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Resegregation is the Point, Part Two [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-03-19

Yeah, more politics. What if I promised you a book review tomorrow?

The Trump administration appears to be run by a desire to shove anyone not a white, straight male out of society. Not entirely, of course. A lot of the DOGE actions are merely corrupt to protect Musk or the result of an actual belief that the Federal government does too much and should focus on its real job: tax cuts for the wealthiest.

(Slight aside: the line above is jokey, but the problem with DOGE in concept, aside from its recklessness and incompetence, is not that people want to hollow out the federal government. That is a position that democratic societies can debate. The problem is that they are doing so illegally — they have not made the case to the public and had these departments legally restructured via Congress. Instead, they are unilaterally ignoring laws passed by Congress and dismantling departments on their own orders. That matters. A bad idea while approved by the people’s representatives through normal means may still be a bad idea but it is democratically legitimate. A good idea done thorough the orders of the President against the law is a step toward everyone losing the protection of the law. Now back to the segregation.)

But outside of DOGE, much of what the administration does seems to be driven by a desire to never have to look at a successful non-white, non-male person ever again. I have talked about this before, but they continue to act as if everything earned by someone who is not. white, straight man is on its face illegitimate. And they certainly don’t want anyone to see any evidence otherwise.

Take Charles Calvin Rogers. The man won the Congressional Medal of Honor after being wounded three times while defending his position in Vietnam. First, they took his page down. Then they put it back up so that the URI read “deimedalofhonor”. The racism is staggering here. What is the argument supposed to be? That he’s black, so the wounds must have been self-inflicted? That the Vietcong respected DEI so weren’t really trying to hurt him since he was Black? No — the only reason is to soothe the feelings of whiter, lessor men who never displayed this man’s courage by hiding the fact that African American soldiers have been heroes since there has been a country to be a hero for.

Or take St. Patrick’s Day. How can a drunken celebration of hating on snakes (that’s what it’s about, right? I am neither Irish nor an alcoholic, so I am taking a bit of an educated guess here. And for the record — I approve. Snakes suck.). The new Secretary of Defense, Hegseth, banned all cultural awareness events, things like Black History Month, across the military. Well, almost all. he left St. Patrick’s Day alone. Why? Because the Irish are now considered White (fun historical fact: that was not always true. Racism is a many splendored thing.) and Hegseth wants to make it abundantly clear that White people are more deserving of celebration than Black people.

Or take the Navajo Code Talkers. The Code Talkers were sued by the US as an unbreakable code since basically no one outside the Navajo nation spoke the language. They were often the first onto the battlefield and the last to leave, and we quite literally do not win the war in the Pacific without them. Go read a real history of these people, by the way, they were as a group remarkable people and my description does nothing close to justice to their collective bravery and dedication. But their story has been removed from military websites, often with a broken URI replacing with, again, the letters DEI inserted into them. Again, the argument that these people were somehow undeserving of their accolades can only be driven by racism, only by the concept that it is impossible for non-whites to be smart, brave, resourceful, heroes.

The Trump Administration want sot shove non-white males out of society, and they are starting by trying to pretend that non-white males are not worthy of their recognition. I have known a lot of racists in my time. I am a “normal” looking white guy who codes as extremely white. Hockey is my favorite sport; I like mayonnaise unironically; I listen to show tuns on purpose by choice; I think punk is the best for of music even though I was too young to have experienced it; rap reminds me largely of a bad poetry slam. If I were any whiter, they would make me a member of the House GOP caucus whether I wanted to be or not. And a surprising number of racists assume that every white man they see believes the same nonsense they do. Almost inevitably, the person spouting the nonsense is deeply flawed in some fashion. The same applies to this Administration.

Trump has been a loser almost his entire life. Musk’s empire is largely based on buying other people’s work, PR, and government subsidies. Hegseth, even if you don’t believe the sexual harassment and assault accusations, is a known drunk and failed at running the only organization he had ever been allowed to operate. It appears to infuriate these people that men and woman they see as inferior by birth have greater accomplishments than they could ever hope to achieve. And so, they move to eliminate their history, create an ad-hoc Ministry of White Truth to scrub all white, non-straight males from the official record. Big Brother in a pointy, white hood.

I don’t think it will work. Oh, it will sooth their tiny, bruised egos and the tiny, bruised egos of their white nationalist followers. But the more they try and erase people, the more people notice. And the more obvious their real aims become. This is too big a country, still too free a country, for them to be able to erase the real history. They might succeed, given enough time — after all the Dunning School warped our understanding of the Civil War for decades, but these are losers at heart. They may be able to break things, like any toddler can, but if enough people trumpet the truth? Well, these are not men who know how to get anything done, much less a years long long campaign to change history.

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