The End of Sanity and a Beautiful Moment at Costco

Trump has trashed DEI across the entire federal government. But we are DEI, too.

"Tank Man" blocks a column of Type 59 tanks heading east on Beijing's Chang'an Boulevard (Avenue of Eternal Peace) near Tianenmen Square during the Tianenmen Square protests of 1989. This photo was taken from the sixth floor of the Beijing Hotel, about half a mile away, through a 800 mm lens at 1/30th of a second on June 5, 1989. The name and fate of the man is unknown. Source: Published by The Associated Press, photographed by Jeff Widener. Wikimedia Creative Commons Share-Alike. 4.0.

The dreadful mid-air collision of a Blackhawk helicopter and a passenger jet near Reagan Airport in Washington and the deaths of all aboard—like anything that comes into Trump’s field of vision and offers the opportunity for rage-spewing, blame-dumping hate mongering—were instantaneously used by Trump, J.D. Vance, and Pete Hegseth to rail against DEI.

Of course, what this amounts to is saying that ONLY WHITE MEN are competent and that if a person of color or a woman has a technically taxing job like air traffic controller they got the job as a DEI handout to the perennially unworthy, not because they have IQs and competence levels of which Trump, Hegseth, and Vance should be envious.

“AND NOW”—Trump seemed to be screaming—“people are dead and it’s some damned woman’s fault of some damned person of color’s fault. A white guy wouldn’t have screwed up like this.” The tacit message to women is, “Girls, go breed or clean something.” And to people of color, it’s “you have no place in this white man’s domain.”

The Craven Three ran this one right into a wall, as people are now pushing back with FACTS (the new F-word):

• Trump cut back the staff of the NTSB

• Trump instituted the DEI protocols initially

• Trump removed the safety protocols on airline safety with days of his inauguration

Now Trump and the Creepy Guys—drunks, thieves, and sexual abusers all—who, like Trump, claim to have found Jesus (yes, you heard that right)—are trying to walk back the cat at fast as they can. It won’t work entirely, but …

They wanted to dog-whistle every racist, misogynist white guy in America, and they did.

They are saying, “This is where we’re at: We want people of color back in minimum-wage jobs with no clout and no future. And we want women out of the board room, out of tech, out of science, out of medicine, out of education, and out of work if possible.” And they will do this again, even if they subsequently have to wag the dog until the poor thing’s ears flop.

Because the Manosphere got Trump elected, and he wants them to stay loyal, just like he wants the violent perps of January 6 to remain a ready militant force for the next time he wants a riot. And watch out for Trump’s next move with the military. The military are NOT supposed to be used in any police actions against U.S. citizens or anybody inside the territorial borders of the United States. Trump used a “declaration of emergency” to use the military against migrants. Funny, they’ve never been needed before. And BTW, ICE says we are supposed to expect “collateral damage” in their sieges of dangerous brown mothers and their insurrectionist brown toddlers and thieving, murdering rapist little brown infants.

So, it does well and truly suck. But get ready for 2026 elections, and in the meantime, remember:

We Are DEI

When George Floyd was murdered, I felt as if someone had blown a hold in my chest. The shock I felt had no equivalent for me, even in a life where I had buried so many friends from the Vietnam War and patched up protestors clubbed in the head and covered with blood. George Floyd died for one reason only: he was black. It wasn’t ideology, and it certainly wasn’t his fault. He was murdered because he was black and it gave some white sleaze a thrill to bully him. (P.S. I’m white, and Derek Chauvin is a bully and a sleaze.)

And over the next weeks and months, I gingerly approached black people at gas stations and at the bank and at the post office. And in every case, I apologized for not having done enough. And I meant it.

And when I went to Costco yesterday, I found a black woman in the aisle struggling with a huge bag of dog food, so I helped her, and then I asked her if I could please just tell her something.

“Sure,” she said.

And I said, “I know what Trump said in the news conference about the plane collision must have upset you and every black person who has heard about it. I know it must make you feel so unsafe. But my family and I want you to know that we hate what he said. We don’t feel that way. We think you are beautiful and bright and kind and an asset everywhere you are in this culture. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

And she burst into a brilliant smile and thanked me profusely and shook my hand. And then her kids arrived, so she gathered them up and moved on.

And I stood in the dog food aisle in Costco and burst into tears.

Some of us have been part of the Civil Rights Movement since the early 1960s—more than 60 years. We have watched gains made through immense sacrifices made by whites whose families disowned and disavowed them and black students suffering arrest and imprisonment and beatings just to sit at the soda fountain of a drug store. We stood in front of a black-and-white television set and watched the coverage of Medgar Evers’ murder—and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s murder. We watched Richard and Mildred Loving, he white and she black, fight just to be able to be married to each other. We watched women stand their ground for the right to have their own bank accounts and credit cards, to be able to own property and inherit wealth, for the right to enter contracts without having their husbands’ signatures on a house mortgage or a car loan. We watched them fight for equal pay, for entry into Ivy League colleges, to have rapists tried and convicted and not just have judges let somebody like Brock Turner off with a six-month jail sentence for raping an unconscious woman behind a dumpster because he was a Stanford swimming star.

And now we have Trump, Hegseth, and Vance, creepy racist misogynists all, telling us they can declare that DEI is dead.

Well, they’re doing a bang-up job of erasing it everywhere they can find it. But they are not God.

They are tawdry, narcissistic vile little toddler-ranters who are fascist to the core—and they are not God.

And they are not DEI.

We are DEI.

And they cannot destroy DEI if we continue to embody it—in hiring, in friendship, in religion, in education.

Let your friends who are people of color know you will be there for them. Have cards with your name and phone number and email address printed up so they can call on you if they need you. For truly, truly, they may.

All love, all light …