Trump And Hegseth's Racist, Misogynistic, And Homophobic View For Our Military

Pete Hegseth has said he wants to improve our military by making it a merit-only organization. But his actions show otherwise. 

He has taking action to drive transgendered people out of the military - regardless of whether they are doing a good job or not (merit be damned).

But he's not stopping there. He's also making it clear that no members of the LGBTQ community are welcome. He has ordered the Navy to rename a ship - the USNS Harvey Milk (a fleet replenishment oiler).

This makes no real sense. Harvey Milk was a great American who made a mark on our culture as the first openly gay person to hold elected office. It does, however, send a message to LGBTQ soldiers - you are not welcome in the U.S. military (regardless of merit or job performance). 

He's not stopping there. On his list of ships to be renamed are ships named after Thurgood Marshall, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Harriet Tubman, Dolores Huerta, Lucy Stone, Cesar Chavez, and Medgar Evers - all American heroes in their own right. Why? Because none of them are white males.

He's making it clear that no one is welcome in the military unless they are white, male, heterosexual, and a MAGA-lover. 

And this is OK with Trump, who is also trying to rewrite and whitewash American history.

When Trump took office, and before Hegseth was named Secretary of defense, the United States had the most effective and most powerful military in the world. One reason was the diversity it embraced. Trump and Hegseth's racist, misogynistic, and homophobic views are destroying that.

We can only hope that too much damage will not be done to to our military before both can be replaced. Our national defense is at stake.

Most Americans Say Diversity Enriches Our Culture Instead Of Threatening It

The chart above reflects the results of the CNN / SSRS Poll -- done between May 5th and 26th of a nationwide sample of 2,539 adults, with a 2.7 point margin of error. 

Most See Difference Between Parties, Want Gov. To Do More, Support Diversity, & Worry About Democracy

 

The charts above are from the CNN / SSRS Poll -- done between May 5th and 26th of a nationwide sample of2,539 adults, with a 2.7 point margin of error.

Public Overwhelmingly Says Diversity Make The U.S. Stronger

 

This chart reflects the results of the Marist Poll -- done between January 29th and February 1st of a nationwide sample of 1,582 adults (including 1,441 registered voters). The margin of error for adults is 3.4 points, and for registered voters is 3.6 points.

13 Presidential Centers (Both Rep. & Dem.) Call For Respect For Rule Of Law And For Diversity Of Beliefs

 

U.S. Congress Grows In Racial/Ethnic Diversity

 

From the Pew Research Center.

PRRI Poll Shows The Picture Of A Divided Country

These charts are from a Public Religion Research Institute Poll -- done between March 11th and 30th of a nationwide sample of 5,042 adults, with a 1.6 point margin of error. It shows the social groups of people in the United States. Generally, even though we live in a diverse nation, most people tend to socialize only with those in their own racial, religious, and political groups.

Diversity Is Increasing In Every U.S. State

 The charts above, using Census Bureau numbers, are from usafacts.org. They show that diversity is increasing in all of the states.

The U.S. Is Much More Diverse And That Scares Republicans

The Census Bureau has finally released it 2020 report, and it's a report that has to be scaring Republicans. It showed that the white (non-hispanic) portion of the population dropped in all fifty states. And for the first time, the percentage of whites in the population dropped below the 60% mark. Whites now make up only 57.8% of the population. 

The population grew by 7.4% -- the lowest since the Great Depression. And non of that growth was among whites. Non-white minorities made up all of the growth of the country.

Predictions are that in another 20-30 years, whites will be less than 50% of the population.

If you wondered why Republicans are trying to suppress voting (especially among minorities), this can give you a clue. They want to maintain white superiority in the government, because the policies they pursue advantage whites over everyone else.

Seeing the demographic change that is happening (and is unstoppable), the Republicans had a choice -- they could change their policies to be more inclusive of minorities, or they could try to make it much harder for those minorities to vote. They chose the latter.

The GOP leaders really had no choice. After letting the racists and white supremacists into the party, they lost control over them. Now the racists make up too large a share of the party, and they dictate the whites-only policies of the party.

Voter suppression is a last-ditch effort, and it's doomed to fail in the long run. But the racists controlling the GOP are not very bright people. They actually think they can preserve white privilege in our society. They are wrong.

Trump's View Of Suburban America Is Out-Of-Date

Donald Trump is doing well in rural areas of the country, and doing badly in urban areas. The election will be decided by how suburban voters go.

Trump knows that he is in trouble in the suburbs. The 2018 election, and many recent polls, show the suburbs have turned away from him (and the Republican Party that has supported him).

Trump has decided that he can win suburban voters back by trying to scare them. He has told them that he will not allow low-income housing and apartments to come to those suburbs. He is trying to scare suburbanites by telling them he will keep minorities away from them.

There's a problem with that approach though. It supposes that the suburbs are White bastions. That may have been true back in the 1960's, but not anymore. Suburbs now have a diverse population, and are becoming more diverse all the time. If Trump didn't live in his bubble surrounded only by the rich, he would have known that.

Here is how David Byler, in The Washington Post, describes the flaws in Trump's suburban strategy:

Give President Trump this much: He has finally realized that the 2020 election will be lost and won in the suburbs. The question is whether his realization comes too late.

In recent weeks, Trump claimed that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden wants to “abolish the suburbs,” tweeted that he would preserve the American Dream for “Suburban Housewives of America” and bragged that his repeal of Obama-era housing regulations intended to prevent segregation would prevent suburbanites from being “bothered or financially hurt by having low income housing built in your neighborhood.”

It’s another step to stoke racial anxiety, this time among voters who moved leftward in the 2018 midterms and will be crucial in November. Other Republicans have tried it in cycles past. But the scare-the-suburbs tactic has flaws in 2020.

First, demographics. These communities are no longer all-White bastions where fathers work and mothers stay home with the children. These neighborhoods are racially diverse: According to a 2018 study, only 68 percent of suburbanites were White, 14 percent were Hispanic and 11 percent were Black. And no matter where they live, Pew Research Center found that the share of mothers who stay home with children declined from 49 percent in 1967 to 27 percent in 2016. The audience Trump believes he’s targeting — White stay-at-home suburban moms — may be smaller than he thinks.

Playing the race card is more likely to backfire now than in any time in a generation. In 2019, the libertarian Cato Institute found that 52 percent of Americans who live in the suburbs favor “building more houses, condos and apartments” in their community while 46 percent oppose the idea. According to YouGov, 50 percent of suburbanites think Biden would be better at handling race relations than Trump, and only 28 percent prefer Trump to Biden. And though it’s too early to tell whether this is a fad or a permanent trend, some suburbs may move left as city-dwellers, some of whom fear disease, have fled urban covid-19 hotspots.

Finally, Trump’s suburban pitch is off-key in an election dominated by the coronavirus. According to Gallup’s long-running “Most Important Problem” survey, concern about economic issues is at an all-time low, despite the economic impact of the pandemic. As of August, a 35 percent plurality thought that “coronavirus/diseases” was the most important problem facing the country, 22 percent believed it to be “the government/poor leadership,” and 10 percent named “race relations/racism” as most pressing. With voting set to begin in a few weeks, Trump’s handling of the virus and the broader recession are more important to voters than the specifics of housing policy.

It’s understandable that Trump would want to shift the narrative away from the virus — less than 40 percent of Americans approve of how Trump has handled the pandemic. And it makes sense to target the suburbs. Voters there make up roughly half of the electorate, and many still remember pulling the lever for tax-cutting Republicans since 2000. Trump needs votes and he needs them quickly, so he is playing on suburban voters’ basest fears to win back former Republicans and overcome Biden’s strength in cities.

But Trump may discover that, with kids going back to schools and colleges, voters in the suburbs have far too many other fears to worry about the homogeneity of their neighborhoods.

Most Americans Like Diversity (And That's Bad For Trump)

The charts above reflects the results of the latest Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between August 23rd and 25th of a national sample of 1,244 registered voters, with a 3.6 point margin of error.

The United States has always been a nation of diverse colors, ethnicities, and religions. It hasn't always treated the non-whites and non-christians as equals, but they have always been here. And the nations is becoming more diverse all the time.

That no longer bothers a majority of Americans. About 51% say diversity makes the country a better place to live, while only 11% say it makes it worse. And 76% say it is at least somewhat important for a political party to promote diversity, while only 24% say it is not.

This is not good for Trump, because most Americans see him as a racist and a divider. And it has become apparent that Trump wants to appeal to only whites, and suppress the votes of minorities (of color, ethnicity, and religion). I don't think that's going to work this time. Too many Americans are tired of the racial divisions in this country, which Trump is promoting. They want a better country -- not a divided one.

Most see the Democratic Party as the party most likely to promote diversity. About 54% say the Democrats are excellent or fairly good at that, while only 35% say they are not. The Republican Party is not trusted on diversity. Only 41% say they are good at promoting diversity, while 50% say they are not.

At the Republican convention, Trump and the Republicans tried to scare whites by talking about "lawless protests". It was a move to justify their own divisive politics. I don't think it will work. I think most voters will reject the racist and bigoted politics of Trump and the GOP next November.

116th Congress Is The 5th In A Row With Increased Diversity

These charts are from the Pew Research Center. The top chart shows some good news. For the fifth Congress in a row, Congress has become more ethnically diverse. The 116th Congress is the most diverse Congress we have had in this country. That means the Congress looks more like the actual make-up of the country's population than ever before.

But there's also a bit of bad news. Whites still make up more of the 116th Congress (78%) than their percentage of the U.S. population (61%).

Record Number Of Women (Mostly Democrats) In House

These photos are from Facebook. They show the Democrats (top photo) and Republicans (bottom photo) being sworn in as members of the 116th Congress in the House of Representatives. There is a striking difference in the photos. The Democrats show a remarkable diversity -- and represent the diversity that makes this country great. The Republicans are mainly just old white men.

One of the things that's great about the new House is the record number of women now serving (over 100). That's not enough and we still need that number to be much higher (like about 200 or more), but it is a big improvement.

Here's how Elise Viebeck describes the new House for The Washington Post:

Women lawmakers had to wait until 2011 to get a restroom off the floor of the House.

On Thursday for the first time, there was a line to get in.

The opening day of the 116th Congress was heavy with symbolism underscoring women’s historic gains in power as Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) retook the speaker’s gavel and more than 100 women were sworn in on the floor of the House.

Beneath the portraits of male speakers past, history seemed to be changing.

Dozens of newly elected women queued to receive their member pins. Husbands affixed those pins to their wives’ lapels. They held tote bags, corralled relatives and quieted children.

The day served as a powerful reminder of the shifting gender dynamics of the House as Democrats ascend to power. When Pelosi arrived on Capitol Hill in 1987, there were 23 female members. As of Thursday, there are 102, nearly 90 percent of whom are Democrats. . . .

Pelosi underscored these hopes in her opening speech to the House as speaker, noting that her election comes amid the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage. . . .

The difference between the Democratic and Republican caucuses was striking as members assembled midday on the House floor.

To the left of the dais — the Democratic side — the typical sea of men’s suit jackets was balanced by pops of green, blue and white worn by women. Bald heads alternated with bobbed haircuts. Scanning the rows, the record number of women and lawmakers of Hispanic, Asian and African American heritage who will serve this term was clear.

To the right of the dais — the Republican side — older white men occupied nearly every seat. Visually, granddaughters provided most of the contrast.

Democrats Think Republicans Are Racist (& They're Right)

This chart is from an Axios / SurveyMonkey Poll that was done between October 30th and November 2nd of a national sample of 3,215 adults, with a 3 point margin of error.

It shows that a substantial majority of Democrats (61%) say Republicans are racist/bigoted/sexist. I think they are absolutely right. After all, being a bigot or not is not determined by what a person claims, but by their actions. And supporting a racist/bigot/sexist (Donald Trump) is an action. It's an action that shows us most Republicans are just fine with bigotry.

About 31% of Republicans return to charge about Democrats. Not surprising. That's about the number of true trumpistas, and like their favorite demagogue, they will accuse others of what they themselves are guilty of.

All you have to do is look at the field of candidates for each party. While the Republicans ran mainly white men, the Democrats fielded a wide array of candidates -- candidates reflecting the true diversity of this country.

Nothing Can Stop U.S. From Becoming More Diverse

The current anti-immigration efforts by Trump and his Republican cohorts are a futile effort to stave off the demographic changes happening to the population in this country. They are afraid of an America where Whites are the minority, and White privilege no longer exists. But they can't stop it, no matter how hard they try. The change is happening, whether they like it or not.

The chart above shows the increase in diversity between 2016 and 2017 as noted by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Here is what's happening -- as reported by Think Progress:

As the nation grows older, it’s also becoming more racially and ethnically diverse.  “Nationally, the population of all race and ethnic groups, except for the non-Hispanic white alone group, grew between July 1, 2016, and July 1, 2017,” the Census statement said.

Specifically, the Census Bureau reported:

• The Hispanic population increased 2.1 percent to 58.9 million.
• The black or African-American population increased 1.2 percent to 47.4 million.
• The Asian population increased 3.1 percent to 22.2 million.
• The American Indian or Alaska Native population increased 1.3 percent to 6.8 million.
• The Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander population increased 2.1 percent to 1.6 million.
• The population of those Two or More Races increased 2.9 percent to 8.7 million.
• The white alone-or-in-combination population increased 0.5 percent to 257.4 million.
• The non-Hispanic white alone population decreased .02 percent to 197.8 million.

Of course, none of these revelations are particularly earth-shaking. Keen demographers and social scientists have been tracking the so-called “browning of America,” for years.

But in the current political environment, it bears repeating over and over, if for no other reason than to remind more Americans of the inevitability of change. Soon — within the lifetimes of the vast majority of Americans alive today — the U.S. will no longer be a white-majority nation.

And that’s why this column is directed to Trump’s MAGA crowd, which seems hell-bent on returning the country to some idealized era of the 1950s or earlier, when white men were the unquestioned arbiters and beneficiaries of the nation’s politics, culture, and economy.

Indeed, the hateful atmosphere brought about by Trumpism and echoed in archly right-wing media has its roots in a vocal white nationalist movement, which seized on the president’s embrace of their racist rhetoric as permission to openly act on impulses that previously were tucked away from public view.  . . .

For all their bluster and bravado, however, white nationalists are whistling past their own graveyards. The numbers and unrelenting facts of demography stare in the face of those who believe they can restore some non-existant glory of white supremacy.

Valerie Wilson, director of the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy (PREE), estimates that by the year 2043 — about 25 years from now — the U.S. will reach the tipping point when the country transitions to a majority-minority population. Among working-class Americans — made up of working adults without a college degree — she estimates the tipping point may arrive nearly a decade sooner, possibly by 2032, . . .

The sooner most Americans come to terms with this reality, the sooner the public will rally support and encourage politicians to deal with the changing demographics from a position of national strength, and not as the fearsome dilution of white superiority. One thing is certain: the changes coming to America aren’t going to suddenly shift into reverse, no matter how loudly Trump, his subservient congressional leaders, and white nationalists complain.

We Are Not Enemies - We Are All Americans

The photo at left (from NBC News) is of passengers on the train that crashed in Hoboken trying to move to safety. I was struck by a comment made by several of the crash survivors -- that they were surprised at strangers coming forward to help them after the crash.

I thought that was a rather sad comment, since it shows that they didn't think most people would jump to help in an emergency. I wonder if that's the view that most Americans have these days.

We get a lot of bad news from our media. Sometimes it seems like that's the only kind of news they report (both on the local and national level). Add to this the growing partisanship in our politics over the last few years, and one would be excused in thinking that Americans hate each other, and would not lift a finger to help someone else.

I don't think that's true. Most Americans are decent and law-abiding people -- and they are good people who would step forward to help others in any kind of tragedy. And they would do that regardless of the race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation or political views of the victims. I really believe that.

There is nothing wrong with being passionate about our political views. In fact, I recommend it because that is the heart of a good democracy. But we must remember -- we are not enemies. We are all Americans, and we are in this together. It's not all or nothing when stating our opinions. We need to remember that we all want what's best for the country, and that reasoned compromise is not a bad thing. In fact, it's what has usually moved our country forward.

Let me also say -- If you are a Democrat or Republican (or Green or Libertarian) and you don't have some friends in those other parties, you are missing out on knowing some really good and nice people -- and you are part of the problem. We can fight for our views without dividing our country into groups that hate each other.

We are enriched by our diversity -- both in people and in political views. It's OK to disagree with someone else, but it is not OK to mistreat that other person because they disagree with us. You don't have to agree with someone to like and help them. That's just common decency.

Is Sunday Morning Still The Most Segregated Time In U.S.?

We must face the fact that in America, the church is still the most segregated major institution in America. At 11:00 on Sunday morning when we stand and sing and Christ has no east or west, we stand at the most segregated hour in this nation. This is tragic. 

Those are the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1963. He was repeating what Dr. Helen Kenyon had said more than a decade earlier (in November of 1952). They were right. It was true in 1952, and just as true in 1963. Some states were still segregated at that time and some were not, but as Americans went to their place of worship on Sunday morning, they did so almost exclusively with members of their own race (and the same could be said of those who worshiped on other days).

Has that changed? Maybe some, but it can probably still be said that our religious institutions are much more segregated than work or school environments. The chart above is from the Pew Research Center concerning racial diversity in religion. It uses the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index to rank individual religious institutions on their diversity. They explain that index this way:

If a religious group had exactly equal shares of each of the five racial and ethnic groups (20% each), it would get a 10.0 on the index; a religious group made up entirely of one racial group would get a 0.0. By comparison, U.S. adults overall rate at 6.6 on the scale. And indeed, the purpose of this scale is to compare groups to each other, not to point to any ideal standard of diversity.

Frankly, it looks to me like most religions still have a long way to go -- and even if an organization has  a pretty good diversity index, that doesn't mean those people necessarily worship together (but has their own churches that cater to mostly a single race).

And us atheists and agnostics aren't doing a whole lot better than most religious organizations -- with whites making up the huge majority. We also need to do a better job of reaching out to people of color.

Our Only Hope For Real Change Is To Stay United

Last week, representatives of the movement called Black Lives Matter interrupted a speech by Bernie Sanders (and Sanders finally just left the stage and mingled with the crowd). It was an example of two progressive groups being at odds with each other -- but not the only example. Supporters of both Sanders and Clinton have been taking potshots at each other (and sometimes even making personal attacks).

This is very disappointing. I am a progressive Democrat who believes we have two great candidates this year -- each of whom could bring some real change to this country. I support Clinton, but I have no argument with Sanders' supporters. I think as Democratic progressives we should support which candidate we like in the primaries, and then come together to beat the GOP in the general election. We have a real opportunity to change this country, but that opportunity exists only if we remain unified.

On his blog a few days ago, former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich made a similar point. here is what he had to say:

A new report finds more U.S. children living in poverty than before the Great Recession. According to the report, released Tuesday from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, 22 percent of American children are living in poverty (as of 2013, the latest data available) compared with 18 percent in 2008.

Poverty rates are nearly double among African-Americans and American Indians. Problems are most severe in South and Southwest. Particularly troubling is a large increase in the share of children living in poor communities marked by poor schools and a lack of a safe place to play.

Which brings me to politics, power, and the progressive movement. 

The main event at the Netroots Nation conference in Phoenix, Arizona last weekend was a “Presidential Town Hall” featuring one-on-one discussions between journalist and undocumented American Jose Antonio Vargas and presidential candidates Governor Martin O’Malley and Senator Bernie Sanders.

It was upstaged by ‪#‎BlackLivesMatter activists who demanded to be heard.

It’s impossible to overcome widening economic inequality in America without also dealing with the legacy of racial inequality.

And it is impossible to overcome racial inequality without also reversing widening economic inequality.

They are not the same but they are intimately related.

Racial inequalities are baked into our political and economic system. Police brutality against black men and women, mass incarceration disproportionately of blacks and Latinos, housing discrimination that has resulted in racial apartheid across the nation, and voter suppression in the forms of gerrymandered districts, voter identification requirements, purges of names from voter registration lists, and understaffed voting stations in black neighborhoods – all reveal deep structures of discrimination that undermine economic inequality.

Black lives matter.

But it would be a terrible mistake for the progressive movement to split into a “Black lives matter” movement and an “economic justice” movement.

This would only play into the hands of the right.

For decades Republicans have exploited the economic frustrations of the white working and middle class to drive a wedge between races, channeling those frustrations into bigotry and resentment.

The Republican strategy has been to divide-and-conquer. They want to prevent the majority of Americans – poor, working class, and middle-class, blacks, Latinos, and whites – from uniting in common cause against the moneyed interests.

We must not let them.

Our only hope for genuine change is if poor, working class, middle class, black, Latino, and white come together in a powerful movement to take back our economy and democracy from the moneyed interests that now control both.

Minority Population Distribution In The United States

I found these charts very interesting, and I thought you might also. They were made by Randy Olson, and featured in The Atlantic. They show the distribution of minority populations in the United States (on a county-by-county basis). The top chart shows African-Americans, the second chart shows Hispanics, the third chart shows Asians, and the fourth shows Native Americans. For each chart, the darker areas show the highest percentages of each minority group.

There is one more chart, and it is shown below. It has all the races put together, and shows just what a diverse nation we really are. The darker counties are the counties with the most diversity. I'm sure the teabagger Republicans would like to see all of these maps get a lot whiter, but that ain't gonna happen. The days of an overwhelmingly White America are gone -- and they are not going to come back. It's time for all of us to learn to live together, and to realize that being an American has nothing to do with race, ethnicity, or skin color.

Cable News Regressing On Diversity

With each passing year, the United States becomes a more diverse nation -- with minorities becoming a larger percentage of our population (and whites becoming a smaller percentage). In fact, many predict that minorities will make up the majority percentage of the U.S. population around the middle of this century. It only makes sense then that our society should reflect this growing diversity (and also include more women being shown in positions of power).

But the cable news networks don't seem to reflect that view anymore. In the last five years, some of them have actually regressed in the diversity shown on their networks. It doesn't really surprise me that Fox News is moving back to white males instead of women and minorities -- with the number of white men on their network increasing from 56% to 60%, while the number of women and minorities dropped from 44% to 40%. But they are not the only one.

CNN has been even worse in their hiring over the past five years. The number of white men on CNN has gone from 55% to 62%, while the number of women and minorities has dropped from 45% to 38% -- and this is supposed to be the middle-of-the-road network that most closely represents America.

Fortunately, there is one network that seems to be moving in the right direction. MSNBC had the number of white men on its network drop from 61% to 54%, while the number of women and minorities rose from 39% to 46%.

Some of you may think I'm just quibbling over an unimportant point. I disagree. I believe it is important, especially for the news networks, to present a more accurate picture of the country we live in -- and a part of presenting that accurate picture is to show the diversity of this nation through the people they put on the screen.