Pete Hegseth’s staff damaged a priceless globe associated with Dwight D. Eisenhower after bypassing trained curators, trying to move it themselves, dropping it, and leaving a gash near Antarctica. The Army acknowledged the damage occurred during an attempted move, and reports indicate the Defense Secretary’s office had been seeking the globe.
The broken globe is more than a broken object. It symbolizes a careless attitude that has become all too common in American public life. Trump and his ilk of low-IQ mouth-breathers believe that expertise is for suckers. Why let professionals do a job when a bunch of Joes can do it for a few beers after work?
The ‘scholars’ who worked around Hegseth seemingly didn’t realize the globe wasn’t a trinket ordered from an online gift shop. This was an artifact tied to one of the most consequential military leaders in American history, a man who helped direct the Allied effort that liberated Europe from fascism. Ironic, since Hegseth is striving to resurrect fascism in America. The globe survived World War II, decades inside the Pentagon, and generations of military stewardship. Then it encountered the modern cult of Trump and Company’s arrogance.
The Pentagon has trained curators precisely because priceless historical artifacts cannot be treated like office furniture. Yet somewhere in the chain of command, somebody apparently decided expertise was optional. The result was entirely predictable. The globe fell. History paid the price.
The saddest part is that this story feels perfectly in character for the Trump sycophants with a MAGA mentality. Repeatedly, with actual artifacts or the values and ideals of the nation, these walking absurdities in Trump’s government defy any working knowledge of conservatism. Real conservatism should include protecting the nation’s treasures. Real respect for military history requires more than posing beneath generals’ portraits and quoting famous battles. It means understanding that artifacts are not props. Treat them with RESPECT.
Eisenhower represented a generation that understood stewardship. Men and women sacrificed and built things intended to outlast them. Today, Hegseth, a former walking drunk on Fox News, seems determined to damage not only our national character but artifacts from our history, too. He and the cheap chaff (not a typo) around him think professional curators are overrated and unnecessary, and that history exists only to flatter the ego of whoever occupies the office.
The globe survived the Second World War. It could not survive the idiots trying to move it down the hallway.
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