Recently, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has argued that during the Biden years, Army basic training became too soft and lost some of its hardcore edge. He wants basic training to toughen up. Which brings us to a phenomenon in the Army I’ll call the Hardcore Paradox: Soldiers enjoy comfort and dislike pain, stress, and suffering, but they like to be able to honestly say they’ve endured the hardcore.

Perhaps nowhere in the military is the paradox so prevalent as basic training. Trainees often talk enviously about how much harder basic training was when their fathers or grandfathers endured it. When I was at basic in 1999, an officer spoke with a handful of us trainees about how he hoped to have air conditioning installed in the barracks. Air conditioning would have been amazing in the hot, humid Missouri summer, but all of us protested, sweat rolling down our backs, “Oh, no, sir. We’re fine without it!” The hardcore paradox.