The Attitude with Arnie Arnesen
opening thoughts:producers: Dave Scott and Stephanie CollinsChloé LaCasse (the best of the attitude)podcasts available at https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/attitude-with-arnie-arnesen/id1634055179opening thought:The Hegseth ethos
Dec 6There is no “Secretary of War” or “War Department” in the United States of America under US law.
Each time a news organization uses Pete Hegseth’s concocted title, and submits to his “War Department” fantasy, it is an act of corruption.
It is a direct and specific choice that immolates journalistic ethics by embracing fantasy at the demand of power.
Journalism confronts power.
Journalism doesn’t obey it, heed it, submit to it, appease it, or accept the premise that make-believe is real if the leader believes it so, regardless of reality....Perhaps one reason that Pete Hegseth fetishizes the “War Department” is that, when it existed, it commanded a segregated force. The Defense Department has always commanded a desegregated force.Powerful men have a long tradition of sending powerless young men to die in unworthy causes in far away lands.
There should be an extremely low tolerance for such men in 2025 America, but they are not only tolerated, but indulged.
The hypocrisy of the US Congress on the matter of Pete “Kill them all!” Hegseth is bottomless and dangerous. Their faithlessness to the American soldier, sailor, airmen and marine is obscene.
The man who jumped up on a table screaming, “Kill all Muslims!” was exactly who the Congress was warned about. Yet, the warnings were unheeded because the Congress cared more about pleasing Trump than the institutions of the US Army, Navy, and Marine Corps that predate the independence of the United States. They cared more about sating a stirred-up Fox News mob than a 19-year-old private.
Shameful doesn’t begin to describe it.
It is a dereliction of duty, and the most profound type of moral betrayal.
The 119th MAGA Congress is an abomination, led by a religious nutter and weakling who is neither bright, decent, funny, nor wise.
In other words, he is a perfect MAGA puppet who thinks he is a ventriloquist. In truth, the hand inserted into his most sacred space, the one he hides his bespectacled head within, is smeared with orange hand paint.
Faithless, treacherous and disloyal are the Hegseth ethos. They are a perfect mirror of the only reflection of equal rottenness in America: the crazed MAGA Congress, filled from bottom to top with corrupt loons, belligerent liars, sexual deviants, conspiracists, fraudsters, women beaters, and insider traders, who worship Trump together.
Pete Hegseth is the leader of a military that is unready and unprepared to fight a necessary war. He is a performance artist, a late-stage mid-tier Fox News star who is a herald of disaster to a population filled with indifference. It is about to find out the hard way how much damage a small group of evil men and women can do to a nation.
part one:The Beautiful Game Is Getting Ugly
Soccer fans braved a winter storm to demand FIFA President Gianni Infantino reject Trump’s white supremacy, using the slogan ‘No ICE in Our Cup.’ https://prospect.org/2025/12/06/beautiful-game-is-getting-ugly-fifa-protest/Meet the Connectors
Middlemen, our economy’s most shadowy characters, sit in between buyers and sellers and get rich in the process. It can even be a matter of life or death. https://prospect.org/2025/12/05/meet-the-connectors-middlemen/Whitney Curry Wimbish is a staff writer at The American Prospect and can be reached at wwim...@prospect.org. She previously worked in the Financial Times newsletter division for 17 years and before that was a reporter at The Cambodia Daily in Phnom Penh, and the Herald News in New Jersey.Emma Janssen is a writing fellow at The American Prospect.part two:
The Supreme Court Is About to Hear a Case That Could Rewrite Internet AccessMichael P. Goodyear is an acting assistant professor at New York University School of Law. His research analyzes the potential of intellectual property law to spark and stymie technological and cultural change, especially as it relates to underrepresented populations.Court seems dubious of billion-dollar judgment for copyright infringement. https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/12/court-seems-dubious-of-billion-dollar-judgment-for-copyright-infringement/