WTF. In just ten dystopian days, in the name of restoring America to a mythical white guy greatness, a blundering, vengeful, rabidly unfit oompa-loompa has tried to shut down the government, strong-arm the economy, whitewash culture, roll back civil rights, and in a ghastly flourish pass the buck on a fatal crash by luridly scapegoating imagined “others”:
Look! Over there! A blind, black, dwarf female air traffic controller! Grim fact: “What a horrible, pathetic little man.”
Like a malignant, unstrung kid with zero impulse control blithely toying with a live grenade, the Orange Oaf (OOF) has unleashed chaos with a torrent of dodgy, often devastating “executive orders” that often bear little resemblance to governing or even reality:
Tossing a blanket pardon to Jan. 6 thugs now startlingly swiftly landing back in prison, purging scores of competent federal workers to install know-nothing lackeys, fecklessly rescinding as much as he can of civil rights progress over the last 60 years.
Next fever dream: separate water fountains. His most dazzling debacle was the madcap freezing of trillions in federal grants and loans, essentially shutting down governance to ensure it’s consistent with (his) agenda” not “advancing Marxist equity,” and after a day of predictable mayhem saying, oops, hmm, never mind.
He’s also ordered that any semblance of “dangerous” and “demeaning” DEI efforts to create a level playing field be scrubbed from America’s government, business, culture or the military, and enlisted the help of a brass-knuckled coterie of Space Nazis, sycophants and fixers to enforce it.
When COSTCO shareholders thunderously rejected the demand to eliminate its diversity initiatives – insisting they are “appropriate and necessary” – the company was set upon by the head of the right-wing National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project, who argued DEI “may sound benign” but is in fact “weaponized language concealing a radical Marxist agenda” that stifles “excellence and innovation.”
Besides, he added of the whole preposterous project of encouraging fairness and inclusion, “I believe that this is a fad.”
More muscle entered the fray when 19 GOP Attorneys General sent an irate letter to COSTCO’s CEO warning him to end the “unlawful discrimination” of DEI efforts that “courts and businesses have rejected as illegal” – not – or else.
Citing dubious legal precedents, they argue that by doubling down on DEI the company is “doing the wrong thing” and rejecting orange guy’s order “steering companies back to their fundamental mission to focus on increasing shareholder value.” Eek: Doing social justice not capitalism?!
They move from bullying to coaxing to note the “refreshing change” of companies folding to threats – META, Amazon, McDonald’s, Target, Lowes, Ford, Boeing, Walmart and others abandoning DEI to stay “in step with the evolving external landscape” – before reverting to mob-style threats: Repeal in 30 days, explain why not, or a dead horse is in your bed.
In appreciation of backbone, Rev. Al Sharpton led 100 members of his National Action Network in a buy-in through Harlem’s Costco; he warned, “If you want to put us back in the back of the bus, we going to do the Dr. King-Rosa Parks on you.”
And other companies have stood firm on diversity: Apple, Delta, Google, Pinterest, Microsoft, JP Morgan, Bank of America, Cisco, Johnson & Johnson, Ben and Jerry’s.
Still, the lure of racism remains strong, even in a military that’s over 30% female, black, Hispanic, or LGBTQ and despite the Air Force quickly backtracking when their move to eliminate Tuskegee Airmen and World War II female pilots from history drew outrage.
But with drunken, rapey, White Nationalist Pete Hegseth now at the helm, things will only get worse.
For proof, look no further than this week’s surreal news from the Defense Department’s “Intelligence Agency” that, along with banning all DEI programs, they will “pause” annual observances of 11 “Special Emphasis Program” events, all coincidentally celebrating everyone not a rich white man.
So: No more Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Pride Month, Black or Women’s History Month, or months honoring Hispanic, Native American, or Asian-American Heritage.
Working to “fully implement all executive orders” to make America as racist as possible again, it intones, the military will “receive additional guidance” as we “continue to update our internal guidance.”
Most importantly, Hegseth said he’s directed staff to create a DEI Task Force to ensure they’ve killed all traces of DEI; then he snarled, “We’re not joking around.”
Of course, all this regressive rancor, furious posturing and backpedaling to a dreamily-recalled unequal past is at the behest of an addled, malignant, old white racist, sulky scion of unearned wealth, and dumpster fire of a hollow human being who, fixated on money, power and fictional grievances, has spent his tacky, florid life panicked anyone else might get what he, obscenely, has.
But he’s not just focused on revenge and greed. He’s also “working.” He’s threatening allies, antagonizing neighbors, halting all medical research, planning to invade Greenland, returned Cuba to a terror state and is, after a Fox talking head suggested it, “building” a 30,000-person detention center at torture-haunted Guantanamo, which “nobody’s ever heard of,” to hold “high-priority criminal aliens” concentrated into one big secure camp though we’re not sure what that’s called.
He’s hunting down and terrorizing said “aliens,” aka “anyone with a tan,” including a U.S. veteran, a Puerto Rican toddler, mother and grandmother dragged off for speaking Spanish at a Milwaukee store, and many innocents.
He’s sharply spiked the price of eggs and gas, threatened a third term from a welcome grave, tried to steal a canal, left behind “shell-shocked” civil servants and other victims of his vitriolic wrecking ball tour, considered adding his paunchy profile to Mount Rushmore, bragged of turning on a hallucinatory faucet to end fires in California, hawked yet more crap, and named a parade of inept fascists, brain-worm cranks and greedy con-men to help burn it all down as supine Dems who’ve spent years warning he’s Hitler nod and say, “I’m a yes on Goebbels.” He’s ceaselessly whined, raved, lied, and played golf.
Then, when a military helicopter hit an American Airlines passenger plane en route from Kansas to D.C., killing dozens, he crassly, viciously, moronically demonstrated yet again how infinitely, tragically unfit he is to run, not just a country but a hot dog stand.
“This is a bad situation. NOT GOOD!” posted the imbecile who in his first days gutted the government, declared a federal hiring freeze widely deemed “dangerous,”fired the heads of the Transportation Security Administration and Coast Guard, removed all members of a security advisory group considered key to aviation safety and, because he’d proposed making Elmo Musk accountable for SpaceX safety failures, fired the head of the FAA days before the worst air crash in decades – all to kick off a horrifically mangled response decried as “one of the biggest scandals in presidential history.”
At a press briefing, his face caked with orange grease paint, he babbled, “Our hearts are shattered…That icy, icy Potomac…Cold water.” Then, even as crews began retrieving bodies, before any investigators were on site, he said he had “very strong opinions and ideas” and launched a fact-free, dumbfounding rant about how DEI caused the crash.
It was, of course, Obama’s fault from nine years ago. “I put safety first…(Dems) put policy (sic) first…They put politics at a level nobody’s ever seen.” Orange guy “made up very powerful tests.” Dems “terminated” them, used “dangerous DEI tactics,” hired air controllers with “intellectual disabilities,” blindness, blackness, dwarfism, and female-ness.
Bullshit: He had his own DEI program, DIVERSITY TAKES FLIGHT; there have been no crashes for almost 20 years, and the number of black controllers is “completely fucking irrelevant.”
“There was a lot of vision and people should have been able to see that,” he blithered. “You can stop a helicopter very quickly…It had the ability to go up or down…You could go under it or over it…Nobody realized…”
Also, Pete Buttigieg is “a disaster” with “a good line in bullshit,” “You have to be naturally talented geniuses,” “This is a major chess game,” “You want me go swimming?” and it’s DEI’s fault “because I have common sense (and) a lot of people don’t.”
But we bet those watching soon felt way safer. Especially once we learned tower control staffing was “not normal” – one worker doing the job of two – they’ve long been understaffed by a third – need 30, had 19 – and many had raised alarms that airspace is “uniquely congested.” Still, OOF signed another “executive order” blaming DEI and Dems for the crash. His response was judged grotesque, disgusting, vile, monstrous, craven, despicable and “an epic face plant.”
Soon after, in a “harrowing fulfillment of Biblical prophecy,” panicked customers reported that all the nation’s 3,059 Chick-fil-A stores were raptured when “a large burst of God’s divine light shone down from the clouds and lifted (them) into the Lord’s Eternal Kingdom.”
One employee said customers fell to the ground and “began screaming in tongues” as her fryers, grills and walk-in freezer hovered in the air; an Atlanta franchise owner theorized, “God has taken His favorite foods up to heaven (and) has left us to die a painful, tortuous death at the hands of Satan…
We are doomed to live in a world without Chick-fil-A. May God have mercy on our souls.” Okay, that’s from The Onion. In truth, we may or may not be doomed, with or without Chick-fil-A. But we could def use some mercy. Meanwhile, one pivotal, apocalyptic rule: “Do. Not. Comply.”
This article was originally published on Common Dreams and republished here, with permission, under a Creative Commons license.
