Dan Rather, You Can't Erase the Truth [View all]

https://open.substack.com/pub/steady/p/you-cant-erase-the-truth?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web


Not many things you can take to the bank, but believe me — this reporter has, through many decades of employment, never felt discriminated against because I’m white. But to hear Donald Trump tell it, times have changed dramatically in America.

Trump insists that white American heterosexual men are now a persecuted group. It is his basic argument for vanquishing all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in the federal government, and he has strong-armed public and private companies to go along with this charade.

One of Trump’s loyalist minions, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, is taking it a step further in this latest culture war battle. Hegseth has already deleted Pentagon webpages and erased photographs of prominent Black, Latino, and female members of the U.S. military. He has fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a Black four-star general, and the Commandant of the Coast Guard, a female admiral.

He is on a rampage to remove mention of anyone in the U.S. military who isn’t white, straight, and male. On Tuesday, Hegseth ordered the Navy to remove the name of the USNS Harvey Milk, a Navy support ship named for the political trailblazer and gay rights activist. The decision to make the announcement at the beginning of Pride Month was no accident.

Milk served in the Navy during the Korean War and was one of the first openly gay elected officials in the United States when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1978. He was assassinated later that year by a political rival. The ship was named in his honor in 2016.

Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell tried to explain the rationale. “Secretary Hegseth is committed to ensuring that the names attached to all DoD installations and assets are reflective of the Commander-in-Chief’s priorities, our nation’s history, and the warrior ethos,” he said.

Though the USNS Harvey Milk was the only ship mentioned, CBS News has obtained a list of other vessels in Hegseth’s crosshairs:

USNS Cesar Chavez - named for a co-founder of the United Farm Workers union and civil rights activist

USNS Medgar Evers - named for the civil rights activist assassinated by a white supremacist in 1963

USNS Ruth Bader Ginsburg - named for the second woman justice on the Supreme Court, who fought for gender equality and civil rights

USNS Dolores Huerta - named for a co-founder of the United Farm Workers union

USNS Thurgood Marshall - named for the first Black Supreme Court justice and a pioneering civil rights attorney

USNS Lucy Stone - named for an abolitionist and suffragist who after became the first woman from Massachusetts to earn a college degree and fought for women’s rights

USNS Harriet Tubman - named for an enslaved person who escaped to freedom and then became a conductor on the Underground Railroad and Union spy during the Civil War.

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