No Shave Chits are the New Enemy: Hegseth

Of all the national security concerns facing America — rising authoritarian threats, recruiting shortfalls, cyberwarfare — our Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has declared that the real enemy is… facial hair. Troops stationed in South Korea, he says, need to ditch their beards to restore discipline and professional pride.

Yes, this comes from the same man who used to boast about not washing his hands on Fox News. Now he’s the moral surgeon trying to “clean up” the force — one shave at a time. Somewhere in the Pentagon, actual professionals are wondering how grooming policies became the hill to die on.

Underneath the patriotic buzzwords, this move reeks of something else entirely. Troops with beards aren’t a threat to readiness; they’re a threat to fragile egos who confuse conformity with strength. And let’s be honest — this sudden return to “traditional standards” looks a lot less like leadership and a lot more like cultural policing.

No-shave chits exist for a reason, especially for Black servicemen who suffer from pseudofolliculitis barbae, a painful condition caused by razor burn and ingrown hairs. The military has long recognized that mandatory shaving disproportionately harms Black troops. So when the new SECDEF cracks down on beards under the banner of “anti-woke discipline,” what he’s really doing is repackaging systemic racism as a policy reform.

It’s not about combat effectiveness. It’s about control — about reasserting a certain image of what “professional” looks like in uniform. And that image, unsurprisingly, looks a lot like Pete Hegseth: white, loud, and convinced that every modern adjustment is an attack on tradition.

The irony is almost too rich. The man preaching discipline is the same one who treats policy briefings like barstool arguments and can’t seem to separate national security from his next PR stunt. Given his long-standing affection for beer-soaked bluster and showmanship, it’s hard not to see this as projection — an undisciplined man punishing others for his own lack of self-control.

If Hegseth wants to root out what’s “hurting morale,” maybe he should look past the beard line and examine what’s growing under his own watch: extremism, corruption, and a workforce exhausted by performative politics.

So no, this isn’t about neat razors and tidy uniforms. It’s about sending yet another signal to the old-guard culture warriors that “woke” has become the new enemy. But stripping away no-shave chits for medical necessity? That’s not enforcing discipline — that’s institutionalized discrimination dressed up in patriotic slogans.

If grooming standards are the new national security strategy, then the Pentagon might as well hand out razors with the next round of partisan marching orders. Because nothing says “readiness” like a clean chin and a dirty conscience.