• Slashme@lemmy.world
    9·
    2 天前

    Are there any queers in the theater army tonight?
    Get them up against the wall
    There’s one in the spotlight, he don’t look right to me
    Get him up against the wall
    That one looks Jewish!
    And that one’s a coon!
    Who let all of this riff-raff into the room?
    There’s one smoking a joint!
    And another with spots!
    If I had my way
    I’d have all of you shot!

  • irish_link@lemmy.world
    14·
    2 天前

    Anyone seen the video of this douche bag trying to do a workout with the army. By workout, I mean essentially calisthenics. The guy looks like an absolute moron with the side steps.

    • dermanus@lemmy.caEnglish
      11·
      2 天前

      What really gets me about those clips is he posted them! This wasn’t some leaked video. He saw that and thought it looked badass.

      I regularly ask myself how much they believe their own bullshit. For a long time I thought they didn’t but Hegseth might actually be that clueless.

  • binary45@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    40·
    3 天前

    Hey, Pete, you know what happens when you decide to kick all those people out? You lose all the people running the cybersecurity division. Funny how that stuff works.

    • Bahnd Rollard@lemmy.world
      28·
      3 天前

      As the old saying goes. A plane crash returning from a furry convention would put the software and cybersecurity industries back decades.

    • multifariace@lemmy.world
      3·
      2 天前

      This thread brought me to a new thought. As with most essential parts of our government, maybe he is trying to push for privatizing the military. By firing top positions without reappointment and cancelling or delaying payment to labor, they create a volatile work environment. Spending increases on military does not go to our servicemen. Now attacking the people who want to serve is making their jobs near as unsafe as the frontline. This they hope will lead to low recruitment and retention, resulting in a need to hire more contractors.

    • outlawcarl@fedinsfw.appEnglish
      4·
      2 天前

      He didnt say no furries although seems like the FBI is trying to attract them (and not knowing what a furry is)

    • Omgpwnies@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      2 天前

      Also, basically every other role that’s not basic infantry… including spec-ops who are allowed to have beards to operate clandestinely.

      • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
        1·
        2 天前

        hesgeth got mad because he never was able to obtain ranger school because hes such a screwup, i heard it was unofficially required for his position when he was sitll in the military.

      • binary45@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        2·
        2 天前

        Yeah, and from what we’ve been seeing… AI… err… “SI”… has been doing more offensive action than defensive action…

        The best their so-called SI could do for their defensive strategy would be to encrypt everything… and then being unable to get the data back…

  • Hanrahan@slrpnk.netEnglish
    7·
    2 天前

    its interesting how this was reported in the Australian press, selective quoting, this is from the AFR, the Aus. equivalent of the WSJ, just a complete misquote…

  • TheObviousSolution@lemmy.ca
    43·
    3 天前

    Because when you are losing a war, the sort of facial hair you have really matters. Reality doesn’t back them up, so they have to go for crass appearance. Not “weak” my ass.

  • Lanske@lemmy.world
    32·
    3 天前

    And then he puts fucking Elon Fatty Musk wimpy nazi in charge. Yanks - please kick out this administration

  • Iusedtobeanalien@lemmy.world
    13·
    2 天前

    Outrage about woke is 2023

    Even MAGA has woken up to it being the great con played upon them

    This bloke is like a tiktok streamer playing the role of defence secretary from a 1980s action movie

    • 🇨🇦GreenBeard🇨🇦@lemmy.caEnglish
      195·
      3 天前

      It’s a wild thing. So the term grew out of the manosphere actually, it was mainly a term for present fathers who steered their boys away from that garbage because they recognized it was only going to hurt them. It kind of grew from there to encapsulate everything they hate. Now, they associate beards with hipsters, dads, LGBT+, nerds who like games, music, books, theatre, and basically any man with a soul and two brain cells to rub together, which is precisely who they see as the enemy because they’re so transparently evil.

        • 🇨🇦GreenBeard🇨🇦@lemmy.caEnglish
          1011·
          3 天前

          Exactly. They’ve been working real hard to make it about gas masks in the military, which is a thing, but that’s not why they’re going off about it. “Beardos and Weirdos” specifically is a dog-whistle for men who actually have honestly held values, don’t consider sex, violence, and substance abuse the point of life, and try to be a mentor, a partner, a part of a community or who otherwise contradicts their narrow, machismo-laced, lecherous and reductive definition of “Man.”

          • JoeBigelow@lemmy.ca
            51·
            3 天前

            Look here now, a man can enjoy sex, violence, and substance abuse(not necessarily in that order) a whole lot without it becoming a part of their personality. Plenty of us are happy to be degenerates in private

          • Earthwormjim91@lemmy.worldEnglish
            23·
            3 天前

            No it’s just a racist dog whistle. By far the group that gets the most facial hair waivers in the military are black men. They just don’t want blacks in the military anymore.

            • Enkrod@feddit.org
              16·
              3 天前

              To explain the facial hair wavers to my fellow straight-hair-phenotypes: forcing to shave too closely, can lead to really big, painful infections and scars from ingrown hairs if you have curly-phenotype hair.

              You can shave close enough for a gas mask to work, but in an organization that had its rules build around the bodily and cultural “normal” of white people, you might still need a facial hair waver.

              • Earthwormjim91@lemmy.worldEnglish
                6·
                3 天前

                Yeah the waivers are definitely a good thing. Black men often have very coarse, tightly wound facial hair. Some of the dudes I served with would get the worst ingrowns and without a waiver they’d still have to just shave over them, causing nasty sores.

          • killea@lemmy.worldEnglish
            27·
            3 天前

            Oh ya I get it, just wanted to shorten your more complex definition for some folks. I can hardly comprehend the amount of fucking idiocy and blind hate occurring in the us gov right now. They shit all over the so-called values they very vaguely pretend to support.

          • jve@lemmy.worldEnglish
            12·
            3 天前

            Holy shit I’m inadvertently outing myself as giving a shit about people.

          • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz
            3·
            3 天前

            Damn, and here I was thinking it was about no-shave chits (which has racial undertones, because black men are more prone to razorbumps (basically ingrown hairs which can be extremely painful)).

            • 🇨🇦GreenBeard🇨🇦@lemmy.caEnglish
              2·
              3 天前

              I mean, it’s the US, you dig into anything deep enough and you can find racist undertones, because American society is built on racism. That said the particular phrase “Beardos and Weirdos” did in fact evolve out of the manosphere to describe any man of any race who didn’t fall in line with them ideologically. Like so much of what they do, it just happens to also particularly disadvantage black men by virtue of their ideal being grounded in “whiteness.”

              • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz
                1·
                3 天前

                Well I’m saying that in the military context specifically, it’s well-known that the vast majority of shave-chit holders (i.e., people who can have beards) are black men. There was a whole thing a few months ago when they banned shave-chits, and a large part of the discussion was how it would disproportionately affect black men, and how this is one part of a larger strategy to push black men out of the military.

                So within that context, yes, this statement by Hegseth absolutely does carry racial undertones, and you don’t have to dig very deep to uncover that. It’s not a conjecture, that statement was thinly-veiled racism.

                • 🇨🇦GreenBeard🇨🇦@lemmy.caEnglish
                  1·
                  2 天前

                  I’m not disagreeing. The policy itself is definitely an attack on black people. His choice of phrasing merely suggests he was trying to slur a lot of people, black people chief among them as usual.

        • m4xie@lemmy.ca
          19·
          3 天前

          Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that. The change to the follicles is permanent, one needs laser hair removal or electrolysis to destroy each one.

          That’s not to say someone couldn’t tell them…

      • crunchy@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        24·
        3 天前

        Specifically in the military it refers to those in favor of loosening facial hair standards beyond just tiny mustaches, plus some service members that discovered and successfully exploited the “Heathen loophole.”

        Really it’s just Pete’s preference toward big burly white hairless men that will follow his commands.

          • crunchy@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            4·
            3 天前

            Beards are apparently a part of Heathen and Norse Pagan religion, so claiming the religion allowed them to grow and maintain a full beard as a religious exemption. That’s since gone away with Hegseth’s purge of almost all non-Abrahamic religions.

            Everyone knew it was a loophole being exploited and not a bunch of people having spiritual awakenings all of a sudden. But a loophole is much more preferable to a Christian Nationalist leader determining what is and isn’t a valid religion.

            • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
              3·
              3 天前

              Ok, yeah that makes a lot of sense. And yeah, when it comes to stuff like this you wind up in an awkward position where you have to allow loopholes to avoid prohibiting sincere religious convictions, especially among neopagans. Speaking as one, we’re eclectic in what we consider religious (for example I consider my being trans to have religious significance and if I were to file a first amendment complaint against restrictions on my hormones it would be entirely sincere)

              I’m not even necessarily opposed to not giving facial hair/uniform passes to members of particularly disorganized religions. We aren’t like the Sikhs where it’s easy to see their conviction and there’s a continuous practice that can be pointed to. That said, first amendment complaints are first amendment complaints. Just because I think a compromise might be reasonable, doesn’t mean that’s in line with the law. Us pagans get fucked six ways to sunday on religious freedom and we do need to stand up and demand it apply to us.

      • antheraeavx@slrpnk.net
        8·
        3 天前

        Great explanation. Ashamed to say I would have thought it was another term for ‘neckbeard’ judging only by the sound of it lol

      • abbiistabbii@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        3·
        3 天前

        So basically they made up a made for the type of men who opposed their bullshit and moved their sons away from it and now the Head of the Defence department is using that exact language.

        Fuck.

    • E_coli42@lemmy.world
      441·
      3 天前

      A beard or long hair for men has always been a sign of rejection of conforming to social authority.

      Hair is the best symbol of rebellion as it is difficult to defect from, takes a long time to grow long, and is accessible to everyone. You can recognize a hippie with their tie-dye shirt and reflective sunglasses. They signal to themselves and others that they are opposed to the Vietnam war and the establishment in general. But when they go to the office, for a swim, to the gym, etc. they go back to conforming to the rest of society. The hippie with long hair is at all times signaling their rejection to the establishment and is also signaling that they have been rejecting this for many years. The hippie who only commits to the tie-dye shirt and sunglasses can take it off when under scrutiny and put it back on when convenient.

      Hair has no nerve cells. Cutting hair is completely painles. If someone won’t even listen to authority telling them to cut their hair, what makes you think they’ll listen to authority for anything else? Long hair subconsciously scares authority because the legitimacy of said authority is constantly challenged. This is my hypothesis for why being clean shaven and short hair has become a requirement in many militaries, but never a militia. It is the easiest way to get someone to subconsciously be comfortable with submitting to authority.

      Some examples of “beardos” who use their hair as a symbol of rebellion:

      • Koreans during Japanese Imperialism
      • The Khalsa
      • Indian saints, regardless of religion
      • Hippies in the US
      • Brazilian communists during the dictatorship
      • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
        51·
        3 天前

        Very true for many cultures. But it’s also important to understand that for many Native American men it’s rebellious in a very different way. Many tribes saw it as manly for a man to have long hair, and by growing it out it can be a rebellion against the demands of cultural surrender placed by white society

        • E_coli42@lemmy.world
          1·
          2 天前

          How is this rebellion in a different way? The Native American man keeping his hair long is the perfect example of him rejecting conformity to the standing social order, which is that of his colonizers.

    • baronvonj@piefed.socialEnglish
      30·
      3 天前

      Jesus. Jesus was a beardo. A real socialist hippie kind of guy in sandals and robes and long hair and a beard.

      • explodicle@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        3·
        3 天前

        To be fair, Jesus would only be useful in a military if he abandoned his principles and went Doctor Manhattan on everybody.

        • kestrel7_7@lemmy.world
          5·
          3 天前

          Nah, the guy who whipped money changers outside the temple and said “sell all your possessions and buy a sword to defend the poor” would do just fine. He was canonically into peace, but not pacifism

        • baronvonj@piefed.socialEnglish
          2·
          3 天前

          Well then maybe the “Christian” nationalist shouldn’t be running the Department of “War” preaching about filling the ranks with “Christian” warriors.