give their lives in Trump’s war are disdained by Trump and his minions, who are indifferent towards them. Hegseth suggested that the press prominently covers service member casualties to "make the president look bad.”

There are terrible days ahead, but there is a map out of hell.

It starts with character, and Trump has none.

Neither do his shoe men.

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Save America Movement “Fighting Democrat Series:” Congressman Seth Moulton

I hope you’ll join Congressman Seth Moulton and me TODAY at 1:30 pm ET on Substack Live for our ongoing The Save America Movement conversation series with “Fighting Democrats.”

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MAGA disaster incoming: a conversation with Joanna Coles

I love talking with Joanna Coles of The Daily Beast podcast. During our most recent conversation we talked about the mounting panic spreading amongst the Republican party heading into the midterms, the downfall of Kristi Noem and the fallout from the $220 million DHS ad campaign, and of course, the Florsheim shoes worn by Trump’s men.

Also make sure to check out and subscribe to Joanna’s new Substack “Primal Scream.”

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