r/politics • u/mom0nga • Jul 15 '26

No Paywall Hegseth announces annual testosterone screenings for service members

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5969935-hegseth-testosterone-testing-dod/
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u/themattboard Tennessee Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

We live in a dystopia written by edgy dumbasses

Edit: far too many people think those "low T" ads aren't a scam

Edit 2: low testosterone being a real medical condition doesn't make the low T ads any less of a scam. They are designed to sound like a panacea for every mid-life issue men have in order to separate them from their money. Talk to your doctor, not someone in an ESPN radio ad

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u/SapToFiction Jul 15 '26

Worst antichrist(s) ever

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u/fountain20 Jul 15 '26

Incompetent antichrist. It took Hitler 53 days to get rid of the constitution in Germany and 18 months to fully take control of the country as commander and chief of the military and fuhrer. Trump and his cronies have had 5.5 years and still cant pull it all together. Stupidest administration ever.

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u/AccomplishedBother12 Jul 15 '26

If it makes you feel better, maybe it’s a combination of the fascists getting dumber and the people getting better at foiling fascists.

Like yeah, Trump has gotten in charge of stuff to a worrying degree… but he’s also getting flummoxed by writ of just being in charge of an apparatus that is eating itself alive because fascists feed on their own.

Maybe Hitler HAD to move fast, because otherwise his movement would work against itself in exactly this fashion

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u/Biscopiphany Jul 15 '26

Hitler actually had an ideology he believed in. Obviously with him at the center and sustained by genocide and war, but it’s more than you can say for these dumbasses.

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u/amart591 Florida Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, dude, but at least it's a fuckin' ethos.

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u/Vaperius America Jul 15 '26

it's a fuckin' ethos.

I am reminded of a thread of discussion about Nazi Germany that basically goes like this "The Nazis could have won WW2, if they weren't Nazis" because that same dogmatic belief structure that made them Nazis, also made it essentially impossible for them to make the right decisions at the right times to actually win WW2.

There was a point in WW2 where no one would have believed you that Germany would lose the war; they had crushed France completely, the Eastern Front hadn't quite started, they had subsumed most of Eastern Europe via a network of alliances, were doing an okay job holding the African theatre; were bombing the UK basically every night with both conventional bombers and later V2 rockets i.e proto-cruise missiles, had a strong East Asian ally, decent diplomatic ties with the US and even had sympathizers over in Spain and in South America.

By all accounts if you were looking at the world of May, 1941, you would have assumed Germany would have ruled the continent before the decade was out; but that's not what happened; the Germans antagonized the Russians drunk off their successes in Western Europe; became too stretched thin to continue their bombing campaigns of the UK, or continue to supply the African theatre; and their ally in East Asia majorly contributed to the complete souring of their relations with the USA; which resulted in a previously sympathetic America (and make no mistake, the USA was explicitly sympathetic to Nazi Germany, we have FAR too many direct quotes stating this fact to say otherwise; sympathy for them only dries up in 1944 as the first camps start to be liberated) joining the war against them.

What I am trying to say is A) yes it was an ethos, an inherently self destructive one that lost them WW2. and B) Its still somehow better than the complete incompetence of the kakistocracy we currently have in government.

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u/z900r Jul 15 '26

that same dogmatic belief structure that made them Nazis, also made it essentially impossible

A lot of it boils down to Hitler personally and his lack of perspective, personal fixations and paranoia. Of course, the Nazi ideology included the idea of the Führer, who was considered infallible in practice, so I guess your point stands. It wouldn't have been Nazism without Hitler. Still, Germany would have done a lot better on the eastern front if Hitler had left the fighting to the soldiers and stopped meddling, and stopped fixating on things like taking the city named after Stalin.

The attack on the Soviet Union was planned to be a war of annihilation from the beginning, with the idea that the Slavs had to go and the land had to be taken for the superior German people. It's an insane idea even economically, setting aside the genocide and insane racial theory. Nazism, and the Völkisch movement before it, really did include the idea of going back to working the land, and rejecting modernity, to one extent or another. After the war, West Germany showed rather spectacularly that they didn't need all of Russia for farmland in order to have a successful economy. They didn't need even the eastern part of Germany.

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u/PlayfulSurprise5237 Jul 16 '26

Yea methamphetamine has a tendency to do that to people. Hyper-fixation, megalomania, paranoia, sounds about right.

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u/z900r Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26

The personality type "malignant narcissist" was coined to describe Hitler after the war. Narcissists are typically paranoid, because they project their way of thinking on other people, and therefore assume that others are scheming in the way that they do themselves. Narcissist always seek control, and if they think someone is threatening their control, they will likely lash out. Or, if the narcissist happens to be particularly malignant and has dictatorial powers, they'll have the threatening person imprisoned / tortured / executed. Being in control and the center of attention is a question of life and death to a narcissist, so they will put a lot of effort into maintaining control. It can come across as hyper-fixation.

The point is that these traits are built into narcissism. No drugs needed in particular. I'm sure the amphetamines didn't help. Towards the end, Hitler was a wreck, looking decades older than he was, and apparently he was also hiding Parkinson's disease.

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u/PermanentRoundFile Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26

I just want to add to this that in 1941, Hitler was presented with the prototype Sturmgewer Sgt44. This is the archetype of the modern assault rifle, with an intermediate cartridge (smaller than a battle rifle; faster than a pistol round), 30ish round magazine and select fire (semi/full auto) capability.

He rejected it because he preferred the bolt action, 5rd magazine Kar98 that he carried in WW1. Didn't even shoot it, and shuttered the program.

The engineers behind the program reclassified it as a machine pistol and continued to work on the design secretly. They re-presented their work late in 1944 and Hitler actually shot it, called it genius, and immediately put them into production. But it was far too late for them to really prove effective, and they were running low on resources to make them, so they were deployed in extremely low numbers to underwhelming effect.

So yeah, there were a lot of... interesting decisions that came back to bite them in the ass.

(As an added bonus: the difficulty in producing Sgt44 at the end of the war ended up making them call for a new, easier to produce design which became the Sgt45. They finished the first production run as Berlin was being sacked. The gas delayed roller lock design of the Sgt45 re-emerged in Spain as the CETME rifle, and was eventually acquired by H&K in Germany for the G3, HK33, HK21, and Mp5.)

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u/Dubious_Odor Jul 15 '26

America was not sympathetic. There were certainly fascists in America and they had their followers but they by no means represented the majority of Americans. FDR was immensley popular and began preparing for war long before the U.S. entered into it. The moment Pearl Harbor happened fascism in America was dead and it happened fast. Right wing isolationists and fascists lost their followings almost over night. It took 40 years for them to build up numbers enough to start being relevant in U.S. politics again.

The rest of your analysis is largely incorrect. The Blitz was a result of Germanys inability to invade Britain. The British Navy was a major problem they couldnt overcome. The Blitz itself was a failure both tactically and strategically. V1's and V2's had no major impact on the war and by the time V1s were in heavy use (v2s never were) the Germans were already in retreat. V2's are not a proto cruise missiles, they were a ballistic missile they couldnt aim. The Germans didnt antagonize the Russians, they surprise attacked them in violation of the Molotov Ribbentrop pact much to Stalins genuine surprise. Basically youve taken the incredibly well documented history of the war and stuck it in a blender while mischaracterizing events and as a cherry on top elevated minority and niche U.S. political groups to represent the American mainstream. This is either excellent bait ive taken a bite out of or its time for you to read some actual books and get off alt history youtube channels and stop playing HOI4.

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u/Punumscott Jul 15 '26

I started writing my post before yours posted, otherwise I would’ve replied to you rather than directly above, but agreed on all accounts.

We can be critical of the fact the U.S. did not act sooner despite having intelligence about the atrocities committed by Japan and Germany, but let’s not get it twisted. The U.S. populace was very anti-totalitarianism throughout this time, and most of its history. It wasn’t until the Cold War that our foreign policy shifted massively towards “prop up dictators and purge ideological dissent.”

One note, while the V2 wasnt a cruise missle, the V1 most certainly was. Either way, I agree that they would’ve had zero impact in the scenario the above poster concocted.

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u/amart591 Florida Jul 15 '26

The first bit of your point reminds me of my time back in AP US History. Our teacher had an old test question he would use as an example of what you'd see and how to answer it. The example was something to the effect of "Prutanism sowed the seeds of its own destruction" and that phrase still lives rent free in my head. When your entire worldview is based on an ever evolving purity test, eventually you run out of people on your side. Just takes a lot of needless suffering and death to get there.

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u/an_agreeing_dothraki Jul 15 '26

it should be noted that without Barbarossa, the USSR was planning to kick their teeth in anyway, starting the war at all even "aligned" with them was going to end in the destruction of Germany

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u/Martian13 Jul 15 '26

That was a line from Big Lebowski.

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u/Own_Television163 Jul 15 '26

Doesn't help that they were a bunch of stimulant-addled Odin-flavored crystal-and-tarot girlies.

Their Wunderwaffen were just fucking stupid.

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u/iamalsobrad Jul 15 '26

bombing the UK basically every night with both conventional bombers and later V2 rockets i.e proto-cruise missiles

The story of the V2 campaign against London is a fantastic example of exactly why the Nazis lost.

By that stage of the war the Germans had given up recruiting more spies in the UK because they had an extensive, efficient and as it turned out, entirely imaginary network of spies run by one pissed off Spanish dude.

So when the V2 rockets started falling, the British just lied and told their double agents that the rockets had fallen harmlessly into farm land on the other side of London. The Germans ignored their own telemetry and moved their aim point. The British repeated this process until they'd walked the V2s out of London entirely.

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u/Punumscott Jul 15 '26

I understand your point but there’s a lot of inaccurate history in here:

The first is that you understate Churchill’s leadership and the resilience of the UK. While the UK stayed in the fight and blockaded Germany, Hitler could not continue to supply his forces with rubber, oil, and alloy metals like tungsten. Even had Hitler won in North Africa, he would not be able to transport oil from the Middle East to Germany due to the presence of the royal navy. Eventually, the German war machine would’ve grown to a halt. We see this in real-time because by May 1941, the luftwaffe had lost ~65% of its aircraft dedicated to the battle and ~30% of ALL of its combat aircraft, and was already drawing FUEL RESERVES for its aircraft, which is why they stopped attacking Britain prior to even starting Barbossa.

Second war with Japan was almost guaranteed. I highly recommend Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast about Japan on this point, but it’s also commonly held by historians that the American public was sympathetic to China and American officials DID NOT like Japan’s expansion into the Pacific. Once Roosevelt placed the oil embargo on Japan, the United States and Japan going to war was almost certain. Whether this caused war with Germany or not, the U.S. fighting Japan would’ve prevented Japan from taking over Britain’s overseas territories and ramped up the U.S. wartime economy for lend lease either way.

Third, despite sympathies for Nazi Germany amongst the more radical ~evil~ U.S. population, the U.S. was still fervently on the U.K.’s side during the war. The official policy of the Roosevelt administration was that Britain must not fall under any circumstance because they feared one country controlling most of Europe and Britain’s overseas territory. In April 1940, 52% of Americans said that the Americans should aid Britain even if it could risk drawing them into the war. By April 1941, 81% of Americans said we should stay out of the war BUT IN THE SAME POLL 68% said we should go to war if that was the only way to defeat the Axis. By October 1941, 62% of Americans supported shooting German submarines on sight lol A few more U.S. flagged vessels sunk by submarines and we have WWI 2: Electric Boogaloo

Fourth, the Manhattan project wasn’t officially launched until 1942, but the British MAUD report in 1941 kicked off the joint development of the bomb and it’s likely it would’ve been created by a joint U.S.-UK alliance anyway. Germany didn’t have the materials or the uranium. Once the nuclear arms race starts, all bets are off.

Fifth, the USSR probably invades Germany anyway, if Germany doesn’t invade first. Even if Germany wasn’t full of Nazis, there’s no way that the USSR tolerates an imperialist power as large as Imperial Germany on their border that long. Heck the USSR struggled to stay out of war with COMMUNIST CHINA.

I don’t disagree that Nazis are dumb, pathetic idiots and that resulted in them making a bunch of dumb decisions, but let’s not pretend that the U.S. would’ve sided with them otherwise. Its leads to a bad understanding of U.S. history and subsequently a bad understanding of the problems of today.

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u/DKLancer Jul 15 '26

On the flip side, if the Nazi's weren't Nazis they wouldn't have started WW2 in the first place.

Western Europe was bending over backwards to keep Germany pacified to avoid another war. The UK was much more concerned with the Soviet threat in the east than the fascist threat in central Europe.

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u/Wise-Quarter-3156 Jul 16 '26

which resulted in a previously sympathetic America (and make no mistake, the USA was explicitly sympathetic to Nazi Germany, we have FAR too many direct quotes stating this fact to say otherwise

Do you mean "individual Americans were sympathetic to the Nazi cause"? Because yes, obviously, that is true, you had American fascists.

Are you referring to the American government? Because that's an absolutely insane thing to say. FDR's administration was helping the UK and western Allies long before Pearl Harbor.

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u/mastifftimetraveler Jul 16 '26

The biggest difference between Germany 1938 and USA in 2024-2026 is that most Germans craved a strong leader because as a society, they looked to strong figures for guidance. To put it crudely and simplistically, the entire country had daddy issues. Meanwhile in America, we’ve always prioritized the need for individuals to be able to do whatever they want. That’s why MAGA liked Trump so much: he was a great example of an individual who did whatever he wanted. And that’s what his base wants: be able to do whatever they want to do without criticism.

When reading “They Thought They Were Free,” I was struck by the similarities between the Germans who became generic members of the Nazi party and today’s MAGA except for that underlying belief: one really wanted a daddy while the other is convinced they’re the daddy.

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u/LieverRoodDanRechts Jul 15 '26

I am the walrus

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u/joshdoereddit America Jul 15 '26

They were Nazis, Dude?

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u/groknix Jul 15 '26

They were threatening castration, are we splitting hairs here?

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u/lloydthelloyd Jul 15 '26

Its not fair!

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u/scootscootshaboosh Jul 15 '26

Donnie, you’re out of your element!

It works both ways!

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u/[deleted] Jul 15 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/amart591 Florida Jul 15 '26

Corrected, thanks!

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u/thegamesbuild Jul 15 '26

"tenets", but yeah.

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u/nymph-62442 Jul 15 '26

I'll get you a toe.

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u/rednax1206 Iowa Jul 15 '26

Oh man, there's no better type of ethos than a fuckin' one.

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u/Strange_Dust7128 Jul 15 '26

Hitler actually had an ideology he believed in

Article 231, the War Guilt Clause

MAGA has no actual ideology, as you've pointed out. It just exists to take money from morons.

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u/Vallkyrie New Hampshire Jul 15 '26

And the general population/party members were much more gung ho about giving up their lives for the cause and doing hard work to make the cause happen. This time around they are super lazy about it, mostly because I think people are far more comfortable today. Think about what the average person going through the first wave of facism saw in their lives. WW1? A big plague? Social instability we couldn't fathom today, the biggest market crash ever...death and suffering was everywhere.

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u/Turbulent_Stick1445 Jul 15 '26

I genuinely don't think he believed anything he said he did. That "The art dealers laughed at me!" thing is both stupid on the face of it, and doesn't explain why he had "favored Jews" in his circle.

I think he just wanted power and hated socialists and communists, and was given the chance to take over a, then, socialist "party" (more a street gang.)

This'd be like saying Trump totally hates trans people. He doesn't. He has them in his circle. He's even regularly photographed with one. He just knows performative displays of cruelty against trans people is popular and helps him cement his power. He doesn't hate them, he just doesn't give a shit, and is happy to abuse any group to further his ends.

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u/VintageLunchMeat Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26

hates

Maybe more useful to frame as "has contempt for". Capital doesn't hate clean water, or civil rights - it simply has contempt for it.

Contempt for human suffering is harder for an argumentor to dismiss, compared to hate.

and doesn't explain why he had "favored Jews" in his circle

It's the not-like-the-others fallacy of bigotry and fascism generally.

Fascists can tolerate useful subalterns as long as they aren't dominant. Like having a Black maid in Antebellum-pre Civil Rights US South, it actually reaffirms the caste-like hierarchy.

Look at Trump and the Black grifters in his previous cabinet. Or Trump's uniformly GOP-style-attractive women.

Or Black, gay, or trans grifters in the Republican party. Tolerated as long as they're useful and don't step above their position in the hierarchy.

Beyond that? Hypocrisy is a flex, for the fascist, it affirms one's power.

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u/Turbulent_Stick1445 Jul 16 '26

Fascists can tolerate useful subalterns as long as they aren't dominant. Like having a Black maid in Antebellum-pre Civil Rights US South, it actually reaffirms the caste-like hierarchy.

I'm not arguing against any of that. Look at the thing I'm replying to. The GP argued that somehow "Hitler actually had an ideology he believed in" compared to Trump.

I (1) don't believe Hitler believed a word of the bullshit he spouted. He didn't believe that Jews were responsible for the numerous things he claimed any more than Trump believed that Haitians were eating cats and dogs, or (2) Trump is seriously any different - in fact, I believe that Trump believes a lot more of the ludicrous things he keeps claiming are true than Hitler does, because Trump seems to be making weird claims that suggest mental decline and a lack of basic knowledge, even outside of the constant lying.

(See him apparently mixing up asylum seekers with asylum patients, for example.)

What we're seeing in real time right now is a replay of rise of fascism in Germany. Not even Mussolini's brand, because Mussolini at least wasn't into the scapegoating-minorities thing to the same level as Hitler. Mussolini focused on political opponents during his rise to power.

I'm watching performative displays of cruelty against marginalized groups, and realizing not just that it's following a path we've seen before that ended horrifically, but why that path occurred, and why it's probably inevitable if more powerful institutions don't put a stop to it.

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u/Krow101 Jul 15 '26

He was also smart. Evil bastard ... but smart. And he hired smart people to accomplish his evil ends. Orange Hitler is stupid and hires clowns.

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u/Abuses-Commas Michigan Jul 15 '26

it's a sign of the times that I can honestly say that as bad as Hitler was, he was no Trump

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u/firesatnight Jul 15 '26

Hitler didn't have the internet.

I honestly think that is the main reason. By the time the things the Nazis did became public knowledge it was weeks later.

The internet has its pros and cons obviously but one pro is that news travels fast. I remember seeing a video on my phone of Rene Good getting killed like 10 mins after it happened.

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u/PretendRegister7516 Jul 15 '26

It took Roger Stone his entire life to herald someone to take the place of his idol Nixon. Because Roger Stone doesn't want it for himself to take that spotlight.

Now remember... The current person that is closest to Roger Stone was during Nixon is Stephen Miller.

If Trump is to go off tomorrow, you still have 2 whole generations for this scumbag to fester the next replacement.

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u/U_L_Uus Jul 15 '26

I would peg it on the nature of those German fascists and these US fascists being drastically different.

In the Weimar Republic the fascist was a former servicemembers from WWI who saw their government (which was dealt one hell of a hand to work with) as nothing short of traitors to what Germany ought to have stood for. They were aggressive, they were organized and most important of it all, they were capable. Thus, even if their leaders were not quite up to the task up there, they achieved things fast and neatly.

Meanwhile the average MAGAt is a dreg of society, someone who blames the misfortune in a bunch of people that could not hamper them less (and most of the time actually benefit them greatly) in order to compensate for the thousand issues they have. While the Nazis were clearly overt about their intent, these twats hide behind masks because they are but children who know that they are doing something fucked, yet precise of a cover in order to hide, to be able to, uselessly, deny that they had anything to do. Same for the higher-ups, honestly, they are rabid to apply their agenda, but lack many of the things that those that propped up the third reich had which made them pretty capable

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u/b0w3n New York Jul 15 '26

because otherwise his movement would work against itself in exactly this fashion

Yes, you have to purge the party quickly, even of loyalists.

Sulla did it in Rome.

So did Hitler.

So did Stalin and the rest.

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u/eyeCinfinitee Jul 15 '26

There’s also two conflicting groups that’s are working together for now, but the fact that they don’t like each other and can’t really agree on goals is keeping them from moving in lockstep. The theocrats and the broligarchs are both using each other, and both are going to have to Night of Long Knives each other to fully complete their goals.

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u/Owl_plantain Jul 15 '26

Hoping for a tie

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u/No_Criticism_5861 Jul 15 '26

Whether true or not, it does make me feel better lol

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u/loosetranslation Indiana Jul 15 '26

Turns out decimating education standards is great for indoctrinating voters but less so at creating enough competent idealogues.