Trump and Hegseth Think You’re as Cruel as They Are
Forget ‘virtue signaling.’ We need to talk about the Trump administration’s vice signaling.
There is no more perfect embodiment of vice signaling, and its embarrassingly hollow cowardice, than Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth – an alleged serial drunkard and sexual abuser working for Donald Trump, a man found liable for sexual abuse and former friend of the world’s most infamous pedophile – posting memes about attacking boats in the middle of the ocean, and then pinning it all on a subordinate when the going gets tough.
Much hay has been made about “virtue signaling” over the past decade (often, ironically, by some of the most unvirtuous people in public life). A disorienting panic, given how much of US politics in recent years has brought unseen levels of vice. And what was sometimes hidden before is not just out in the open, but winked and nodded at daily.
In one sense, it’s refreshing for the villainry festering in the swamp to be expressed more honestly. On the other hand, they think there’s an appetite for this.
Are they right?
‘A Classic Franklin Story’
Amid the Trump administration’s illegal onslaught on what it alleges are “drug boats,” reports have unveiled that the US struck a ship in the Caribbean Sea a second time to kill two shipwrecked survivors, in order to comply with an alleged order by Hegseth to “kill everybody.”
The revelations prompted a few Republicans to support an investigation into the matter, though some members of Congress are going as far to say Hegseth may be responsible for war crimes. (That hasn’t stopped Trump from repeatedly joking about people not wanting to go fishing anymore.)
The administration’s response to the “double-tap” report was scrambled. At first, the Pentagon said, “This entire narrative is completely false.” And then, when asked about it himself, President Trump said, “I don’t know anything about it.” He later said he wouldn’t have wanted a second strike and that Hegseth said he didn’t do it.
Hours later, Hegseth responded with the scruple of a wolf in winter:
The leader of the world’s largest military force – the self-proclaimed “Secretary of War” – responded to allegations that he directed a war crime by posting an AI-generated meme of a children’s character firing a missile at a boat in the sea.
Days later, after the US surpassed 20 strikes, Andrew Kolvet, executive producer of the ‘Charlie Kirk Show’ and close friend of the late commentator, tweeted: “Every new attack aimed at Pete Hegseth makes me want another narco drug boat blown up and sent to the bottom of the ocean.”
Hours later, Hegseth responded: “Your wish is our command, Andrew. Just sunk another narco boat.”
The entire arc of the US military industrial complex – the most benevolent interpretations of its aims, the most horrific realities of it, the foolish wars, the trail of crimes, the smoke, the mirrors, and everything in between – have all led to this: The commander of the planet’s most powerful military force killing people for the sake of a tweet.
Cruelty Isn’t Just the Point
We saw the brute immorality of the Trump presidency immediately in its first iteration years ago. Then, Adam Serwer’s seminal essay argued how cruelty was the point of Trump’s MAGA movement. It was a means to bond those in the in-group on the basis of gleeful dominance of those whom Trump and his allies mock, harm, and marginalize.
Now, that dynamic has metastasized into the second Trump administration’s – and the Republican Party at-large’s – garish, pathetic performance of supposedly “based” politics online.
It’s not enough to send masked agents to round people up in the streets, or silence students who criticize Israel. They want a camera crew and dystopic fancams to document and share the carnage in social-media videos (even as artists slam Trump for using their songs in them).
It’s not enough to disappear people to shadowy prisons both here and abroad, on the flimsiest of bases. They want photo-ops in front of the prisoners.
It’s not enough to haphazardly strike small boats in the middle of the ocean. They want content.
But a disturbing aspect of this is how committed they are to the show. In years past, I recall discourses surrounding the idea of “virtue signaling,” which, generously, was criticism pointed at the act of performing decency or morality without necessarily acting in accordance with those values. (I say “generously” because some used the term as a catch-all to lazily dismiss progressives in broad strokes as unseriously committed to their purported beliefs; I still, however, think the term is useful for those it actually does apply to. The Israeli military celebrating Pride month or ExxonMobil commemorating Earth Day come to mind as easy examples.)
But we’ve come to a point when virtue signaling’s opposite – “vice signaling” – is far more prominent in its presence, and far more destructive in its practice.
Nowhere do I see a ruling government official – or anyone in their bloated, self-absorbed media apparatus – appealing to universalist values, or mutual care or respect, or anything that could be mistaken as shared virtue. (Nor do I see anyone in the ruling party even signaling to pretend to care about those things.) Everywhere, though, I see people in charge who are supposed to represent a culmination of our collective wills, and who instead are embodying only the worst possible impulses in us – and blaring it as loudly as possible.
What does it say that the ruling party relishes in cruelty not just as some sort-of half-flung effort to mobilize their base, but in having it define their every act?
Are You as Cruel as They See You?
Our collective order has supported or tolerated all manners of cruelty. Still, it’s also true that the most cruel ventures of the US government have been done at the behest of the most powerful, and at the expense of everyone else. And it’s difficult to ascribe blame to a populace subject to the restrictive imagination of a two-party political system, and an accompanied hyper-partisan, corporate-controlled media environment. But while systems can shape the structures around us, they do not define us. They push, pull, and propel us, but they do not compel us.
The ruling party in the United States is apparently counting on voters to be as soulless as its members are. As with many other issues on their watch, some of their own supporters are uncomfortable with the strikes. Many, though, are still behind the violence.
Too often, conversations about what we choose to be part of in this society collapse into partisanship. If I am to criticize one party, it can be seen as demanding you support the other. But can’t we at least have enough dignity to reject such a false choice?
If I ask you to look at masked agents separating mothers from their babies, or the government using your taxes to fund a genocide and to silence those who protest it, or the powerful’s relentless lust for greed and power and their rank indifference toward your welfare or happiness – I am not asking you to have an opinion on people I’m not talking about. I’m not asking you to become a card-carrying Democrat. I’m simply asking you to have enough self-respect to determine what you’ll allow to be done in your name.
In the current iteration of our two-party system, I am not demanding you vote for something. I’m simply asking you what you’ll allow to be done with your permission. Because, putting aside whether the opposition earns your vote, it’s a whole other thing for you to actively put your name behind the people currently in power who are counting on you to be as cruel as they think you are.
And responding to these horrors go beyond just voting every two years. Because politics and democracy mean more than that. It’s about how we relate to each other, how we see each other, what sort of society we want to be part of. Politicians aren’t the only people who can blare their morality (or lack thereof) at us. I see you and you see me. I want to care for you, and I think you do for me.
All this vice is being signaled to you, loud and clear. How will you respond?
Have any tips or information for us? You can text Prem on Signal at premthakker.35.
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Thank you for a spot on piece. I lost friends who voted for Trump the first time, as politics isn't merely policy, it's values. And Trump was always just a symptom of our values. I say with great pain and no apology: We are the shithole country.
Just a fantastic piece Prem!