Partisanship Turns Brilliant Men into Morons
Walsh’s Second Law of Politics reads as follows: Partisanship turns even the most intelligent of persons into raging morons. There are no exceptions.
One of my favorite examples of this immutable fact is Stephen King. King is a brilliant human being — one of the greatest storytellers in human history. I’ve read most of his books; all are good, some are great. His memoir On Writing remains one of the most riveting and useful books I’ve encountered as an aspiring writer. His is not the life and work of a stupid man.
But have you ever read his tweets on politics? Good Lord. They’re deranged. On X (Twitter), Stephen King exhibits all of the noxious qualities he condemns in others: intolerance, intemperance, a default assumption of bad faith — and never anything resembling a rational, balanced, or objective defense of those politicians and policies he supports.
Stephen King is a brilliant man. Partisan politics has made him an imbecile.
Nothing proves my Second Law more vividly than actual politicians. There are any number of professions where a genuinely intelligent person can satisfy ambition yet serve humanity. Some choose political power instead. With predictable results.
In my estimation, the two most intelligent presidents of my lifetime have been Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon. Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar and a Yale-trained lawyer. He possessed unmatched political instincts and communication skills. He assumed office at a time when the U.S. economy was strong and real transformation was possible.
And he chose to sexually exploit a young female subordinate less than half his age — in the Oval Office. Who does that?
His presidency became so overwhelmed by scandal and obfuscation that, absent a compliant and adoring press, he might well have been driven out of public life — if not into prison.
And that was just his time as president. His record as governor was worse.
As for Nixon: what’s left to say? He was undeniably brilliant — finishing second in his Duke University law school class. Yet he either orchestrated or tolerated the burglary of his political opponents' offices during an election he went on to win by a historic landslide. And then, idiotically, he tried to cover it up.
Two of the sharpest minds ever to occupy the White House, reduced to the level of a common thug. Idiots.
Intelligence, it seems, is no defense against stupidity in the partisan political arena. But what happens when you’re already stupid?
The Rise of Pete Hegseth
Which brings us to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
Pete Hegseth is a drunk. A serial domestic abuser and philanderer. A small-time grifter. He is the Hunter Biden of the Trump Administration — only without the outsized ambition.
The examples of his stupidity are too numerous to fully explore here. A book-length treatment would be required — and those books will, no doubt, be written. For now, let’s focus on just two: Hegseth’s handling of state secrets and censorship.
Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of her email communications while Secretary of State was unconscionable and obviously illegal. Her so-called defenses were as pretextual as they were irrelevant. Her mindless defenders during the 2016 campaign were simply more evidence for the power of my Second Law.
Few were louder about Hillary’s criminality than Pete Hegseth. Here’s Hegseth on the matter:
“The fact that she wouldn’t be held accountable for this, I think, blows the mind of anyone who’s held our nation’s secrets dear. [Everyone with a Top Secret clearance] know[s] that even one hiccup causes a problem.”
Yet almost immediately upon taking office, Hegseth hiccuped all over himself. He shared classified communications and war plans — over a social media group chat that included, among others, a hostile journalist.
According to reports, he then shared much of the same information on the same unsecured platform with his wife, his personal lawyer, and God knows who else. Maybe his barber.
His rationalizations since make Hillary Clinton look forthright and honest by comparison. If Hillary belongs in jail, she and Pete Hegseth should be arguing over the top bunk.
Censorship: The Biden Legacy
Every politician, it seems, has both the incentive and the impulse to censor political opponents. But few were more aggressive in suppressing speech — speech protected by the Constitution — than Joe Biden.
The Twitter Files made this clear. Biden Administration officials repeatedly and explicitly threatened social media platforms if they failed to bend to its propaganda demands. It was gross. And its defenders, of whom there are blessedly few, offer further — if unneeded — evidence for the Second Law.
But it didn’t stop there. Biden proposed the Orwellian Disinformation Governance Board, supposedly limited to “homeland security” issues — a thin pretense for expanding government control over the speech of American citizens.
We had the Biden-led suppression of stories regarding the laptop belonging to his degenerate, drug-addled son. We had the attempted suppression of stories critical of his unconstitutional student loan “forgiveness” plan. We even had a Biden Justice Department that targeted parents who spoke up at school board meetings.
And yet — we are told — it is Trump who is the threat to democracy.
Trump’s Initial Course Correction (and His Mistake)
Speaking of Trump:
On Inauguration Day, he signed an executive order ostensibly overturning the Biden-era censorship regime. I cheered the move at the time. I have since read the order and found it well-argued and much needed.
The government — especially the federal government — must never stand between U.S. citizens and those who wish to speak, or be heard.
Biden was a disaster. Trump, at least, started out on the right foot. And then he hired Pete Hegseth.
The internet is filled with quotes from Hegseth strenuously rejecting the Biden censorship regime and championing the First Amendment.
Of course, that was before he found himself drinking from the firehose of raw political power.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Naval Academy canceled a lecture by author and self-described Stoic philosopher Ryan Holiday. Holiday has spoken at the Academy several times, all without incident. But this time, he planned to mention that the Academy had banned nearly 400 books from its library — on orders from Pete Hegseth.
To its credit, Academy leadership asked Holiday if he would remove the reference. And to his, he refused.
But what are we to make of the United States Naval Academy banning four hundred books — on the orders of that champion of the Constitution and individual rights, Pete Hegseth?
Very few politicians, when caught violating their own supposed principles, have the courage to say, “I did it because I could.” Or, “I found it thrilling.” Or, “arousing.” And let’s be clear — to them, it is arousing.
Always, their totalitarian impulses are wrapped in the language of collectivist safetyism. Or protecting "the children," or women and minorities, or safeguarding our "uniquely American Judeo-Christian values."
Hegseth justified his order to the Admirals at Annapolis as a fight against DEI — a word I suspect he routinely misspells.
But Trump’s war on DEI is qualitatively different from his executive order fighting censorship.
Obviously, fighting DEI can be a form of censorship. Most of the political DEI project is nonsense — divisive, racially regressive, and often flatly illegal under the black-letter civil rights laws. Efforts, especially in the private sector, to roll back DEI's excesses are overdue and welcome.
But there is a profound difference between preventing the ideological capture of a third grader — and banning four hundred books to shield future Naval officers from the psychotic ramblings of Ibram X. Kendi.
Is this truly how we are to make America great again?
By banning books?
At a university?
Drunk on Power
This is not just hypocrisy — that stock-in-trade of every politician. Pete Hegseth is a man who talks out of both sides of his mouth and understands none of it. He is obviously lost, rambling, probably drunk out of his mind.
And it’s not like he’s running the Department of the Interior.
I have said that this country has long needed an insurrection. All governments are rooted in theft and control. The U.S. government has lost any connection to the philosophy of limited government in which it was established.
Politicians have become mostly mouthpieces guided by the word-for-word instructions of their fundraising consultants. Federal debt, especially since Nixon overturned the Bretton Woods Accords, appears to them as free money that never needs to be repaid.
The press, always partisan, now resembles the crowd at a cockfight — with the intellect and literary skill to match.
No one dared to call it out.
Except Donald Trump.
On virtually every policy matter, Trump is not only wrong but wildly and incoherently so. His lone virtue was in calling a spade a spade, once in a while. I think whatever popularity he maintains rests upon that tender reed.
But you can’t ban books! You can’t share military plans on social media! You can’t seriously claim that it is the job of the government to protect those who will someday command an aircraft carrier from some idiot assistant professor.
If Donald Trump wants to maintain his reputation as the man who tells uncomfortable truths, there’s one thing he must do.
He must fire Pete Hegseth.