Trump, Hegseth, And The Power Of Images

When it comes to getting things done, images matter a tremendous amount.

For a very long time, Democrats have understood that the image any particular political department portrays has a huge cultural impact.

Andrew Breitbart once said that politics is downstream from culture, but the truth is that it’s actually more of a cycle. It’s more that politics is downstream of culture, which is downstream of politics, which is downstream of culture.

What I mean is that politics, the power of government, can shape culture to its own whims. So, an image of DEI or ESG from the government creates an unofficial sanction against people who disagree. Sometimes, actual formal strictures are created against people who disagree.

In other words, the government does an awful lot to shape culture in this country. The Left has understood this in a way that the Right traditionally has not.

But this is a point many people on the MAGA Right have been making for quite some time. A Defense Department that decides, for example, to put out ads that feature lesbian families “finding themselves,” has a profound impact on the kind of people who are recruited into the military. And that, in turn, has an impact on how people think of the military. And that, in turn, has an impact on how people around the world think of the United States.

Things are going back to normal, a process which is starting with governmental action.

You could say culture led to that governmental action. You could say the culture in the United States changed after a backlash against the insane radical Left-wing wokeism of the last decade and a half in the United States, which is why President Trump was reelected. It’s why he has a conservative Supreme Court. It is why he has a Republican-led Senate and a Republican-led House.

All of that is true.

But it is also true that now since the cycle has begun, now since culture has shaped politics, politics is shaping culture again.

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Perhaps the tip of the spear in this battle is the new Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth.

When I was growing up, the Defense Department was all about America winning wars, a battle machine made up of predominantly strong men. We were going to difficult places and doing what no one wanted to see in order to keep America safe.

That was always the image of the military. The movies and TV shows that many of us grew up on were rooted in that image of the United States military.

The other day, I was looking for a movie to watch with my eight-year-old son, and I brought up one of my favorites. When I was a kid, I tended to watch old movies, meaning movies from the 1950s and 1960s. So we watched a particular favorite: “The Guns of Navarone,” starring Gregory Peck and David Niven.

It’s a classic, a wonderful film. It’s about a group of mostly American and British commandos’ secret mission to blow up a Nazi-held stronghold.

The entire basis of the movie is that sometimes men have to do violent, nasty things in order to fight bad guys. This was always the idea of the American military.

But somehow, that idea shifted. Somehow the American military became a tool of social engineering, and the glorious points of America’s history were no longer about America’s military winning wars but became about how the military was to be used as a sort of microcosmic standard for the diversity, equity, and inclusion regime.

Rather than the glorious moments of diversity in the military being linked with victory — for example, the Tuskegee Airmen’s help winning World War II when we needed more people and we needed to get rid of the evils of segregation in order to have a better fighting machine — they were, instead, seen as the high point of the military. Thus was born the idea that what the military really needed to do was draw from every segment of society.

The idea became that the military was not supposed to be a battle-hardened machine designed to win, break things, and kill bad guys. Instead, the military was supposed to be a commercial for United Colors of Benetton.

That became the basic idea of the military, and that’s why we “needed” Admiral Rachel Levine. That’s why we “needed” members of the military who were carrying Pride Progress flags. That is why every recruitment video needed to be about “finding yourself” as opposed to what the military has always been about, which is defending the country and the person next to you.

If young men wanted to join the world’s most diverse workforce and that was their top priority, they’d be going to Wellesley College or looking for a job at Starbucks. But if they wished to join a fighting machine, which is what the American war machine is supposed to be, then they would want to go into Donald Trump’s military, not Barack Obama or Joe Biden’s military. 

I fielded tons of questions over the course of the Obama and Biden administrations from young 17- or 18-year-old men who said, “Listen, I have a long family history of going into the military. I’m not sure I want to go into the military if the commander in chief is Joe Biden or Barack Obama, because, number one, I don’t trust their foreign policy instincts and I’m not sure I want to fight in a far-flung place that has no impact on American interests. But more importantly, number two, I’m not sure I want to go into a military where people like me are scorned and looked down upon.” 

Historic military families were not members of the sort of diversity coalition that would be on the brochure cover for the Biden or Obama military. 

But now, all of that is changing.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is virtually single-handedly changing the culture, the nature of the American military, and how it is perceived. But he is not the only one in the military who is saying this, and the leadership of the military absolutely matters; politically-correct generals atop a structure filled with wonderful men and women who are fighting for the country is not good enough.

You need people at the top of the military who actually reflect the priorities and image of the grunts on the ground, the guys who are actually doing the fighting, wounding, and dying on behalf of the country.

Yesterday, Hegseth did a few things that re-enshrined the idea that America’s military is back. He trained with a bunch of members of the military. He was pumping iron. 

This was awesome because the image that you want to give off to the world is one that implies, if you screw with us, then we will kick your a**. That is the image that the American military should be purveying to the rest of the world.

The second thing Hegsteh did was to restore Fort Bragg’s name, renaming Fort Bragg back to Fort Bragg. But there was a twist, and this was really smart.

Fort Bragg was originally named Braxton Bragg, who was a former U.S. Army artillery commander and West Point graduate who fought for the Confederacy during the American Civil War. One of the reasons many of the forts in the United States were named for Confederate generals was not because there was a great love for the Confederacy in the United States. Rather, it was the way to bring a country back together after the most bloody civil war in American history (and possibly world history) by expressing conciliation and recognizing that the Confederacy did exist but was subsumed into the broader union.

The Biden administration decided to rename Fort Bragg, reasoning that, presumably, when black soldiers went to Fort Bragg, they would suddenly think of Braxton Bragg and the old racism of America.

Hegseth found another American hero who happened to be named Bragg: Private First Class Roland Bragg, a World War II hero who earned the Silver Star and Purple Heart for his exceptional courage during the Battle of the Bulge.

So they restored the legacy of Fort Bragg without paying homage to a Confederate soldier, which is a smart way of squaring the circle.

All this goes to the broader effort Trump is conducting, which is understanding the power of images. This is something Trump understands better than anyone alive. He’s the best marketer in the history of the American Republic, bar none.

Trump is amazing at branding, and he understands the power of imagery. And the Left is panicking because for a very long time, the Right never understood the power of imagery.

But they do now.