The Free Press
Last week, a self-shot video of unknown origin appeared on my X feed. It features a bespectacled young army cadet with curly, ginger hair, talking about how his drill sergeant told him to get a “fucking haircut.” The video then cuts to him duck-facing at the camera, with a high and tight, while he says, “I look like I’m about to go to fucking war!” The guy is clearly a homosexual, possessing what we in the gay community affectionately call a “fagcent.”
Young, in shape, and willing to get a haircut that’s completely unsuited to his face shape—this is the type of person the military needs, right? Especially since the Army has missed its recruitment goals every single year since 2010, in part because 77 percent of young Americans are too fat, drug-addicted, or mentally ill to serve. But not everyone agrees. About a week ago, Eddie Lima, a conservative coffee proprietor with a popular X account, posted the video with a one-word caption: “Sigh.” It set off a whole wave of nastiness.
“That speech pattern needs to be a disqualifier at MEPS,” wrote one commenter, referring to military entrance processing stations.
“Yikes. Hope [Secretary of Defense] Pete Hegseth sees this,” wrote Libs of Tiktok, the popular anti-woke account, which now has 4.2 million followers. The new secretary of defense is supposed to exclude guys from the military for . . . what, exactly? Talking too gay?
In case you didn’t notice, the new administration is waging a war on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Soon after being sworn in, President Donald Trump signed three executive orders rolling back DEI and affirmative action policies, some nearly 60 years old. Attorney General Pam Bondi recently said the Department of Justice will investigate private companies that have DEI initiatives. And in an interview with The Free Press, Hegseth promised to end DEI in the military—promising to put a stop to the endless meetings about diversity, and to ban celebrations of gay pride and Black History Month.
On its face, this development seems fine enough. Gay pride is meant to be celebrated at the club, not Fort Cavazos. And obviously people shouldn’t get jobs just because of their race, gender, or sexual orientation—like when Kamala Harris was hired as Joe Biden’s running mate after activists within the Democratic Party staged a coordinated campaign to pressure him to pick a black woman. They seemingly didn’t even care which one.
But the Trump administration, and many of its highest-profile supporters, are fueling the idea that any minority with a job might not actually deserve it. These people see DEI everywhere.
For instance, in the disaster that occurred two weeks ago in the Washington, D.C., area, when an Army helicopter collided with an American Airlines passenger plane arriving from Wichita, Kansas, killing everyone aboard both flights, immediately, President Trump and Vice President Vance implied that DEI was to blame.
Though there is a real story here about concerns over flawed hiring practices at the Federal Aviation Administration, it wasn’t the time. Trump’s and Vance’s comments set off an avalanche of insanity, focused on a few individuals who’d done nothing wrong. Right-wing netizens falsely accused a random, uninvolved trans pilot in the Virginia Army National Guard of being behind the crash—forcing her to post a proof-of-life video. After that, the actual names of the helicopter pilots were revealed. Two were white men, and one was a white woman: Capt. Rebecca Lobach.
This didn’t end the argument.
Without any evidence, numerous right-wing commentators online assumed that Lobach must have been the pilot primarily responsible for the crash, painting her as a lesbian DEI hire who was unqualified for her job. In reality, she was an experienced pilot—and if you’re interested, I’ve found no firm evidence to support the idea that she was a lesbian.
Tragically, it later transpired that her family had fought to stop her name being released because they’d been afraid that, given Trump’s comments, there would be an outpouring of bigoted abuse aimed at the servicewoman’s corpse—which is exactly what happened.
The chaotic, paranoid response to this horrific disaster is an example of how damaging it can be when DEI is assumed to be lurking behind every corner. But it’s not the only example.
Last March, after a cargo ship caused the collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, multiple Republican politicians attributed the disaster to DEI—even though there was clear video evidence showing the Singaporean-flagged Dali crashing into the bridge. Bad HR policy is not a heuristic to explain every bad thing that happens in the world.
At the same time, several popular right-wing X accounts pounced on the fact that the city’s mayor, Brandon Scott, is black. One post, which got 12,000 likes, features a video of Scott making perfectly appropriate comments about the disaster with the caption, “This is Baltimore’s DEI mayor.” A black mayor elected in a majority black city—that’s not DEI, that’s just demographics.
Is this anti-DEI praxis? Calling a dead woman an incompetent dyke? Claiming that a democratically elected black person is a diversity hire? Excluding a demographic renowned for spending time in the gym because they might be a bit camp? What happened to the stated goal of restoring fairness and merit?
Plenty of minorities—myself included—disliked the Biden regime’s lecturing, divisive, anti-democratic emphasis on DEI. But most of us aren’t masochistic enough to deny our people are being unfairly abused by the people dismantling it. We’re getting dangerously close to the point where any nonheterosexual, non-white, non-male person with a job is automatically assumed to be unqualified for it.
This isn’t how you build an anti-DEI coalition. It isn’t even how you “own the libs,” who have long claimed that the anti-DEI crusade is just a cynical ploy to attack minorities. The Trump administration, and its supporters, is in danger of unwittingly proving them right. You could even say the libs are owning them.
