Rash: Division is driving the government shutdown — and nearly everything else

Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes a mix of commentary online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

•••

At midnight on Tuesday, the federal government shut down.

But the national political shutdown came much earlier.

At the root of each dynamic is division, which was on display at an event just hours before the shutdown deadline at an unprecedented assembly of senior military leaders.

The Pentagon had become the “woke” department, Pete Hegseth, a Forest Lake native, told top admirals and generals, as the secretary of defense — or “war,” as President Donald Trump recently decreed — insisted on instilling what the administration calls a “warrior ethos.”

“We will not be politically correct,” Hegseth said, soon proving it by excoriating inclusive policies. Previous proclamations that “our diversity is our strength,” the secretary said, were “an insane fallacy.”

O’Hanlon pointed to a post in which he wrote that “While there may be areas where [Hegseth], as a former soldier himself, can ask tough questions and change some policies for the better, the overall fighting spirit and capability of the U.S. Armed Forces have not suffered due to a purported pursuit of political correctness or diversity for diversity’s sake. Hegseth’s first instinct should be to follow the Hippocratic oath and do no harm to a system and an institution that remain excellent.”

Ronald Krebs, a University of Minnesota professor of political science who studies international conflict and security, agrees on that excellence, and said that at times Hegseth acknowledged it. But, Krebs said, there was “a fundamental contradiction.” Hegseth “suggested that the admirals and generals located in front of him represented the finest that America has to offer. Simultaneously, he is also suggesting that the American military is fundamentally broken and that an entire generation of generals and admirals had been mis-socialized to believe in the virtues of diversity.” Both Hegseth and Trump “tried to have it both ways.”

Trump tried to have it both ways on America’s adversaries too, with scant mention of the threats from abroad in favor of a focus on urban America, which he horrifyingly told Hegseth could be a “training grounds” for the military.

“That’s a war, too,” Trump said. “It’s a war from within.”

The political battle over the budget channeled the same challenging language, and not just from Trump and Republican lawmakers, who like their Democratic counterparts seek to assign blame and thus apply pressure. Multiple federal agencies, which like the military itself generally stay apolitical, used unusually divisive verbiage like “radical left” or “radical liberals” in assigning blame for a “Democrat-imposed” shutdown.

Trump’s response, however, was not gentle but juvenile, posting a meme video in which Jefferies, who is Black, is characterized with a cartoon sombrero and exaggerated handlebar mustache. After Jeffries called it “bigotry” online and a “disgusting video” in an interview, Trump doubled down, posting another mocking meme, this time with four faux mariachi singers with Trump’s face playing music behind him. Responding to the AI image, Jeffries posted a photo of Trump smiling alongside Jeffrey Epstein, writing: “This is real.”

Trump’s taunts at such a taut time didn’t stop there: He also posted pictures from the unproductive meeting that had hats emblazoned with “Trump 2028,” suggesting an unconstitutional third term. Overall, Jeffries’ post and the president’s provocations belie the consequence of congressional and executive-branch gridlock. The myriad issues at stake — especially access to and the cost of health care, which congressional Democrats have elevated as their key issue — are serious, as is the cost of the shutdown, which just adds to an already unsustainable national debt.

And just as those citizens in cities targeted by Trump aren’t the “enemy from within,” neither are federal workers; rather, they’re our fellow Americans working for the country, usually at lower wages than private-sector jobs. But thousands may be furloughed or fired as the administration seizes the opportunity to gut the government further, all the while payroll-processor ADP reports that 32,000 jobs were lost last month. (The official employment report isn’t issued during the shutdown.) The federal payroll includes about 20,000 Minnesotans and an even larger cohort of contractors, most with mortgages, families and dreams.

As for the force Trump and Hegseth focused on, O’Hanlon said that shutdowns generally don’t affect operations or training but can “affect paychecks and therefore can erode morale and reduce propensity/proclivity to re-enlist or to be recruited in the first place.”

It can also affect morale of everyday Americans. And morale on the home front was a force multiplier far more important than the military being called the “Department of War,” which Trump has alluded to in explaining the name change.