By E. Faye Williams
The Washington Informer
https://www.washingtoninformer.com/
Who could have imagined hundreds of our top military personnel being ordered to the United States to hear Donald Trump (multiple-time draft dodger) and Pete Hegseth rap about their personal grievances, and how they’re working toward putting even more people who proudly serve in the military in jeopardy because of their weight, personal grooming, denying women and gay people the right to serve in combat — except Trump and his sons who served nowhere! It seems the secretary of war and the president think their kind are the only ones truly capable of serving.
They’ve decided cities they don’t like (meaning those with a lot of Black people, Democrats and progressives) can expect to be military training grounds! Looks like they’ve already started doing that. Look at Los Angeles; Washington, D.C., Chicago, Memphis, Portland and others threatened. One assumes they’ll use the same tactics as those used outside the country on the real enemy.
Those leading our nation now are embarrassing, and all of us should apologize to friends in other nations. If you’ve ever had the opportunity to work or travel abroad and meet people, I know you hung your head in shame as you listened to the absolutely horrible nonsense our high-ranking officials had to endure while sitting in that disgusting meeting Hegseth and Trump put on at millions of dollars in costs to our taxpayers. The real tragedy is their performance has leaders in other nations laughing at what happened.
We’re not perfect here in this nation, and it has never lived up to its promise for people of color (especially African Americans), Hispanics, Native Americans — and now immigrants. Trump’s family came here as immigrants. He’s married at least two women from other nations, and all of them were given every benefit other Americans who came here from somewhere else received. Those of us who were born here, work hard every day to perfect our union, but have never fully enjoyed the benefits. Yet, we persist in hope, and work to build this nation to what it professes to be.
While we obey the Constitution, we’re not benefiting from doing so while Trump and his crowd ignore the rules and still prosper. Trump and his friends continue to discriminate against us and try to erase our history. They’re trying to keep others in the dark about all we have given to the prosperity of this nation while they continue to drain our coffers with foolishness, fire hard-working people and deny the evil they continue to protect such as what Trump’s buddy, Epstein, did to ruin the lives of so many young white women.
I’m a peace activist and appreciate the loyalty of protectors of this nation. I don’t like their being summoned here to sit stone-faced to listen to the disrespect they faced in that meeting. Along with the generals and admirals, we were served up complaints about women not being worthy of combat roles, about men (meaning Black men) who, for medical reasons, can’t be clean-shaven, and about their expressions that women and minorities are incapable of rising to the top without “special treatment.”
The meeting of those men and women ordered here was evidence of disrespect for them, implying they don’t know how to do their jobs without the garbage spewed to them by a draft dodger and a man who didn’t know how to control his drinking and other bad behavior. Now they’re ordering highly experienced men and women who’ve learned from training and experience to do the real work of keeping America safe.
Trump says we’re under invasion from within as citizens peacefully protest the wrongdoing of our so-called leaders, and therefore he has to send men who slam men and women roughly to the ground, take frightened children from parents and more. We can’t be too afraid to at least speak out!
Williams is president of The Dick Gregory Society (www.thedickgregorysociety.org).
