On Tuesday morning, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth summoned hundreds of American generals and admirals from across the world to a military base in Virginia for a blistering, mandatory briefing. He railed against poor physical fitness standards, he called for more lethality and aggression in the military, and he — of course — decried diversity, equity and inclusion.
“No more identity months,” he said, “D.E.I. offices, dudes in dresses. No more climate change worship. No more division, distraction or gender delusions. No more debris.” . . . “we are done with that shit.”
But as he spoke, I kept thinking … isn’t this the same person who shared almost certainly classified information about an imminent American military strike on a group text in a civilian messaging app called Signal? And didn’t that group — incredibly enough — include Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic?
Didn’t that mean that, thanks in large part to Hegseth, the safety of the entire mission turned on the security of a civilian app and the integrity of a civilian journalist?
It’s difficult to put into words the sheer incompetence of that moment. If I’d done something that colossally stupid during my military career, it would have ended my career, instantly. It most likely would have led to prosecution. I should know: I’ve helped discipline soldiers for less egregious misconduct — far less.
A senior leader committed gross misconduct and put lives at risk. He was never formally held accountable. That is not what a meritocracy looks like.
One of the most important distinctions in politics is the difference between people who are mainly motivated to vote against their opponents rather than for their allies. Their hatred or fear of their opponents is far more important than their embrace of any particular policy or ideology.
This concept, called “negative partisanship,” is spreading like a virus across American politics, and it’s reaching its culmination in Donald Trump’s Republican Party.
Ben Shapiro, one of the most popular right-wing podcasters in America,. . . [said] “I think that on the right there is such a rage that has arisen,” he said, “at least on part of the right, that the tendency is to just rip things out by their roots, rather than trying to correct or even determining whether the thing can be corrected.”
He is exactly right, and in few areas of American life is that distinction more obvious — and more consequential — than in MAGA’s war against diversity, equity and inclusion. It’s a war against the left far more than it’s a fight for American justice and equality, and it’s producing a new reality that’s worse than the system they’re MAGA faithful are ripping apart.
I write these words as someone who firmly believes that the pre-existing D.E.I. infrastructure suffered from profound problems. Time and time again, even the most well-meaning administrators carried out policies that turned out to suppress free speech or threaten due process or created systemic hurdles and challenges . . . My experience in the military, however, was substantially different. It was the most purely meritocratic institution I’ve ever belonged to — as well as the most diverse. If I was to list the military’s top problems, wokeness wouldn’t make the list.
But if you’re going to demolish D.E.I., what are you going to replace it with? Because if one thing is clear from the Trump administration so far, it’s that the cure can be clearly and unequivocally worse than the disease.
No one should think for a moment that the world before D.E.I. was fair and meritocratic. I remember growing up in a Southern hometown that was a functional nepotocracy — the most important question you could be asked was, “Who’s your dad?”
Explicit racism was absolutely frowned upon, but family history meant (almost) everything. And, of course, since many prominent families dated back to well before the Civil Rights Act, the answer to that question disproportionately benefited the white kids whose families had been powerful and prominent for a very long time.
In fact, life before affirmative action was often shot through with discrimination. Affirmative action (the move to take proactive steps to address the consequences of past racism) didn’t disrupt a pre-existing American meritocracy; it disrupted American bigotry.
The solution, however, wasn’t on display on Tuesday. When Americans watched a strutting, arrogant, underqualified Pete Hegseth lecture men and women with far more combat and leadership experience than he’ll ever possess about transforming the American military, they weren’t watching meritocracy at work. Instead, they were watching something much worse than D.E.I. — a political commissar who conceals his rank incompetence behind posturing and peacocking.
Trump, the commander in chief, who also addressed the generals and admirals on Tuesday, actually suggested that “we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.” He also absurdly suggested that Washington, D.C., was more dangerous than Afghanistan.
Would any military leader of any experience believe for even five seconds that one of the best ways to prepare troops to deter or (God forbid) fight our nuclear-armed foes is by walking through cities, picking up trash and occasionally confronting left-wing protesters?
Nothing about that exercise prepares troops to face deadly, drone-filled skies or the hypersonic missile barrages that characterize modern warfare.
Justice Scalia believed universities could accord admission preferences on the basis of nonracial criteria even if they disproportionately — indeed, even if those preferences exclusively — redounded to the benefit of Black applicants.”
That’s what genuine conservatism looks like. It recognizes an urgent social problem — including the systemic disadvantages suffered by Black citizens as a result of centuries of legalized bigotry advanced through both state and vigilante violence — and attempts to address those disadvantages through means that also respect foundational constitutional values, including freedom of speech and equal protection under the law.
Applied to the military, this means understanding that the American military should draw from every American community, and every American community should feel directly invested in America’s defense.
Trumpism, by contrast, all too often denies the existence of systemic disadvantage (even the very argument is deemed woke), demolishes D.E.I. and replaces it with a degree of authoritarianism and incompetence that makes a mockery of the very idea of meritocracy.
Did a meritocracy give us Trump’s cabinet? Does a meritocracy give us Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Department of Health and Human Services, in which sound medicine is replaced by conspiratorial quackery?
Given a sufficient time horizon, the American story is a good story . . . . But the American story also contains years — sometimes even generations — of backsliding before we correct ourselves. The most salient example is the descent into segregation after the early promise of Reconstruction. In some places in the South, it took Black Americans a century to recover the political power they had in the years immediately after the Civil War.
Trump has initiated another era of American regression. He isn’t replacing D.E.I. with merit. He’s replacing it with sycophancy and malice.
And if you doubt that truth, look to that military base in Virginia, where an underqualified secretary of defense snarled and strutted before an audience of leaders who knew that he’d already betrayed their trust.
Friday, October 03, 2025
White Male Incompetence Isn’t an Upgrade Over D.E.I.
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