D.E.I., MAGA STYLE

Abstract: This essay critiques the authoritarian tendencies of Trump and Musk, focusing on their efforts to rewrite American history and reverse decades of cultural progress. It highlights actions such as the removal of diversity-focused content from government websites, the Smithsonian's censorship of exhibits, and executive orders targeting "wokeness." These measures are portrayed as attempts to whitewash systemic racism, discrimination, and historical injustices. The essay also examines broader societal impacts, including the coercion of universities and corporations to abandon diversity initiatives, and a lawsuit in Missouri targeting Starbucks for alleged discriminatory hiring practices. It concludes by likening these developments to historical instances of fascist revisionism and warns of the dangers posed by intolerance and exclusion under their leadership.

The dizzying pace of executive orders and Musk disruptions continues, and it’s hard to track them from day to day. Who knows when the Trump regal decree machine will slow or run out of steam. Until then we can only watch as dozens of lawsuits, which become hundreds, to rein in the rampage are processed. In the meantime we watch . . . and hope.

For today, though, I felt it would be worthwhile to focus on one aspect of Trump/Muskism: the fascistic impulses to rewrite American history and reverse the cultural advances of the past seventy-five years. Suddenly “diversity” and “inclusion” have become dirty words, to be expunged from the social vernacular -- along with the fruits of these efforts. Jackie Robinson has been disappeared from the Department of Defense website while Ty Cobb, who may or may not have been a racist and bigot, remains. According to a recent article in The Guardian, other pages which have been removed include one focusing on Ira Hayes, a Native American who was one of the marines pictured raising the American flag at Iwo Jima during the Second World War and articles about the Native American code talkers. Defense Department spokesperson Sean Parnell has defended the removals: “I think the president and the secretary have been very clear on this – that anybody that says in the Department of Defense that diversity is our strength is, is frankly, incorrect.” We have even ordered the French government to require any French companies doing business in the United States to report they have removed all traces which might look any bit DEI.

The Smithsonian Institution, although an unconditional gift of an Englishman who never visited the United States, for 178 years has been the principal repository of American culture; it has been called America’s attic. It is the world’s biggest museum, education and research complex. The campus is huge and the principal buildings are a centerpiece of an enjoyable trip to D.C. It’s impossible to see it all, even during an extended visit; the gamut is vast, from prehistory to space exploration; from essential science to the frills of diamonds and first lady gowns. Admission is absolutely free -- as, in fact, it should be at all major museums! Last month Donald Trump arrived with a cultural sledge hammer. Exhibits at the Smithsonian are for the first time in its history being picked over and pulled if they suggest America has been anything but wonderful for its 250 year history.

Only this president, who has sought to root out “wokeness” since returning to power in January, accused the Smithsonian of trying to rewrite history on issues of race and gender. His executive order entitled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History”, he directed the removal of “improper, divisive or anti-American ideology” from its storied museums. While America has much history in which to take great pride -- the creation of the world’s best republican constitution enshrining free association, press and speech; nuclear energy; the free public library, and so forth -- Trump’s edict is just another case of “wink wink nudge nudge” because we know exactly where he’s going with this: whitewash (literally) American history, so slavery is a technical footnote; shall we say George Washington and Thomas Jefferson only had “helpers” . . . Exclusion of Jews and non-whites from American universities and medical schools never happened. . . . Jim Crow and school segregation were passing glitches. . . . Chinese Exclusion Laws, Japanese-American internment camps, “administrative errors” (this week!) shipping a man lawfully in the United States off to a prison camp in El Salvador, leaving his U.S. citizen wife and child behind . . . The extermination of entire tribes of Native Americans in the pell mell western expansion of white America doesn’t deserve a mention; and, most importantly, discussion of American systemic racism -- all these are mere inventions of the radical lunatic left. Nothing to see here, folks, just keep moving along.

Today major American universities are being blackmailed into returning to the days of prejudice and exclusion. Cowardly lawfirms are bowing to the king’s demands for free services for his chosen causes and refraining from litigation inimical to his interests. Most people with a government contract or job are too terrified to speak out. There is talk of giving Elon Musk and friends free access to poke around with the entire IRS data system!

Here is where this leads: The Attorney General of Missouri has actually instituted a 59-page lawsuit entitled State of Missouri v. Starbucks Corp. 4:25-cv-00165 (2025), cherry-picking goals and hiring statistics from various Starbucks public filings and reports. General Bailey and associates allege that Starbucks is a truly evil enterprise requiring harsh legal remedies. I could try to describe this bizarre legal action, but fact is I can’t do better than quote from the actual complaint:

“Since 2020, Starbuck’s workforce has become more female and less white.” “By making employment decisions based on characteristics that have nothing to do with one’s ability to work well, Starbucks, for example, hires people by thumbing the scale based on at least one of Starbucks’ preferred immutable characteristics rather than an evaluation of an applicant’s merit and qualifications.” [I can’t resist an editorial comment: So Starbucks has dropped evaluating applicants based on their ability to pour coffee and only upon race or sexual preference?]

“Making hiring decision on non-merit considerations will skew the hiring pool towards people who are less qualified to perform their work, increasing costs for Missouri’s consumers.” [Please pardon another snarky editorial remark: are we to assume hetero white men are more qualified to pour coffee than women or LGBTQ -- and that they actually want to work at Starbucks?]

“This is because more mistakes are made, more time is required to train and make up for such mistakes, even though mistakes would occur less and resources, including time and materials, would be better preserved by employees with better (and actual) job qualifications.” [One more time for a snide observation: it must be because we know how hard it is to train women, gays or non-whites to brew coffee in an automatic machine.]

“So, with Starbucks’ discriminatory patterns, practices, and policies, Missouri’s consumers are required to pay higher prices and wait longer for goods and services that could be provided for less had Starbucks employed the most qualified workers . . .” [Enough! At last we’ve found out why Starbucks coffee costs so damned much more than other coffee shops.]

How can such evil be allowed to persist in the Trumpian USofA! Well at least Missouri is leading the charge -- backwards.

One more editorial observation: to my knowledge, NOT ONE SINGLE PERSON IN THE ENTIRE STATE OF MISSOURI -- WHITE MALE OR OTHERWISE -- HAS CLAIMED HE WAS FIRED OR REFUSED EMPLOYMENT BECAUSE OF STARBUCKS D.E.I. POLICIES! No one has found any such individual or collective lawsuit, so it evidently is only in the fertile brain of the Missouri Attorney General’s office that this evil requires immediate state action and no doubt will force down the price of coffee in Mo.

Even more astonishing: according to the NY Times yesterday, Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” has been banned from the Naval Academy library but Adolph Hitler’s Mein Kampf is still on the shelves! “The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life” by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, which argues that Black men and women are genetically less intelligent than white people, is still there. But a critique of the book was pulled. In all 381 books were purged. The Nazis used bonfires; Trump and Hegseth are more direct.

AJ. Bauer, an assistant professor in the Department of Journalism and Creative Media at the University of Alabama has written: “At some point the press needs to stop adopting right-wing framing that this is a ‘DEI purge’ and call it what it is — white supremacist violence against our collective past.” David Blight, a historian and current president of the Organization of American Historians, observed, “It’s what the Nazis did. It’s what Spain did. It’s what Mussolini tried. This is like the Soviets: they revised the Soviet encyclopedia every year to update the official history. Americans don’t have an official history; at least we’ve tried never to have.”

Chris Kluwe, former NFL punter hit the nail on the head: “MAGA is explicitly a Nazi movement. You may have replaced a swastika with a red hat, but that is what it is.” .

It is becoming more and more clear what MAGotts and Muskrats really stand for. They have their own brand of DEI, all right: DISCRIMINATION against women and non-whites, EXCLUSION of others, and most importantly INTOLERANCE towards those who oppose them or are different. Zieg heil!

Arne Werchick, after fifty years as a litigation attorney, pro tem judge, law lecturer, former Presiding Arbitrator of the State Bar of California, and past president of the California Trial Lawyers Association, moved to Hawaii and lives with his wife Ruth and their rescue dog Topaz. He writes Out of My Liberal Mind (werchick.substack.com), a periodic blog about issues of concern to the liberal community and asks readers to invite like-minded friends to join the conversation. He can be contacted at liberalmind@werchick.com.