This is from Garrett Graff, the journalist who writes dispatches as if he were a foreign journalist observing our culture.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a late Friday night purge, Donald Trump — America’s often ramblingly incoherent ceremonial commander-in-chief — fired three of this country’s top generals and admirals, the latest assault in weeks of efforts to install loyalists at top military and security posts and restore the primacy of the white male ruling class that has traditionally held power here since the country’s founding two centuries ago.
The purge included the nation’s groundbreaking and widely respected top four-star general, C.Q. Brown, who was the first of the country’s oppressed racial minority Black community to rise to head a branch of the military, and also removed the military’s top lawyers as well as the air force chief and the one female currently leading a military branch. The purge completes Trump’s removal of the both the first-ever and second-ever women to rise to the highest ranks of the military.
Traditionally, incoming US presidents remove precisely zero military leaders and the collective firings stand as all-but unprecedented in the 80-year history of the modern military, which prides itself on itself on studious political independence, but had looked increasingly inevitable since Trump installed a white Christian nationalist as defense minister who has been openly hostile to women serving in the military and who has cut back on recruiting Blacks to join.
Trump in his previous presidency had actually selected Brown to head the nation’s air force, until turning on him more recently as insufficiently supportive of the country’s ongoing political and corporate domination by a caste of mediocre white men — people historically unable to succeed on their own merits or competency — that includes Trump himself as well as the newly installed defense minister. (Unsurprisingly, Trump announced Friday his intention to replace Brown with a less qualified white male general, who had — unlike Brown — never attained the military’s top rank.)
With the ouster of Brown and the naval commander, Admiral Linda Franchetti, the remaining top military leaders—known as the Joint Chiefs of Staff—are once again all white and male, a particularly pointed power imbalance given the fact that the country’s racial and ethnic minorities make up nearly 40 percent of national forces and women constitute fully a fifth of the ranks.
Nazi salutes and purging black and female military members is means there’s no quiet part anymore, it’s just racism and sexism all the way down.
Rose has an open thread below, let’s stay on topic in this one. Thanks!
Steve LaBonne
“Anti-DEI” is plain old Jim Crow. It’s especially obvious when the white guy who replaces the fired Black guy is so literally unqualified that his appointment requires the legally mandated qualifications to be waived.
Melancholy Jaques
I don’t know a lot of normie voters, but anecdotally speaking, the ones I do know have completely disconnected, are not aware of any of this, and get irritated when I bring it up.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@Melancholy Jaques: My wife is a normie (liberal but normie) and she’s riveted by the shit that’s happening. We normally never talk politics — now it’s our main topic of conversation. So I think it depends, but even the local news media in Denver is covering that Bannon salute, because Bannon is scheduled to headline a gala for Colorado Republicans. It’s getting out.
Elizabelle
I was horrified, and am still angry. Guessing a lot of our service members may feel like that. Although perhaps not free to discuss it publicly.
Spent a lot of time on an Army base in Germany, observing the young soldiers. They are a diverse bunch, demographically. Surprise!
I wonder if Trump’s blatant assault on the US military leadership might give some Trump voters permission to stop supporting him. This may have been an own goal.
Steve LaBonne
@@mistermix.bsky.social: Trump’s addiction to being in the headlines every day could turn out to be a double-edged sword.
Baud
@Steve LaBonne:
Literally.
Maybe we should use the full words rather than the acronym.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@@mistermix.bsky.social:
You’ve just described our morning ritual. My normie wife got up this morning and after reading this, said “I was mad, now I’m mad and scared”.
Per Steve #1 above: Anti-DEI is just another dog whistle for Jim Crow.
I remember last year several people talked about Hair Furor essentially purging high-ranking military officers and the response was generally crickets chirping.
And here we are.
Steve LaBonne
@Elizabelle: Also alienating everybody in the military, except for the very top layer of brass appointed by and loyal to himself, is not necessarily a smart move for a would-be dictator.
Hildebrand
One of my parishioners told me last Sunday, ‘I’m just really tired of mediocre white men.’
Yep. This is all about white mediocrities hating that they actually had to work harder, and so this is their reaction.
matt
@@mistermix.bsky.social: I have some normie relatives who are becoming absolutely batshit radicalized by what’s going on.
Steve LaBonne
@Hildebrand: Hegseth never rose to the level of mediocrity on his best days.
Suzanne
@Steve LaBonne:
I am deeply skeptical that this is true. Veterans are apparently Republican by something like 2:1. I have a few relatives and friends who served, and they have all said that it’s majority conservative, by a lot. Which makes sense: dudes.
MobiusKlein
@Steve LaBonne:
For some reaching mediocre is an upward aspiration.
azlib
I golf with a friend of mine and he is outraged and very angry by the firings. He was a registered Republican in Wisconsin before he moved to AZ. He has since reregistered here as in independent. He wrote a letter to our Republican rep and it was to say the least a very angry letter. His father was a WW II vet and my friend feels Trump is simply dishonoring his father’s service to our country. Hopfully, more Republicans and former Republicans feel the same way.
John S.
@@mistermix.bsky.social:
Same here. My wife is also a liberal normie, and she despises Trump. I have had more discussions about politics with her in the last month than in the last 5 years combined.
It’s not that she doesn’t pay attention, she just doesn’t usually enjoy the topic. But she is too pissed off about everything that is happening to stay silent. I hope there are millions more like her out there.
Baud
@azlib:
Hopefully. We’re limited in what we can do unless a significant number of them turn to the light.
Starfish (she/her)
@@mistermix.bsky.social: Well, in Colorado, there is a real chance that the local survivalist white supremacists will show up to support at the Republican gala and make the farmers uncomfortable.
Back in the Friendster days of the internet, we were like three degrees of separation from people in Parker, CO who had Swastikas tattooed on their chest. We assumed it was our gun-enthusiast libertarian friend who put these folks in our network.
I believe the school Republicans at CU invited Holocaust-denier David Irving to give a talk when I was there. The first two rows of the talk were filled with supportive Nazis. The men had the police officer buzz cut going on.
Now, David Irving’s style of Holocaust denial was one of those where you say the number of people who died at the various concentration camps was much less than it actually was. I think he wanted to reduce from 6,000,000 to 2,000,000, but some of the other Holocaust deniers now want to pretend that only 60,000 people died.
narya
@Hildebrand: As someone noted earlier this week, it’s not just that they’re “mediocre,” it’s that they’ve been able to set up some small business that allows them to think they’re Important Men About Town (and cheat on their taxes, and not have to take orders from anyone, especially anyone who is female or Black). They have zero idea what it’s like to actually have to qualify for and get a damn job, and then actually DO that job; they have no experience “bettering” themselves, and, I suspect, a fair number of them actually inherited their business. They don’t read. They don’t think. And they have the unmitigated gall to think of themselves as Superior Specimens. But then again, what has ever challenged that notion of themselves? The media, especially Faux, participate in telling them they are “normal Americans” and everyone else is hyphenated. And their wives get their status from their husbands’ position.
karen gail
If Hegseth has his way the military will be 100% white males, he claims to want them all to “warriors” but the problem with the warrior mindset that he envisions is a blind obedience, unwavering loyalty to Trump and “Christian Nationalists.”
Somewhere along the line these people have gotten the idea that warriors are mindless, obedient, and willing to kill whoever is considered “the enemy” even if it is their fellow citizens. Basically, cannon fodder for the whims of “elite” (rich, white, straight, “christians,” males.)
Melancholy Jaques
@@mistermix.bsky.social:
The normie voters that I am most exposed to are other teachers & education professionals in Los Angeles. I guess my expectations are too high. I mean, they’re all college graduates, most have at least a masters, and they are as clueless about their government as the denizens of Ohio diners.
kalakal
Historically military coups usually don’t tend to be led by the top brass. It’s the Colonels and Majors you have to watch.
Baud
Via reddit, nominated!
JoyceH
When they said they were against DEI, they really meant they were against desegregation.
Almost Retired
Well let’s see. The current Army Chief of Staff was a couple years behind me in High School, and worked for my Dad for a couple years. I wonder if he survived the purge, as a straight white Anglo-Saxon Protestant male from a red state.
Checks news……
Yup. He’s still there. And to be clear, he’s definitely not a mediocrity. But his race and gender will do wonders for his survival in this administration.
Hildebrand
@narya: Yep, that definitely tracks.
I think that’s why so many young, white men are stampeding to the maga movement – they see what their dads or grandfathers had and they want the same things, in the same way, without actually having to work hard, study, or compete. They bitterly resent that they have to compete with anyone, especially women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ folks.
matt
@JoyceH: The way I think about it is that they’re literally telling us the truth, that they are against the values of diversity, equality and inclusion. They’re not just against the programs. They are for racist and sexist hiring, inequality and exclusion.
Steve LaBonne
@Hildebrand: “When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.”
ArchTeryx
And believe me, there’s plenty of antipathy toward the disabled, too. Being white and male is not enough in their world. Visible disabilities – or even invisible ones – means you’re an untermensch and no more than just another <insert racial epithet here>. They aren’t just gunning to use the n-word openly again. They also want to use the r-word. It’s no accident that the first people the Nazis went after were the disabled. Not the Jews, minorities, or LBGTQ+ people. The disabled. THEY were used to perfect the death camps.
I’ve spent my life being discriminated against for my disabilities, both tacitly and openly. At least the open ableist bigots aren’t hiding behind a veneer of plausible deniability, no more than the racists and sexists are. It’s just all hate, all the time. They want to hire Beautiful People in their eyes, and that means white, male, Christian, cis, het, blond, blue-eyed, and able-bodied. IOW, Aryans. Qualifications to do the job are the LAST thing they care about.
trollhattan
The neighborhood dads would have rounded these assholes up and done unspeakable things to them, when I was a kid. Half of them fought Nazis directly, and were in no mood to give them “a second chance.”
Now it’s “Hitler dressed well and had some interesting ideas” with nobody around to squash the thought by the third word. Lucky us.
ArchTeryx
@trollhattan: That’s a HUGE part of the problem. The WWII veterans are all dying off. I know my father was raised by an open Nazi Party supporter (Swiss), and he chose, instead, to volunteer for the U.S. Army as a fighter pilot and fought the Nazis instead. He had absolutely zero use for American nazis, and would have gladly shot some of these people himself. He actually had a cop friend that he worked with in his gunsmithing business that thought like he did. How quaint it was, an antifascist cop.
That loss of cultural memory is now coming back to bite us all.
Steve LaBonne
@ArchTeryx: Absolutely, and we must not let anyone lose sight of this.
different-church-lady
It’s always been a Nazi rally. They just didn’t dare give the salute until this year.
Hildebrand
@Steve LaBonne: Exactly. It’s amazing how many of the ‘why are young, white men abandoning the Democratic party’ stories will talk about everything but that.
Aziz, light!
My view is that most Americans pay no attention to anything outside of their daily lives and whatever they find entertaining and amusing. This willful ignorance will be the key reason why the fascist takeover has a good chance to succeed. The people will get a rude awakening when their livelihoods and social safety nets collapse, but by then it may be too late. Once the rule of law is gone, the only recourses will be revolution and/or civil war.
I’m not hoping for this outcome but am trying to plan ahead to find ways to best survive it.
different-church-lady
@Melancholy Jaques:
Irritate them.
different-church-lady
@Aziz, light!: Our constitution really doesn’t have anything that references bunkers or Esso stations.
Xavier
Is there’s any other topic? Jeez…
Ruckus
I’ve said some of this here prior, so I know I’m repeating myself somewhat.
I am a senior citizen who gets his paid into and earned Social Security as my income.
I am a veteran and get my healthcare from the VA.
I am a person who feels like my life could change dramatically in the next 24 hrs. For the worse. And I’m not alone. Not in any way, shape or form. Many, many millions, like all of us, could be massively affected by this bullshit. We have someone born into wealth, hate and racism now running our government.
Not elected, approved, appointed in any way shape or form. Our democracy has been taken over, stolen, for the first time in its over 200 yr existence.
different-church-lady
Today in How Fucking Stupid Can You Be?
On January 20, 2025, the United States STOPPED BEING UKRAINE’S ALLY, YOU FOUR DUMB FUCKS!
different-church-lady
@Ruckus: Hey, look, I like you, but if you gotta die so I can have the illusion that someday eggs will be cheap, well, that’s just how it is.
(/s obviously)
Melancholy Jaques
@different-church-lady:
Oh, I do, often without even trying.
different-church-lady
@Melancholy Jaques: Good work soldier, carry on.
Lily
Cartoon by Steve Broder: https://stevebrodner.substack.com/p/crowned-heads
Melancholy Jaques
@different-church-lady:
I keep repeating: They are not stupid. They are not making mistakes or failing to learn. They are deliberately promoting Trump & his agenda.
different-church-lady
@Lily: Wow, that is some admirably brutal caricature.
Another Scott
Seen on Mastodon.social/explore – Nice graph of 2024 turnout, results, etc.:
We need to remember that the election was close.
Hang in there, everyone.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Xavier
@kalakal: yeah, those colonels tend to be itchy. But more generally, as Peter Tuchin notes in his newish book End Times, the overproduction of elites with no real path to a suitable productive outlet leads them to become counter-revolutionary forces.
schrodingers_cat
Do the fired brass have any legal recourse? Lawyers and ex military folks what are their options?
different-church-lady
@Another Scott: The election was close. The results are binary.
Kelly
OR-2 Rep Cliff Bentz got a lot of push back at yesterday’s town hall. It’s Oregon’s only R district. He won roughly twice as many votes as the Democrat. The district is rural about half the land is federally owned. The Malheur Refuge of the Bundy assholes took over is there. It was fun to see but I can’t help thinking most of his angry constituents expected Trump to hurt Portland.
tobie
@different-church-lady: my gosh…that headline from the Post is pure evil. It’s like an RNC press release posing as news.
It’s become clear to me that the GOP assault on DEI is part of a larger eugenics project. That’s why they’ve expanded DEI to DEIA. Only able-bodied, white, hetero, Christian males count for them.
PeteS
Just in case anyone doesn’t know, “William Boot” was invented by Evelyn Waugh some 87 years ago for his novel Scoop, which I haven’t read in decades but feel an urge to. It is a brilliant pseudonym and I just signed up at Doomsday Scenario. The more sane people I read the less crazy I become.
Ruckus
@Xavier:
NO, there isn’t.
This country has existed as a democracy for over 200 years. It has now been take over by one of the worst humans on the planet.
This is not the time to discuss gardens or the sunrise/sunset or any other day to day rhetorical time passing things.
I, and millions of others served our country, many of us during times of wars, protecting your right to be disgusted by our continued discussion of its take over by one rich asshole. This is the worst I’ve seen this country in my 3/4 of a century of breathing in it, serving it, voting in it.
NO ONE voted for the rich asshole now stealing it.
Ruckus
@different-church-lady:
You’re welcome!
different-church-lady
@schrodingers_cat: “O-P-E“
JoyceH
One silver lining to the current situation is that people are being reminded that government really does important stuff. So much of government operates so seamlessly and quietly that a surprising percentage of the population has become convinced that government doesn’t do anything important, it just takes their money so unqualified women and minorities can sit around drinking coffee and gossiping. I like that the news shows are featuring people who’ve been laid off to remind us that oh yeah, we need people to make sure we’re not poisoned by our food, drugs or water. That bad guys don’t steal our nukes. That cures are being created for the stuff that killed your grandparents. That your Mom’s social security comes on time and grandma’s nursing home is staffed. And maybe giving a billionaire a free hand to fire people by the thousands isn’t such a genius idea.
different-church-lady
@tobie:
It probably is.
schrodingers_cat
@different-church-lady: I don’t get it. Are you saying NOPE? And if you are saying that, is that your opinion or a fact.
different-church-lady
@schrodingers_cat: Apologies, obscure Dr. Strangelove reference.
MP
@Hildebrand: One of my favorite mugs is one my wife got me. It says “Lord Give Me the Confidence of a Mediocre White Man.” I’m a 56 year old white man from the South and I’ll never have a bridge overpass, building or endowed chair named after me, but I’d like to think I’m a good father, husband, friend and citizen.
karen gail
Those of us who grew up with stories from our parents, grandparents and great grandparents are old; while we remember the emotions that went with the stories when they were told to us, if we share those stories it doesn’t have the same impact. Not only that the only stories about the WWII most of the younger generations (I’m in my 70’s) have heard or seen are the movies made about the war. The movies have been sanitized; along with most people who see disabled veterans from latest wars only see the veterans after they have become “healthy” and fitted with prosthetics. Long gone are the collective memories in US of what it really means to be a victim in war, the closest are those who have survived a mass shooting.
Elizabelle
@tobie: the WaPost reader commenters are savaging the headline, story, and whole premise.
different-church-lady
@karen gail: I’ve been thinking about Nazi Germany a lot lately for obvious reasons. But the past couple of days I’ve been thinking about my generation’s perceptions of WWII, as people who were born 20 years later.
The realization is that what we saw were the ghosts of the American view of the war: we went in and eventually kicked ass, even though there was a lot of pain and cost. It was the UHF television reruns of war films made during and after the war about American soldiers winning.
What was almost completely missing was the European view of the war: Nazism and Fascism. The manipulation of society and the horror that resulted. Other than “The World At War” series it was never addressed.
We haven’t lost sight of it: we never had it in the first place.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Starfish (she/her):
The CO mountains have a decent enough numbers of survivalist, white supremacists. We ran into a slew of them last Sep when camping up outside of Tincup. Nothing but hand signs when you drove past them on a UTV. Only one had any obvious signage, a 5-30 flag.
karen gail
@different-church-lady: History is written by the “winners,” the US didn’t enter the war until the attack on Pearl Harbor. US soldiers didn’t really get involved until 1943; before then it was limited or volunteers that went to Europe and fought.
That “big beautiful ocean” that Trump still brags about separated the US from direct effects of war on the population. Yes, the US sent soldiers, doctors, nurses, pilots, weapons but the average person only read about “the war” in the newspaper or heard about it on the radio or saw short pieces at movie theater. Grandpa B said that he knew about the war but it didn’t touch daily life; he was too young for ww1 and too old for ww2, so it didn’t seem real to him and those he was friends with.
When Trump bragged about an ocean between US and what is happening overseas he still believes that somehow that body of water will protect the people in US and isolate US from what is happening in rest of the world.
No Nym
@different-church-lady: I think the stories were out there. I remember reading books by Corrie ten Boom and Anne Frank as a kid. However, over the last couple of decades, I noticed how the so-called History Channel only ever had shows about Nazis on, as though it were the only thing that ever happened in all the world. I wonder if maybe we are just seeing a shadow that was always there in our European DNA (if you’re white). White male Americans, in particular, feel “seen” and important when they see Nazis. (Yes, yes, I know–not ALL of them.)
kindness
Not being conspiritorial or anything but Trump switching out the people at DOJ, DOD, and the security agencies to me appears to be Trump is setting the table up for the next shoe to drop. Trump fully intends to become a dictator before this term is out. Trump saying he’s a king or will run for a third term is a ruse. I expect there will be some (manufactured) crisis that Trump will declare martial law. Anyone who could have stood him up on that is now gone, replaced by boot licking supplicants. I doubt we see elections in 2026. And if we have them and Democrats win big in ’26 (because they would) there won’t be any elections in ’28.
Just my sunny thoughts for today. My bad, I’m sorry about that.
No Nym
@kindness: No need to apologize. Did you see Cole’s post a night or two ago? I think a lot of people agree with you. Besides, I am not sure who is helped when we smile and pretend like everything is just fine when it very much is not.
JoyceH
One thing we really need to get over is the common assumption that things are happening the way they are due to some fiendishly clever plan. Trump is stupid and the people he selects to be around him and carry out his agenda are also stupid. Now that doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous – Hitler and his crowd were also stupid. But it does mean that smart people can thwart him once they realize they need to.
One of the things we need to demolish is the myth that Elon Musk is a genius. He isn’t. He buys the work of smarter men and if he’s permitted he wrecks that work.
There was a post on Twitter or Bluesky recently that summed things up – said something to the effect that “I once heard Musk talking about electric cars. I didn’t know anything about electric cars but he really sounded smart. I heard him talk about rockets and I didn’t know anything about rockets but I was impressed. Then I heard him talk about computer programming and I’m a computer programmer – and I realized he’s an idiot.”
No Nym
I may have killed another thread here, but I want to thank mistermix for the threads that are not open threads lately. I like pondering a post with the noise filtered out.
Freemark
@Elizabelle: My subscription ended last week so I can’t join them, I did send a note through their website about why I did not renew my subscription. After explaining the problem and including the quote above I asked if the writers were sure to swallow after writing that. I assumed they did.
chemiclord
@Melancholy Jaques: That’s… the Average American Voter in a nutshell. They don’t care, they don’t want to care, and in fact resent you if you try to explain to them why they should.