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The Majority Report with Sam Seder
3651 - Military Education And Masculinity In The US w/ Jasper Craven
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- [00:07]
A
It is Monday, May 25, 2026. My name is Sam Cedar. This is the five time award winning Majority Report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, usa. On the program today, it's Memorial Day. We have on Jasper Craven, freelance journalist, author of God Forgives Brothers, the Long March of Military Education and the Making of American Manhood. Also on the program today, not much else as we are live to tape taking Memorial Day off. But let's check in with our resident expert on Memorial Day, Brian. Because Brian, of course, served honorably.
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B
Yes, sir. Nobody can take that away from me in quotes.
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C
Thank you for your service, Brian.
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A
Thank you for your service, Brian. Now, you didn't die, so Memorial Day is not about you.
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B
No. But you know, we can still what the thought.
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A
I mean, you could still thank me in many ways. O' Brien did die when you were in the military and a new Brian emerged.
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D
Yeah.
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A
Wouldn't you say that.
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B
Yeah, I went in a boy, I came out a man.
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A
That's right. And then, then you spent a couple more years being a boy again.
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B
Right, a couple, like 20 years
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C
going back and forth, right on the precipice.
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B
It didn't take. The manliness just didn't stick.
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A
You know, of course, like now this show has been around for two or three wars, I guess, major wars,
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B
maybe
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A
another couple of like kinetic actions.
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B
I used to listen to Air America in the barracks.
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A
Is that right?
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B
Yes.
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A
At Fort Gordon we would get, we would get reports of military listening to the program back in those days. So of course, you know, the horror is that more often than not, at least certainly in the past 50, 60 years, a lot of young men, some young women as well, have died in service of really things that we can't really outline and be explicit about. World War II was a lot more sort of straightforward, at least, you know, the vast majority of it, I think, was the broad brushstrokes.
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B
Yeah, you can make a decent bedtime story out of it type of thing.
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A
Yes, exactly. Which is not to say that any war is anything other than a racket, as Smedley Butler would say, but
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D
some
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A
were just far more misguided than others and far more costly and far more geared towards the benefit of a very limited number of people. And so today's Memorial Day. Give a thought to those who died in our military service and maybe to how we can keep those people from dying in the future. Meanwhile, let's play this clip before we get to Jasper Craven. This is Sort of fascinating. Just a little bit of backstory. There was a story in the the New Republic by I think it was. Was it Parker Malloy? And it was. It's a broader story about what's happening with, you know, sort of right wing media. But in terms of the Washington Post, sort of fascinating. They won two Pulitzers and they wanted to stream the announcement but they had already fired all of their video people. And the. They started up a. An opinion, an opinion like a podcast studio. Apparently the Premier Washington Post YouTube channel has something like 600 subscribers, not 600,000. 600 subscribers. This is after almost 200 videos and 20 episodes. Most users on an Apple podcasts have given a 2.3 stars. The guy who built Washington Post tik tok presence left last year when it was clear that Bezos was moving the paper towards like stripping it of a lot of its reporting. I'll talk about in a second. But anyways, he left. His channel now has over four, almost 400,000 subscribers in a year. The opinion podcast has 515. And at one point Bezos was warned by his opinion editor that if you take the Washington Post and get more right leaning in your perspective, you're going to lose readers and interest. And Bezos didn't care. And you could see this also in terms of like rolling back. He fired a ton of reporters. And the reason why you do that is because you're a billionaire, you don't care. The newspaper is never going to make you money. The value of the newspaper is one thing and one thing only, and that is to kiss Donald Trump's ass. And if you have a bunch of reporters, you no longer have control over what the paper writes about because some of these reporters are going to stumble on stuff that may be inconvenient for Donald Trump to know about. So you're only going to have opinion writers who are paid to have an opinion that is not going to offend Donald Trump. And here's Jeff Bezos being interviewed on CNBC talking about Donald Trump. And did you realize like how much he's matured?
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E
When I last interviewed you about two years ago, President Trump had just won. He was not the president yet. And I'd asked you what you thought of him at the time and you said that you thought that he had mellowed, that he was calmer.
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F
Yeah.
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E
And I'm curious now. Here we are.
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F
Yeah, I still think that two years later.
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E
Yeah, we've had lots of wars and tariffs and all sorts of things that have happened since then. What do you think?
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F
I think he has. I mean, I'm comparing him to his first term, and I think he is a more mature, more disciplined version of himself than he was in his first. First term. And, you know, so he's. Again, I've. I've worked with all the presidents. I will work with all the presidents, you know, and I hope to do that going forward, if they'll have me. But it's. We need our business leaders to provide input into the. The administration, regardless of who the president is.
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E
I want to.
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F
I'm not on the side. You know what this is. I. I'm on the side of America, and that is so important. And that's where business leaders should be. No, I think. No, I think we are, but we get perceived as being, like, partisan or whatever. Like, I was helping Obama every chance I could. I was helping Biden every chance I could. I still call Obama for advice. He's a very smart guy. And, you know, and by the way, people that are. Trump has lots of good ideas, and he's done a lot of. He's been right about a lot of things. You have to give him credit. Where credit is due.
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A
Well, where is credit due? Ask the question, where is credit due? I mean, listen. Exactly. Well, he saved me a lot of money. I'm like a billionaire five times over. The. The thing to keep in mind here is like. Like, this is what an oligarchy is. And the only sort of, like, slight difference is that the oligarchy is sort of permanent. And who leads it is a little bit, you know, can shift. And that's what his job is. He's in it for America, not for himself.
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B
The arrogance of saying, I helped Obama the best as much as I could. I helped Biden.
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C
You helped less the.
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A
And how is that help going for the country right now? It's going well for him. It's going well for the Washington Post or not for the Washington Post, for Amazon, for the servers that are getting all the government contracts, for the billions of dollars that you're. You're making for yourself, the undermining of the post office. This is just bullshit. These people need to be taxed out of existence as billionaires. For America.
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C
Is there some designer supplement out there that makes it so guys like him and Peter Thiel and Elon Musk can't finish sentences like, it's very strange communication better?
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B
I feel like their brains are firing on so many levels.
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C
I think there's something in water. Like something.
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A
Yeah, exactly.
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C
I genuinely think they're doing something that is not helping their ability to stay on track. And I'm saying this as somebody who does things that don't help. My ability to stay on track with
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B
Bezos is particularly funny because he's got the steroid body.
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A
Yes.
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B
But he still has the nerd.
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A
I wonder if they all shoot up. I wonder if he gets into a room with Bobby Kennedy and whoever else is on it and they all just shoot up their steroids at the time. Same. Same time. Yeah. I can't wait to take it. I'm a couple years off, but I'm going to. I'm gonna get so. I'm gonna get so buff.
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C
Jacked.
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A
Yeah, man. Yeah. Jeff Bezos doesn't care. Jeff Bezos doesn't care. As long as there is no antitrust, he's okay. You didn't go on and on about Biden. Biden had some weird antitrust stuff that anti monopoly was sort of.
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B
He tried to help him with it.
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A
Yeah. I tried to explain to him that monopolies are good. In a moment. Jasper Craven, freelance journalist, author of God Forgives Brothers don't the Long March of Military Education in the Making of American Manhood. We will be back live tomorrow. Till then, have a good Memorial Day.
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D
It.
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A
We are back. Sam Cedar on the Majority Report. Want to welcome to the program Jasper Craven, author of God Forgives Brothers don't the Long March of Military Education and the Making of American Manhood. Jasper, welcome to the program.
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G
Thanks for having me. Sam,
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A
Let's. I mean, I don't know, I guess like a broadly speaking, you've done a history of military education in the context of how it has formed masculinity in this country. Give us a sense of like what the starting point was not so much with the military education, but like I guess when we're going back 250 some odd years more. 250, whatever. 300 years. 250 years. What was like, what was the nature of manhood at that time, broadly speaking?
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G
Yeah, well, there's a lot of conflicting ideas early on in the sort of Revolutionary War. First and foremost is a deep skepticism, a real hatred actually of military imperialism, of military occupation of the redcoats. But at the same time there's sort of this practical need to expel them from the country and secure independence. And so what inevitably ends up happening is that many of the founding Fathers sort of nod to the need to keep military in check, to never elevate the soldier above the citizen. And yet at the same time they sort of like, you know, through Their own vanity elevate themselves. And most of the founding fathers were Revolutionary War veterans as these sort of prototypical Americans. Strong, strapping, unafraid of bullets whizzing by. I mean, everyone likes to say that Washington, you know, was very careful not to sort of nourish his image so as to be like, elevated as a sort of princely, kingly figure. But there were a million different myths that he sort of, you know, actively cultivated in his early years. His kid, two funerals, one of which had, like, insane military honors equivalent to what Genghis Khan was sort of sent off into the afterworld with. And so really there's, you know, there ends up being a sort of practical need to. Or a practical wish to keep a strong army, to sort of keep the British at bay, to keep suppressing indigenous people. And. And there's sort of like, interestingly enough, you know, while the army is demobilized after the war, there's basically this, like, little nugget of officers left at West Point, which was a very important strategic post during the war. And then from there, what you see is the military industrial complex grow. It's really like a few dozen guys into what we see today. And, you know, from that point forward, really, military brass, politicians, you know, there's a million other cultural inputs are sort of equating manhood with the key sort of signatures of military service. And really, what I argue is this was kind of like a cynical effort to ensure that there would always be young boys that they could, you know, bring into the system and, and stay well prepared, essentially.
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A
I mean, so is this, like. I mean, how much of the development of the prototypical American male. Right. Which, I guess, like. And, and. And you, You. You write about some of the contradictions, the, the idea that we're ruggedly individualist, but also, I mean, God forgives, but brothers don't. Right? Like, they're brothers. All of a sudden, you. You've joined a brotherhood. And I also. I want to circle back to that title because it's. It's pretty fascinating. But the. How much of it was the. The. The military understanding that it needed to create this version of masculinity to sort of propagate the military? Like. Or was there this sort of, you know, version of masculinity as you are going through the frontier that needed to be fed into. Into the, you know, that was fed into the. The military?
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G
Yeah, no, it's a good question. I mean, many people will argue that man is inherently violent, and surely, like, world history shows that fighter has been sort of man's defining vocation. He has been relied upon to, you know, secure territory and open up the seas to trade. And, you know, there were certain practical needs many moons ago to sort of like, have men fight and just secure survival for his family, his country, all the rest. I mean, the same is true of the sort of, you know, territorial conquest that mark the early days of America. And so, yeah, I mean, there's an argument to be made that this was necessary. I mean, maybe you make the sort of like, optimistic argument that diplomacy could have secured some of these victories. I'm not entirely convinced of that. I mean, I do think that, like, you know, this sort of violent, strong understanding of masculinity has sort of seeped into man at the genomic level just because all of our family trees include, you know, deep veins of military service. Like today, obviously 2% of Americans serve. But you go back a couple of generations and most of us have some, you know, great grandfather who was probably traumatized through, you know, some pretty heavy stuff. So, like, it's deeply embedded and I acknowledge there are certain practical aims. But really what has happened over the, I mean, really since the Cold War is that like, these ideas which are very fragile, you know, and, and sort of potentially can spin out of control very quickly because they're sort of oriented around violence and subjugation and power. They have just like completely mutated into really, like, you know, hyper violent, hyper aggressive, high testosterone, you know, like, roided out masculinity. And this is what we see with clavicular people saying high tea. Like, and like, some of these, these, this early obsession with the male form in the body sort of date back to World War II. And like, military generals were sort of concerned about the like, weird eugenics, bodybuilding stuff that Hitler was doing. Like, there's certainly like a fascist influence on all of this as well as I write in the book. But yeah, I mean, the book basically argues that like, maybe those old ideas had some merit, but they're completely irrelevant now just to how we fight wars, to what's required of man. And so they're like, completely outmoded, which is part of the reason why man feels so, like, empty, because he's not really able to actually, you know, prove himself in these ways in any way that like, enriches his country or his family. And so, you know, the, the sort of idle, violent man just sort of turns inward or into his community and, you know, here we are.
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A
MLK had said every bomb that goes off in Vietnam explodes in this country. And largely, you know, if you train a cadre of of people to do one thing and that thing is not available for them to actually to do, then it seeps out in other places. All right, so let's, and I want to go through some of the history anyways. It's a fascinating history. The development of, of, of like the, the military education and, and, and, and how that formed masculinity through the, the history of the country. But I also wonder and, and I did not know this, but the God Forgives Brothers don't is a. Was not only the, the, the saying
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D
of,
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A
of the motto of the West Point football team, apparently it's also the Omerda code of the Aryan Brotherhood, which came first and how much of that relationship, you know, regardless of whether, whichever came first, but which came first and how much of that relationship is indicative of the, the sort of the fascism that you need for imperialism, particularly the early military in this country was all about we're humans, they're not. We take their land. This is how we do it.
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G
Yeah, no, great question. The fact of the matter is that the Aryan Brotherhood, a white power prison gang, developed God Forgives Brothers don't as their omerta code in the 1980s. So that came first. And then around 1996, the West Point football team adopted it as their motto. Now, the exact sort of timeline and underlying motivations there are not entirely clear, but it does seem like a group of West Point footballers watched this movie called Stone Cold in the early 90s, which is about a white supremacist biker gang sort of loosely inspired by the Aryan Brotherhood, and they liked what they saw there. And so that seems to be sort of the most tangible evidence of like a direct connection between people in the military at West Point playing football, seeing themselves in, you know, and a sort of similar ideology to this white supremacist gang. You know, it's very clear from the earliest days of West Point and other military schools that like the, the, the very specific structure was authoritarian. And people who championed this model argued that you needed an authoritarian fascist model to secure democracy. And so while many people like to believe that service academies like West Point, Annapolis, et cetera are sort of these like Ivy League level liberal arts enlightened places, they have forever relied on dehumanization. I mean, I talk a lot in the book about really just nasty racism that pervaded Vietnam post 911 conflicts. I mean, it's really as old as time. It just wasn't as discussed as much in earlier Imperial conquests, but. And that dehumanization is sort of really learned through the hierarchy that exists at these places. You know, there's the plebe who comes in and all of the elder cadets basically ravage them, abuse them. They are not considered whole, and until they sort of undergo just really intense abuse. And so, you know, while there's a promise of true brotherhood, often that it's forever fleeting, I mean, the military is always withholding complete validation or even really complete humanity. I mean, one old West Point cadet I spoke to compared the experience to like bdsm, where you sort of have like, rights and privileges meted out very slowly as you're sort of just getting like, like grind it down. I mean, it's, it's cultish. There's indoctrination. It's about scrubbing away your humanity and ultimately just getting you to a place where you're capable of waging state violence.
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A
I mean, that's sort of also the, the paradox, right, is that it ostensibly is building you up as an individual, specifically an, you know, an individual, a man. But at the same time it's also explicitly breaking you down and essentially saying you have no free will. Your will is ours. Like, all of what you have is ours. You get to keep the, you get to keep the. The affect, I guess, is really what it comes down to and is obviously, I mean, that's what the military has felt that it's needed to do for an extended period of time. Let's, I mean, let's jump into the, to the, the history as you go through this. I mean, you, you bring out that the, the early, sort of like father of West Point, I guess, educational system was a guy named Sylvan Sylvanus Thayer. And very early on they understood we need to sort of have more technical minded people rather than humanities minded people because of what we're going to ask of them and we don't want them thinking too much about other things.
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G
Right? Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, Thayer grew up in Massachusetts, comes from a long line of puritans. And so there's a very puritanical spirit that he brings to the military. You know, serious brutal punishments for minor infractions, securing, you know, discipline and specific sorts of behavior, and then yes, really sort of undertaking a curriculum that is less about, you know, developing the soul than sort of creating a pliant body. He, you know, does away with Latin, English courses, plays, extracurriculars, vacations. There's really nothing left and no real joy he left in the place. Like he really squeezes it all out and imposes.
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A
And it was there before?
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G
Yes. Well, yeah, there was sort of an early skirmish between him and an old frat brother at Dartmouth named Alden Partridge. And Partridge was sort of. He. He saw these boys as. As his. As his children sort of. I mean, he. He was much warmer than Thayer. I mean, certainly there were still punishments and hierarchy, but relatively speaking, he allowed the humanities to flourish and felt that cadets should have some influence on this curriculum as it was developing. He developed a lot of loyalty among these cadets because he treated them humanely. But it was basically decided that there would be a better foundational superintendent because he could be relied upon to instill unwavering obedience. I mean, a big problem early on in the army was that there were a lot of defections. And, you know, there was not this sort of. There's actually a few, like, French military generals who come to try to shape the military, and they're frustrated that the Americans don't listen to their orders. They ask, why? Why should I do this? And so Thayer kind of tries to stamp that out where what was happening
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A
in European military schools at that time was. Is there it. Was it. Was it analogous? Were they doing the same type of thing like, is this a. A military phenomena that in some respects, you could see in Europe as well, but in America, somehow, the influence of determining masculinity is more prominent?
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G
Yeah, well, Europe definitely had a pretty strong network of military academies at this point, and the most famous of which was called Ecole Polytechnique, which famously reared Napoleon Bonaparte. And Thayer was obsessed with Napoleon his whole childhood. He studied up on his campaigns and just felt. He sort of saw him as the pinnacle of manhood. Certainly at some point, Europeans got sick of Napoleon and banished him and sort of felt like, I mean, he was just constantly identifying enemies, always sort of engaging in these grand military campaigns. And so there was kind of a backlash to that sort of form of masculinity and militarism. No such thing really happened in America. I mean, certainly there's like, this strange. These strange dynamics that have pervaded this country for a long time where, like, the citizenry isn't actually that gung ho about militarism much of the time, but still, because of, you know, political forces, big money, all the rest, we sort of continue to just, like, feed this system, feed this machine. It's become so entrenched now that, like, you know, it. It sort of militarism becomes inevitable. But, yeah, I mean, and it was less militarism in Europe by this, by, by sort of the early days of America was less entrenched and, and militarism was less sort of necessary to one's identity of manhood.
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A
I mean, I guess at that point, I mean, you have, as we develop a sort of the modern military, you have centuries of culture that exist there and there's a lot more to work with. I mean, the military is so fundamental to the founding of the, to America as anything other than a colony. And it's so, it's so fundamental. I guess it's going to have more influence in that respect. Let's move forward to the Scabbard and Blade, which is like the military fraternity that was sort of, I guess, sort of like a function as like an alumni association, maybe. I don't know.
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G
Yeah, well, I mean, there's a lot of sort of inputs. I broadly define military education as including congressionally chartered service academies like West Point, the 5200 ROTC and JROTC programs in public high schools and colleges, the Boy Scouts. And then there was for a time Scabbard and Blade, which was like a military style fraternity. Started at the University of Wisconsin in the early 1910s. This is sort of the first effort by military leaders to squelch, you know, the long, noble history of anti war activism on college campuses. There was a lot of spoiling by, you know, industrialists and politicians for entree into World War I. A lot of energy on campus. Not for that to happen. I mean, many early pioneers of education in this country were pacifists, suffragettes, socialists, John Dewey. I mean, there was this really interesting ideology around education that explicitly felt like if you could sort of nurture a boy's imagination, that you could sort of conceive of a world and then create one that was peaceful. You know, Dewey talks about this at length. And Scabbard and Blade was sort of established by the military connected to ROTC chapters on campus to sort of offer an alternative path, an enticing network like any fraternity that offered access to girls and parties and you know, badges and uniforms and all of the rest. I mean, it sort of was this place where you were elevated on campus to sort of an exemplar. And you know, they did. There was one old newspaper clip I dug up that there was like a kissing ceremony that one of the chapters held where apparently 250 girls were kissed by Scabbard and Blade members over an afternoon. And so like, you also sort of see how like gender starts to play into this and you know, just men clearly feeling that wearing a uniform and serving was critical to sort of, you know, securing a nice wife and meaning and identity and all of the rest.
- [34:21]
A
How much of like the, the, the compulsion to sort of broaden the cultural tentacles of the military, for lack of a better description, was a function of the idea that we may have to fight wars that are getting further and further away from the United States and the, you know, through the, the 19th century. You know, we are protecting Americans, we're protecting a nascent country from either invasion or from hostile indigenous people. And we need to expand. I mean, all of it is sort of like, there's an immediacy in terms of like, proximity that going to Europe to fight doesn't necessarily have. How much of like, was there a sense within the context of the, of the military? And where have you found examples of, of that urgency of like, we need to make this thing, you know, I mean, because when I was a kid, it's like you want adventure, go off the places, which is not the pitch in, you know, the 1800s, obviously. And so what, like what, how does that turn get made?
- [35:52]
G
It's a really good observation. And basically what happens is in the early 1900s, a bunch of bankers and weapons manufacturers, DuPont, J.P. morgan, Guggenheim, etc. They help. And also Teddy Roosevelt, I mean, one of the Sultzbergers from the New York Times family is involved in all of this. They sort of astroturf this idea, this movement called preparedness. And this was sort of to deal with what you're talking about because, you know, for most American citizens, yes, there was no immediate threat to the homeland. They were just fine to sort of, you know, live their happy lives and support domestic priorities and all the rest. But what the preparedness movement does is really saber rattles against, you know, with this idea of a coming invasion. Very explicit language, this language was used actually by Justin Morrell, a congressman, to establish ROTC in the first place, mandated at land grant colleges when they were being created. And so, yeah, it's basically, you know, these very thin propagandizing ideas that some enemy, whomever, it was often very poorly defined, was sort of coming to get us. And then from there you sort of see like, you know, that there's these ideologies that must be defeated, these, you know, porous ideologies that can creep onto American soil. But you're totally right, there was not any attitude to go into any, you know, real energy to go into world wars one or two for that matter. But you just see like these very powerful, influential Industrialists, people in the media, politicians, sort of push forward.
- [37:43]
A
Anyways, let's talk about the sort of following that era into World War II and into the Cold War, the idea of strength and how this, the, the idea of, of, of manhood and militarism, you know, sort of conjoined and we're, you know, I, I keep thinking of like, how I saw it represented as a kid in the 70s and the 80s, you know, even down to like whatever it was, Rocky 4 or something where he's fighting the Soviet Union. But the, but this notion of, of, of we need to be men, need to be strong and, and, and, and this is. The militarism spreads on some level where it's there, there's an attempt to create a bridge with civilian life and military life.
- [38:45]
G
Yeah, I mean, World War II is a crucial moment here. And what I sort of tell this chapter of history in the book through this man named Bernard McFadden, who was this sort of mercurial, macho, early bodybuilding magazine publisher. He's sort of like if you took Joe Rogan and RFK Jr. And Andrew Tate and sort of threw them into, you know, amalgamation machine, very skeptical of vaccines, for instance, put forward a lot of like, weird ideas around nutrition and strength. He founded a number of military schools and had a massive magazine empire of some of the first fitness magazines. And he was very focused on building strength in the American man. I mean, he, he was a blatant eugenicist, flirted with strongmen like Mussolini and Hitler, visited Mussolini actually, and sort of gay, you know, took in some of his weak Italian recruits and, and, you know, puffed them up in, in all the right ways. But you see his influence pretty profoundly on how the military is viewing itself, its needs, its weaknesses. In the run up to our entree into World War II in just a few years, thanks to the lobbying of McFadden and others, the army completely scraps its physical standards and rewrites new ones that are emphasizing fighting, you know, bare knuckle boxing, strength, push ups. None of this had really existed before. At the same time, there's a national, there's a federal effort to build hundreds of gymnasiums across the country. There's an interesting sort of like, fusion at this point with PE teachers who were up until this point, not really taken very seriously. But you see the military, like, elevating PE teachers on the same footing as like, you know, an ethics teacher. I mean, to this day, the. That the head PE teacher at West Point is called the master of the Sword. And so like there's, there's this real intense movement also. Like I think before our involvement in World War II, only about a third of Americans said they went to the gym or had a workout havoc that spikes to 60% in a couple of years. And a lot of this again is like focused around trying to sort of meet the Hitler's and Mussolini's fascist ideals around like the perfect body, the sleek, tight, you know, I mean there's also a bunch of homoerotic stuff undergirding a lot of this with McFadden and others. But yeah, and sort of the conflation of physical strength, bodybuilding, military service, fighting with manhood. I mean McFadden's media empire rivaled William Randolph Hearst's and so it was profoundly influential.
- [41:58]
A
It's so fascinating because this is an era where war making becomes more mechanized and so presumably you need less physical strength as opposed to back when you need your musket and after your one shot you're going in there and you're doing hand to hand combat. Yeah, that's when you would think that you would need, that would be the peak and that as you. But the, this, that era is, is fascinating in the ascent of like bodybuilding as a, both a military and sort of civilian vision of what, of what a manhood should be. And all the, the anti vax stuff and the sort of RFK stuff that we're seeing today are just so eerily similar. And we should remember this is coming in the wake of the first global pandemic in the, the so called Spanish flu. So it's, I guess it's just sort of fascinating what comes out of that era. Let's talk about lastly about like it. Well, there's a couple of more things I wanted to get to the. How Christianity and not just Christianity because there was obviously this like sort of Protestant puritanical ethic that was there at its beginning. But the theocratic, the rise of a theocratic religiosity in the military. And much of this is sort of like, I would argue probably post Vietnam. So maybe we should put a pin in that on some level and talk about how Vietnam changed the military and manhood. You got Full Metal Jacket behind you on that poster. I would imagine there's a couple others there. But how Vietnam changed both the, the military, but the military cell of masculinity.
- [44:18]
G
Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean certainly the, the religious element is very important with Vietnam because military brass understood at some point that because they were no longer fighting a war with any sort of tangible moral center that, you know, big, broad, nebulous ideas around religion were sort of crucial to fusing to the military mission to sort of create these. These broader ideas around salvation and sacrifice. It really, you know, we see the U.S. air Force Academy founded just after World War II, and there is where you really see this like, deep evangelical theocratic idea of military service take hold, which again, sort of like it does a million different things, but one of them is that it also just creates incredible ego and a sense of superiority among, you know, military members.
- [45:30]
A
You need to have to go across the world and kill people without any sort of like the flimsiest of notion that this is going to spread. Communism, which of course was also a threat to Christianity.
- [45:47]
G
Yes.
- [45:47]
A
In, in the Korean War, we had at least the tent pole or clothesline of we're doing this for the sake of the un. And the UN is important because that is the response to World War II, and this is the new international order. And there was some other sort of like defining principle and morality associated with it. It started getting much harder with Vietnam.
- [46:16]
G
Absolutely. And so then it just. We enter an era of violence for violence sake. I mean, there's also sort of these interrelated ideas with our dropping of the bomb that just like, in which these sort of these, these, you know, new titans of industry and military technology feel this awesome power and, and sort of conceive of themselves as like almost pious figures, as almost godlike. I mean, you hear some of them, I mean, Charles Lindbergh included, talk about flight. And there's just like this, this sort of intoxicated idea of power and self and destruction that starts to sort of infect, you know, down the ranks. I mean, the irony, of course, is that while America felt like it now had this, you know, unstoppable air force, we see in Vietnam thousands of planes shot down with pretty crude technology. I mean, so that idea gets challenged and undermined very fast. But nonetheless, Vietnam, because there, there's no, there's nothing like the entire war is wracked with lies and propaganda and such thin morals, often war crimes and just like brutal behavior, that you sort of start to see masculinity warp in really messed up ways and it becomes extremely individualistic. Whereas before in World War II, you could sort of cast your service as, you know, around some shared global mission or, you know, there was a certain level of collectivism there, but now it's really just sort of this mercenary soldier of fortune style warfare and conception of military service. That's where you See Rambo, you know, sort of emerge. There's resentment, deep resentment towards the country for not sufficiently supporting the war. There's resentment towards politicians for not sufficiently keeping the war going. I mean, obviously there's lots of anti war sentiments within the ranks, but it just, you just start to see like a hardening of, of. Of the military man. And rather than sort of like fighting for some broader improvements on the global stage, it just sort of about body counts. I mean, obviously this is what Westmoreland was focused on. It was race. You know, the kill ratios are what determined who was winning. And so violence becomes, you know, violence becomes a virtue essentially.
- [48:58]
A
I can't help but think of just the storyline of Apocalypse now, which of course is, you know, it's an anti war film, but there's many different themes you could have used other than sort of a lone individual just sort of want like there's just a series of individuals more or less throughout that film with all their own specific agendas as to how they're going to get through the day. Which I imagine exists in the context of, of. Of war throughout the years, but it not depicted in that way. The illusions of war to the extent that they were depicted before were still in the context of sort of a broader mission. But be that as it may, let's talk about where we are at today because it feels like the military does not have the hold on the culture in the wake of Vietnam that it had prior and that there's been different times in attempts for reformation. I mean, it's funny, it feels like anti war people, which I would count myself amongst them, have more sympathy, particularly following up. Maybe it was following Iraq towards the military or military personnel, but less association with or the military's less ability to define masculinity in the way that it did.
- [50:39]
G
Yeah, I mean you see sort of, you sort of see a brief blip after 911 of, you know, blind patriotism. You know, enrollment at military school spikes. There's many positive media depictions, but it's very fleeting. And you know, really, I would say by, by the early aughts, the military's grip on culture and on ideas around masculinity have really loosened. I mean, what is happening with Pete Hegseth today is a reassertion of an attempted reassertion of that influence. Because, you know, there were still young men like Pete Hegseth who entered the military for very specific reasons. Those being power, self aggrandizement, identity, status, all of the rest. Maybe a political career in his case. And so when that sort of like that, that long time sort of promise that the military will give you all these things didn't come to pass, he became deeply resentful and cynical and angry. I mean, maybe he should have seen it coming. But like, you know, you see this sort of arc where he spends his time after being in Iraq and Afghanistan, trying to sort of like legitimize the war, you know, through like classic neocon talking points around democracy and all of the rest. And then once that doesn't pan out and like the public just completely sours on everything, that's when he starts to turn to these really accurate arguments, not unlike the POW movement, just sort of like these revisionist ideas around what lost this war. Because of course he is completely incapable of self reflection or reckoning with the broader forces at play. And so instead Pete Hegseth, to sort of keep this fragile ego and manhood alive for himself, blames women and people of color. And that's kind of like this easy, you know, narrative that he can perpetuate. And, and then now as, as Defense Secretary, he is like hoping, I, I mean it feels, I, I, I don't know what, what his actual, I mean, motives are. There are many. But I think he's hoping that, that he can sort of try to like wrestle an older, an old school idea of what the military is back into today's orbit, maybe in hopes that that will sort of like revive the brand or sort of, you know, make the military great again or whatever. I mean, I think, I think it's probably a lost cause, you know, beyond a sort of certain segment of people. I mean, the weird thing too now is that like the Republican Party and Pete Hegseth are playing to a lot of just like guys who don't serve in the military and frankly don't want to serve because they're smart enough to understand how kind of self destructive and just like rough it can be. And so they're just sort of posing in military garb. They're working as, you know, security guards or cops. And yet they still sort of identify themselves as like protectors of the homeland. And so it's sort of morphed, you
- [54:13]
A
know, it's a lot of ice. Right?
- [54:15]
G
I mean, that's exactly, exactly. Yeah, exactly.
- [54:19]
A
The fascinating thing to me is that the Iraq war seemed to be, and we certainly got this, you know, in the wake of Vietnam. Right. I mean you would see movies where, and Rambo was one of them even, but Deer Hunter, I mean there was many vets return and they are lost and difficult. I mean, you saw this after the Korean War to some extent too, but it really like Iraq, the Iraq war really felt like where there was a mundane quality to the suffering of military personnel. And the introduction of like the sort of mainstreaming of the notion of PTSD and the idea of like advances in trauma therapies and whatnot, all cut against the image of masculinity that the military had been propagating even through like the Vietnam thing. Like Rambo is disaffected, but he's still, you know, like ultra strong and he's still going out there and they still maintain that. But in the wake of Iraq, we heard about things like traumatic brain injuries and we saw the implications of this stuff where the, the, the fallout was more sort of mundane and realistic. Like this is. People are having a very, very difficult time with their families. It's, it's causing divorce, it's breaking up homes. Children are sort of like losing their parents and you know, not just literally, but you know, in terms of emotionally. And that all sort of conspires to create the wokeness that Hegseth is, is fighting against. Yeah, I guess it's impossible to get a notion of where we go from here, but it feels like his project. I mean, it may have sticking points just in terms of like who he's getting rid of and how hard it is to sort of move an institution in any way that doesn't involve just getting rid of people as opposed to sort of like reinserting new ideals.
- [56:46]
G
Yeah, I mean, it's a really good question and I'm not sure what the future portends. I mean, I know and I've spoken, you know, to many of them, like there, there does exist this contingent of professional non politicized officers who are pretty competent, who despise Hegseth. Often it should be noted on sort of like sort of macho, masculine proving grounds. It's like, oh well, he, he didn't get his Ranger tab and like I did and I saw the shit and his deployments, you know, weren't that heavy and blah, blah, blah, but whatever. And you know, it's really hard to get a sense of where the institution stands today because it's so massive. But like, you know, he's firing, you know, two star, three star generals of color. He is, you know, gutting like sexual military sexual assault programs. He is welcoming in, I think pretty explicitly people who are angry, disaffected, harbor reactionary views. Military service is now the number one predictor of violent extremism in America January 6th was largely perpetuated by veterans. Afterwards, there was some backlash from the military officer class, but there were also more than 100 retired military officers who penned a defense of Trump in the Washington Post. I mean, you know, the fact of the matter is, is that the military, as we've said, like, it has these sort of authoritarian streaks. And so it's that things could get bad. And certainly Trump and Hegseth have been testing the sort of limits of what they can do with military power, whether it's deploying National Guard domestically. I mean, I.C.E. as you know, it has sort of emerged as this domestic militarized force. You know, I mean, like a scholar of fascism told me for the book that to really sort of cross the Rubicon and, you know, get a military under your control, under a leader's control, you sort of have to, you know, form a pedagogical project. And at places like West Point, Hegseth has engaged in a huge crackdown. Scrubbed books like Toni Morrison from the shelves of the library, fired civilian professors, fired military ethicists, etc. And unfortunately, the culture at the military is one of obedience, ultimately. And so, I mean, there were a few months ago, some of the. The vets in the Dem, vets in Congress did that video where they said, right, it's your duty to. To. To not follow an illegal order. Well, that never happens, practically. You can talk to, you know, any JAG you want, and they'll tell you that that just doesn't jive with how the military works. And even some of the men and women who've left the military who surely have very illuminating things to the say in recent months, have not spoken out. There remains a deep loyalty to this institution. And so it's difficult to get, like, a clear picture of what's going on, what might happen, and how to reform it. I mean, you know, the Pentagon can't pass an audit. There is so much murkiness here.
- [60:22]
A
Indeed. Jasper Craven. The book is God Forgives Brothers don't the Long March of Military Education in the Making of American Manhood. We'll link to that at Majority FM and in our podcast and YouTube descriptions. Thanks so much for your time today. Really appreciate it.
- [60:40]
G
Thanks a lot.
- [60:52]
A
I'm gonna get paid.
- [60:55]
D
I wasn't looking when I just got caught. You'd seen the truth in the life bar Fighting out won't make me feel any better. Yeah, I know the clock is ticking but the meds are gonna kicking and my PIL shining bright I get somewhere the choice was made for the option where you don't get paid for the road that bends before it finally breaks
- [61:34]
A
you
- [61:37]
D
I guess somehow I lost my drive between the 101 and the 5 do you know know how far the teacher takes you? Yeah, I know the clock is ticking but the man's not going to kick in and that pilot light shining bright. The month shifted into me while I shifted in an out of gear Waiting for my moment to happen I still know how much longer I can stay in a humming Got to pay to play I know somehow I got grading.