“Barf.”

I hear myself say it.

I feel myself say it.

Try saying it.

Feel yourself saying it.

It sounds like what it is describing.

“Barf” means vomiting.  Use robust American slang to expel the rotten stuff—lies, hypocrisies, pieties, vapid sentimentalities— one has had to ingest.

The fancy word for this trick of language, the word as the sound of a deed, is “onomatopoeia.”

I often said “I want to barf,” during the U.S. Senate hearings on the nomination of Pete Hegseth as Secretary of the Department of Defense on Tuesday, January 14.

“Pete”: do some men think that abbreviating their birth names makes them more masculine.  Is “Pete” less wimpy than “Peter”?  I doubt if St. Peter thought so.

Despite its vigor, “barf” is too weak a response for much of that truncated travesty of a hearing. It was a moral and political joke, given the screeching lack of qualifications of the nominee and the gravity of the questions about national defense now. The Republican senators presented Hegseth as if he were the prize winner at a major kennel show. He looked trim and fit, bragged about his morning push-ups, evaded or goofed up on serious questions, and praised the virtues of his wife, Jennifer Rauchat— in addition to her beauty. With senatorial prompting, Hegseth also proudly noted the seven children they are raising: six from their previous marriages, one born before their marriage.

This encomium of an adoring husband to his peerless wife contributed to the barfiness of the hearings. The Republicans had a problem. Their nominee for a hugely important position had, in addition to his other liabilities, a hugely messy private life. There were the two divorces, three marriages, heavy drinking, and a credible police report of sexual assault.

Hegseth’s handlers reached for a familiar sanitizer, the only too familiar, only too genderized, drama of the redemption of an imperfect man. Its roots are in Christianity, its updating in the Victorian stereotype of the good woman as the angel in the home.

In this drama, the imperfect man must admit to his imperfections, even wallow in them. However, he need not admit to all of his imperfections. The trick is to find the plausible ratio between a confession to and denial of misdeeds. Under Democratic questioning, Hegseth blamed stories of his public drunkenness on “anonymous smears.” Now, he could perform an alternate role: that of the victim.

If the imperfect man confesses to his errors, and if he woos and wins an angel in the home, he will become the man he was meant to be. She combines the virtues of the tenaciously loving mother and the gorgeously loving wife. He will be a good husband and father. Because these are modern times, his family may be blended. He will earn the respect of others, status, even power. His stable marriage will inoculate him against any more mistakes. However, because he is a man, he may slip up again. Having forgiven his past, the angelic wife has the training it takes to forgive any new transgressions, especially if he apologizes and says, “I’m really sorry, honey.”

At the Hegseth hearings that I watched, some Republican senators relished their chance to add to the performance of the role of the imperfect man who makes it and then attributes his success to a woman who forgave and saved him. The Jesus Christ and God who watch over such struggles also got their words of gratitude. 

More nastily, one senator also asked how many senators had shuffled into the Senate chamber to cast a vote while drunk, how many senators had been promiscuous, how many adulterous. He was surely alluding to one of Christ’s instructions: let anyone among you who is without sin cast the first stone. (“John,” 8-7) Yet, this Biblical reference was weaponized in order to stifle questions, not to engage in the arduous task of building a virtuous, democratic community.     

Remorse and forgiveness are indispensable values. However, genuine remorse is hard work, a psychological and often spiritual journey. An apology is mere lip service unless it partakes of this journey. Genuine forgiveness can be equally hard. The words “I forgive” demand recognizing the fullness of the harm that has been given and believing that forgiveness grafts a new growth on the one who harms and the one who bears the scars of harm.

Otherwise we are in Barf Land.