The Weakest Men: Fascism, War, and the Illusion of Strength

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All my grandfather wanted to do was lose himself in baseball. When I would sit at the kitchen table with him as he drank his coffee he would regale me with stories about the old timers. Players like Rogers Hornsby, Lou Gehrig, and Mel Ott. These were the hours before he would sit on the edge of his bed and listen to the St. Louis Cardinals over the radio, his hands clasped, his eye twitching as he grinned and absorbed every word of the play-by-play. He thought it was a beautiful game. Simplistic and surprising. Calming and thrilling. On the few occasions he would talk about his experience in the war, he would sometimes remark that things like baseball were “the reasons I went over there.”

There was Europe. Occupied France, to be more specific. He said it was beautiful but terrifying. He joined the Army to fight Nazis and Fascists. He came home with a purple heart. The twitch in his eye earned from a slice of white-hot shrapnel. His stories were few but they were vivid. Strategies for destroying Panzer tanks. How to tell the direction of sniper fire. How him and his buddies would spend their time between battles and attacks reminiscing together. Always about baseball.

Grandpa didn’t want to go to war. It would have suited him just fine had the Nazis and Fascists never gotten into power and set the world on the path to war. Looking back, his life didn’t seem much of his own choosing. He grew up in the smallest Indiana town and had to take care of his family from the youngest age. Then, the Depression turned the country upside down. In a precursor to war, he was sent to the Pacific Northwest to work for the Civilian Conservation Corps, a mobilization enacted to provide financial relief to the poor while simultaneously curbing fascist energies.

When the war was over, when he returned home, he listened to baseball. He spent the rest of his life grateful the fighting was over. In quiet moments, apropos of nothing, he would say to no one in particular that he hoped all of the wars were behind us.

Nestled in that perspective as a child, it’s easy to believe that that’s the common feeling. And, maybe it is, at least culturally. One of load-bearing walls of the American mythology is the story of the benevolent hegemony, the idea that we are a people of noble intent who fight only when necessary and only for the greater good. It is, and has always been, an illusion that eases our discomfort with how the United States of America was founded and how we have behaved. That story sands the hard edges, eliminates how America inspired the Nazis and struggled with its own fascistic energies. It discards what we did after the war, how the powerful refused to demobilize and instead transformed the U.S. into a war-based, aggressive juggernaut. How we tried to control the world. Overthrew governments. Rigged elections. Sowed chaos for economic and political advantage. How the entire thrust of the American Empire was built on warring and oppression.

All of this is to say, I am not surprised we arrived here. Watching Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump announce this stupid change of the Department of Defense to the Department of War is just making subtext text. The idea that the U.S. was ever benevolent and ever dedicated solely to defense was absurd. It helps crystalize the truth as Hegseth embarrassingly promises “the War Department is going to fight decisively…fight to win, not not to lose, we’re going to go on offense and not just defense, maximum lethality not tepid legality, violent effect, not politically correct. We’re going to raise up warriors, not just defenders.”

Stupid. And pathetic.

The root of fascism is weakness and insecurity. We have been told that aggression is strength, but that has always been a lie. Cults of violence and war are cults of frailty. With the Trump Administration, we are seeing this play out day-by-day. These are men who cannot stop imagining American cities on fire while they are placid. Who cannot so much as see a restaurant logo change without crying and gnashing their teeth. Their violence is cover. The bravado is an act. The chauvenism a disguise.

World War II’s lessons, which my grandpa learned, was the importance of fighting a war when you must and never fighting a war when it isn’t necessary. The Nazis and the Fascists were also pathetic men. Failures and cowards. They hated themselves and projected their hatred onto the rest of the world, seeing conspiracy and shadowy enemies around every corner. They were seeing themselves and it was unbearable. In that state, military build up and attacking the rest of humanity was the only option.

But that insecurity wasn’t theirs alone. It is part of the human condition and America has suffered it since its founding. Those who came here and relentlessly attacked the indigenous population were similarly terrified and pathetic. From them sprung a culture of terror that enslaved others, lashed out, cultivated patriarchal and oppressive systems, and that has been our trajectory all along, which is why so many Americans related to the Nazis and the Fascists and every other authoritarian, from the beginning to now. We have fought this battle against American authoritarianism since there was an America. Trump is only the latest demagogue to bring it to the forefront.

Watching the Trump Administration operate is a window into this horrid mindset. From the beginning they have demonized vulnerable populations. They have twisted the law to hurt others and relish in that pain. They threatened everyone from Canada to Greenland to Mexico. They have bombed Iran, destroyed boats outside Venezuela, enabled genocide. Theirs is a reckless and stupid cruelty.

The good news here is that these actions and worldviews are self-destructive. There is a reason that periods of authoritarian control have given ways to democratic movements and peace. People who are well don’t want to fight wars. They don’t want endless chaos and violence. They want peace and quiet and dignity. These bursts are alarming and destabilizing, exhausting for sure, but they cannot be sustained. The hatred and self-loathing is too much. It burns too hot and burns out.

That doesn’t mean it couldn’t hurt us in the process. It already has. We do not deserve this madness or this pain and this period of time, itself an extension of what we have been feeling our entire lives, has been too much. But there is something hopeful in the ugliness that has festered under the surface for so long coming into full view. These stunts are cringe-inducing, but they are so informative. Actors like Trump and Hegseth are not talented or confident enough to sell this nonsense. The truth rings out like a bell: these men are weak and their ideology is pathetic.

Those who have gone and fought often know the truth. War isn’t a game. War isn’t posturing. It is hell and it should be saved for only the most pressing of moments. The specter of Nazism or Fascism spreading across the world was a reason to fight. And now, as we live on the razor’s edge and the decline of the American Empire inspires the rise of China, Russia, and their developing authoritarian alliance, we would do well to remember that these abuses and these actions are not only unnecessary, they are also offensive and repulsive. We live in dangerous times and this nonsense only makes it all the more dangerous.

My grandpa was the most amazing man I ever met. He wasn’t well-read. He was a man of his times. But he survived the horrors of war and came back with an incredible realization. What mattered the most wasn’t war, it was the time between wars. The quiet moments that needed valued and held as tightly as possible. It was the hiss of the radio as the batter waited on the pitch. The rustle of a crowd of people living their lives.

Wars are fought to not fight wars.

Wars aren’t fought to die. They’re fought to live.