Will Trump dump Petey Piranha? By Hal M. Brown - A normal president would fire Pete Hegeseth.

 

Here’s the article from RawStory speculating that Pete Hegseth may not be long for the top job in the Department of Defense. This is from RawStory:

'Full-blown meltdown at the Pentagon': Hegseth reportedly 'unlikely to remain in his role'

Here’s a Politico article about this:

It is significant to consider who wrote the following:

It’s been a month of total chaos at the Pentagon. From leaks of sensitive operational plans to mass firings, the dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president — who deserves better from his senior leadership.

President Donald Trump has a strong record of holding his top officials to account. Given that, it’s hard to see Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth remaining in his role for much longer.

The president deserves better than the current mishegoss at the Pentagon. Given his record of holding prior Cabinet leaders accountable, many in the secretary’s own inner circle will applaud quietly if Trump chooses to do the same in short order at the top of the Defense Department. (Read his entire article here)

It is by John Ullyot. He is a “former chief Pentagon spokesman and led communications at the National Security Council and the Department of Veterans Affairs in President Donald Trump’s first term. He resigned from the Pentagon last week. He was a senior communications adviser on Trump’s 2016 campaign.” He wrote:

I am a longtime backer of the secretary. In December, when his Senate confirmation was in jeopardy, I wrote an opinion piece arguing strongly that he was the best man to shake things up at a Pentagon in need of serious reform.

Hegeseth’s most recent fuck-up is his sharing Yemen attack plans with his wife and brother on a yet another Signal chat. This has been all over the news for two days. Along with the Pope’s death, it is the lead story on MSNBC this morning:

You can be forgiven if you don’t know who the Petey Piranha in my illustration is. He is…

… a large mutant Piranha Plant first introduced in Super Mario Sunshine. He is the leader of the Piranha Plants and a loyal follower of Bowser, often appearing as a boss in the Super Mario franchise.

He has multiple abilities that set him apart from other Piranha Plants, including spitting goop and the ability to create tornadoes. His leaf-like arms can also be used as wings, allowing him to fly. Petey Piranha also makes frequent appearances in sports and spin-off games, where his sheer size causes him to often be depicted as even stronger and heavier than regular powerhouse characters like Bowser and Donkey Kong. However, he often lacks stamina and his stubby legs make him very slow on the ground, while his massive head leaves him top-heavy and easy to knock over.

The above text is from the Super Mario Wiki and is available under a Creative Commons license. Attribution must be provided through a list of authors or a link back to the original article. Source: https://www.mariowiki.com/Petey_Piranha

I don’t need to highlight why I chose this nickname for Hegeseth.

How egregious does something someone Trump appointed have to be for the man with the monstrous ego to admit he was wrong? Hegeseth should be an embarrassment to Trump. He would be to a normal human being. But then again, RFK Jr. should be an embarrassment, but Trump has gone out of his way to show his support for him. Consider who had the “honor” of sitting just behind him at a cage fighting match the other day:

Ah, to be or not to be a normal human being, that is the question.

In the sense that normal often means both conventional and psychologically healthy, Trump is neither. You don’t have to go further back than yesterday, Easter Sunday, to find proof that Trump is not normal by reading his holiday post.

Considering that Pope Francis used his final speech to blast Trump’s policy on immigrants it is a wonder that he posted “Rest in Peace Pope Francis! May God Bless him and all who loved him!“ on Truth Social. I doubt he bothered writing this himself. 

It is considered newsworthy enough that this was a Hallmark card kind of condolence message for media like The Independent to title an article this way: Trump pays tribute to Pope Francis despite pontiff’s criticism of policies.

Normal people can admit they are wrong when there is overwhelming evidence that, indeed, they were wrong. Trump will not admit he was wrong about Hegeseth. Hegeseth could pull a Hulk Hogan at a Pentagon press conference and rip his shirt off and Trump would be hard pressed to use this as a reason to justify his being fired.

This doesn’t mean that Hegeseth will survive the week as Secretary of Defense. Since this is his religious belief, he could say he’s leaving to take a leadership role the major Christian Reconstructionist church, The Restored Church of God.

He could say something like “sometimes the Higher Power calls you to put God before country” although this might offend Trump.

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Phallocentrism, the ideology that the phallus is the central element in the organization, is central to the manosphere of Trump world. By Hal M. Brown

 If you click here you can hear the 1954 jingle promoting Manishewitz wine. I was 10 when it came out and I remember it well. Below is an article about the wine brand and how Sammy Davis, Jr., who had converted to Judaism, made commercials for it.

This has little to do with my topic today. It is just what popped into my mind because I was thinking that it could be adapted to be a jingle for Trump. “Man, oh Mano Trump, what a manly man” or something like that.

This photo below is from The NY Times article A Different Kind of F.B.I. Chief: Jet-Setting Patel Loves the Limelight.

Her’es a cutout enlargement:

We’ve all seen the fake pro-wresting photos of Trump with Vince McMahon (here).

This is an article in RawStory: 

That article includes this post from the deputy FBI director on X:

I know may of you refuse to look at X but sometimes it is worth it to see the replies:

The reply from Gary (above middle) is right out of the Trump phallocentric manoshere.

Here’s the Wikipedia entry on phallocentrisicm. Another similar concept is the manosphere. Wiki defines this as “a varied collection of websites, blogs, and online forums promoting masculinity, misogyny, and opposition to feminism.” While limited to the online community, the defintion can be expanded to include Trump and MAGA because they have created their own version.

You don’t have to be a male like a muscle bound Pete Hegseth, or a desperately trying to prove he still has manly man biceps RJK Jr., to be a manly man-ish member of Trump fawning flexing brigade.

Membership in the Trump manosphere does not require that one be born with a penis.

Read my two Substacks about this:

Trump's Hitlerian Henchwomen: Pam Bondi and Karoline Leavitt offer the feminine tone as their Führer sets the stage for sending people to the modern day version of concentration camps.

Kristi Noem does the blonde Trump Barbies one better by proving her malevolent sadism with an assault rife.

It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the Trump turkeys we haven’t seen shirtless photos of with hard rippling muscles are busy buffing up at one of DC’s many weight lifting gyms or training with Marjorie Taylor Greene. I’m sparing you a photo of her pumping iron or doing pull-ups.

Poor Elon Musk, he probably doesn’t want to put in the actual sweaty work to avoid articles like “Elon Musk Responds to Viral Shirtless Pics: 'Free the Nip'.”

Somehow bulging muscles and attending fake or real grappling events has become a measure of the man in Trump’s world.

One of most ruthless dictators in modern history had this written about him:

Adolf Hitler was so squeamish about being naked in public, he even refused to have physical examinations. Reference.

You don’t see old photos of Stalin or Mao showing off their physique. While the often pictured shirtless Putin is a member of the more muscles the more powerful club, you don’t see photos of Kim Jong Un or Xi flexing.

While the concept of malignant narcissism fits Turmp and many of his cadre, there’s no term “malignant masculinity’ in the psychological literature. The term for this is toxic masculinity. This is from Wikipedia:

The concept of toxic masculinity is used in academic and media discussions to refer to those aspects of hegemonic masculinity that are socially destructive, such as misogyny, homophobia, and violent domination. These traits are considered "toxic" due in part to their promotion of violence, including sexual assault and domestic violence. Socialization of boys sometimes also normalizes violence, such as in the saying "boys will be boys" about bullying and aggression.

Self-reliance and emotional repression are correlated with increased psychological problems in men such as depression, increased stress, and substance use disorders. Toxic masculine traits are characteristic of the unspoken code of behavior among incarcerated men, where they exist in part as a response to the harsh conditions of prison life.

Other traditionally masculine traits such as devotion to work, pride in excelling at sports, and providing for one's family, are not considered to be "toxic". The concept was originally used by authors associated with the mythopoetic men's movement, such as Shepherd Bliss. These authors contrasted stereotypical notions of masculinity with a "real" or "deep" masculinity, which they said men had lost touch with in modern society. Critics of the term "toxic masculinity" argue that it incorrectly implies that gender-related issues are caused by inherent male traits.^[3]

The concept of toxic masculinity has been criticized by conservative writers and authors as an undue condemnation of traditional masculinity. In January 2019, conservative political commentators criticized the new American Psychological Association guidelines for warning about harms associated with "traditional masculinity ideology", arguing that it constitutes an attack on masculinity. Some feminists have argued it is an essentialist concept that ignores the role of choice and context in causing harmful behaviors and attitudes related to masculinity.

Google Trends search term for "Toxic masculinity" began a substantial increase in 2016, at the time of the campaign for the U.S. presidential election.

This Substack has become too long, so I won’t speculate on what is covered in this 2011 reasearch study: Relationship between penile size and body measurements. I’m resisting temptation to write about this. Use your own imagination to wonder if there is a certain amount of compensation going on with some of these men. I will, however, share this:

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Unsolved mystery: We know Trump is creating chaos, but why? By Hal M. Brown - He shows no signs of caring when his malevolent cadre of clowns proves to be a gang that can't shoot straight.

 

The Harvard email sent by error is an example of the most recent royal screw-up by people who Trump has unleashed to wreak havoc on the country. How much does Trump care? There isn’t a violin small enough to play a song of regret to accompany any feelings he has due to this.

The article in The New York Time title headline reads Trump Officials Blame Mistake for Setting Off Confrontation With Harvard (subscription)  There’s a space in the middle of the page so I added a row of AI created clowns, because, why not?

If you don’t have a subscrption to the NYT, RawStory summarized the story here.

I wrote about Harvard, Harvard Law School in particular, on April 17th.

Since Harvard took their stand, as a Michigan State University graduate I was pleased to read in the student newspaper, “MSU faculty join call for Big Ten 'mutual defense compact' against Trump administration.”

From this we go to the story which shows that the Trump administration is populated by a cadre of clowns. While they are members of a gang of malevolent clowns hell-bent on causing pain and destruction, they have proved to be a gang that can’t shoot straight. An accomplished clown may wear giant shoes, but they don’t accidentally trip over their own feet.

Their fuckups don’t matter to their Capo dei capi, Godfather Trump. Unlike Mafia bosses, when a soldier botches a job may suffer dire consequences, he is forgiving and sends them out on another job. 

By leaving the country unprepared to deal with tornadoes and hurricanes by cutting NOAA to firing staff at the IRS (just being reported on as I type this) I wonder why Trump is doing these things.

Trump is many things. Many smart people have weighed in speculating, with varying degrees of certainty, why he is, to put it bluntly, unhinged and weird. Is he a madman? Is he just plain evil? Is he a secret agent working for Putin who carries an FSB badge in his back pocket?

One thing is certain. Whenever Trump does things like this, he scores points with a large segment of his supporters. 

Big deal, he sent Kilmar Abrego Garcia to prison and announced, the Supreme Court Court be damned, he is the decider-in-chief and that’s that, case closed. He doesn’t even have to remind anyone that Barack Obama’s middle name is Hussien. This alleged gangster has three foreign names.

This is a win for Trump.

Some day we may have the answer to the question “why did he do all this?”

While highly unlikely, we may discover that Trump has been a high functioning schizophrenic for decades and has been obeying the commands coming from voices he hears in his head.

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