Comment: Anti-'woke' crusades by Hegseth, Rubio petty, dangerous
By Andreas Kluth / Bloomberg Opinion
The actor Sean Penn has summed up the problem with Pete Hegseth, and by extension the administration of President Trump. “I’ve never before seen a Secretary of Defense so aggressively demote himself to the rank of Chief PETTY Officer,” Penn said upon hearing that the Pentagon boss has ordered the Navy to rename an oiler called the USNS Harvey Milk.
The naming of a ship (or a gulf, or anything) is often a bureaucratic gesture of forgettable symbolism. Not in this case and a slew of others that Hegseth is currently reviewing. The effort instead points to a worrisome obsession that causes division, distraction and the diversion of scarce energy from real foreign conflicts toward domestic culture wars.
Milk, whom Penn played in a screen biopic, was the first openly gay man to hold elected office in California (he was later assassinated) and had earlier been a lieutenant in the Navy during the Korean War. Homosexuality was then a crime in the military, so Milk was eventually given a Hobson’s choice: He could face a court-martial or resign with a discharge that was “other than honorable.” In 1955, Milk chose the latter option.
To show that America’s armed forces no longer waste such human talent and exclude so many patriotic Americans, the Navy in 2016 named a ship after Milk. But to Trump, who won his first presidency that year, that gesture was part of a pathology which Hegseth later called the “DEI/woke shit,” referring to norms favoring diversity, equity and inclusion.
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/comment-anti-woke-crusades-by-hegseth-rubio-petty-dangerous/
FWIW my dad was career Navy and retired at the rank of CPO. I still get Penn's dig at Hegseth.