By Lafe Tolliver, Esq
Guest Column
If you have not heard it by now, Secretary of Defense (aka: Secretary of War) Pete Hegseth now wants all military men over the age of 30 to get tested for their testosterone levels.
Yes, you heard it right!
Pete Hegseth, who has a makeup room in his offices at the Department of Defense, wants to know if “his” soldiers are up to the task of being raging bulls and warriors and, if not, he believes that it is related to their low testosterone levels.
No science…just Petey’s belief that if he is not seeing his soldiers go through brick halls with their bare shoulders or they are unable to rip dictionaries apart with their bare hands, something is amiss with the fitness and combat readiness of the military troops.
Petey, who loves to cosplay being a John Wayne on steroids and who apparently spends a lot of time in front of his mirror grooming his hair with jars of gel and perfecting the “perfect” tanned look to show how fit he is, wants more.
He wants to yearly test his military troops (including women?) to see if they muster up to his images of they being Darth Vader and The Hulk combined.
Remember, this former part time Fox News host, is now in command over the military and he wants to materialize his daytime dreams of leading warriors into combat who are buffed with high testosterone levels.
I wonder if Petey can, by his supernatural powers, simply pass by a soldier, and using his smell test, ferret out soldiers who deficient in their fighting skills due to his preconceived notion that “something is off” about them.
Now, he wants to burden the military with additional millions of dollars in expenses to have all of those soldiers tested to see if they can run like a Jesse Owens and fight like a Bruce Lee!
Hopefully, medical science will step up to the plate and issue a denouncement of this foolishness as being a distraction from more important military issues.
Of course, then again, I am waiting to see Hegseth’s testosterone test results to see if his braying of the need for a more aggressive military man or woman meets his own performance demands found in his own blood draw.
You would also think that Hegseth would demand that the commander in chief of the Armed Services, our Dear Leader, would be the first to volunteer for this lunacy, much less the chief of staff of all of the military branches and their subordinates.
Yet, we have not heard a word from the medical community on the grave risks there is in giving out testosterone willy-nilly as Petey plans to do. No guidelines, no medical intervention, just Petey’s plan to “gin up” the military with a controlled substance.
No soldier in his or her right mind should agree to be tested like a guinea pig to satisfy the nuttiness of Pete Hegseth.
Unless a doctor approves of such hormone therapy, the risks are numerous and in the final analysis, what is the point other than to satisfy Petey that he is an Uber-Male, who in his dream state, visualizes himself as a Viking sacking and plundering Ireland and Scotland.
For anyone who is curious about testosterone and its adverse effects, check any credible medical journal or website (Mayo Clinic, for example) and find out what are the complications and dire side effects from a person undergoing such a serious medical treatment.
Hopefully when the dust settles over this latest brain dead idea from Petey, that both parties of Congress and the medical professions will be proactive and demand answers to this half-baked idea.
Until I see Petey and our Dear Leader rolling up their sleeves for the blood draw for this moronic idea, soldiers should refuse to be part of this grand experiment on personal medical grounds and if need be, sue the Department of Defense.
Contact Lafe Toliver at lafe5x@gmail.com