DOGE staffer resigns over racist posts
wsj.comIf you're having a team going into every bit of government data, you might want to vet them. Beyond eugenicists and racists, if they're getting anywhere close to SCIFs, make sure they fill out that SF-86 accurately. And maybe even if they're not, have them go through regular clearance procedures.
Yes, it takes time. But right now, DOGE seems like a huge security risk for the USG what with it setting up backdoors everywhere, and with unvetted staff working for it.
That these concerns are being dismissed as partisan shows how far through the looking glass we truly are. Either _the party of law and order_ doesn't understand how risky this activity is, doesn't care or both -- any of which are _extremely_ troubling. We should also all be sure to keep this in mind next time they're crying crocodile tears about TikTok or DeepSeek.
I just emailed my representative (Mike Lawler) and I suggest everyone who's concerned about this activity and capable of offering compelling insights into why this activity (active data breach) is so concerning do the same. Perhaps they're somehow blissfully unaware of the security implications of these folks accessing data (it's only read-only access, though, so don't worry! /s), copying it to ... wherever?, running it through ChatGPT or tinkering in production on critical Cobol systems is and we can enlighten them.
> Either _the party of law and order_ doesn't understand how risky this activity is, doesn't care or both
If they hadn't already obviously ceded that title before 2025, they certainly did when over a thousand duly convicted violent partisan offenders were pardoned.
These weren't just random people, they were accomplices of the person who pardoned them.
We're in an autocratic United States now, where no crime, no matter how violent, committed by members of the regime will be prosecuted.
a president cannot pardon or commute state crimes. most states have crimes against violence
The crime in question occurred in a non-state, so that isn’t much help here.
The majority of governors are all in on this new Republicanism. They can pardon any crime that Trump can't. Blue state governors can be leaned on extremely hard and most will have to give in if their Federal dollars are on the line. This isn't 2006 anymore.
> Blue state governors can be leaned on extremely hard and most will have to give in if their Federal dollars are on the line.
This is especially true if the courts roll over and reverse the Impoundment Act, which is exactly what the Project 2025 author and OMB nominee is pushing for. The president would be able to bankrupt any State, any entity that relies on federal funding, regardless of the wishes of Congress.
And arguably they could just do it: ignore any court judgment, and watch Congress do nothing. We know he won't ever be impeached and removed, so it's sort of a foregone conclusion that impoundment power can be seized at any time.
It doesn’t matter if you write or call your representative. He knows that if he goes against President Musk, Musk will throw his unlimited funds at someone so he gets primaried and even before that Musk will use his bully pulpit - Twitter - to berate him.
He is in a D+3 district that usually votes Democratic. That would usually moderate him. But see above about he would have to first survive a primary.
Threats of violence is what drives all those inexplicable last minute vote changes in congress, simple as that.
And why the senate didn't convict trump in the second impeachment about the insurrection he fomented. There is reporting of Mitt Romney that several republican senators indicated they didn't vote to convict because they were afraid what his minions would do to them and their families. They also mentioned they didn't have the funds to pay for private security the way that Romney had been doing for some time.
There's a word for achieving political ends via violence or the threat of violence. We should've been using that word heavily then, and we should be using it heavily now.
The Musk+Trump duopoly seems insurmountable. Trump has an a cult like hold on the Republican Party and Musk has enough money + Twitter to control the narrative/scare politicians in line to convince enough independents to keep them in power.
Our only hope is that the Cheeseburgers and high cholesterol gets the best of Trump.
And that Democrats grow a spine.
What you're not mentioning the personal and intellectual flaws of these idols and their followers, and the tens, if not hundreds of millions of people in the US, and billions all over the world. How the chances "seem" right now is rather moot and very likely to be wrong one way or another; historians can say that later on. It is what it is now. It's not like you're suggesting to invest energy into A rather than B, so instead of idly musing about chances of success, try to focus on what increases them.
The next Luigis could be the Hamburglar and Mayor McCheese, who aim directly for his heart and don't miss.
This isn't Musk+Trump, it's Musk+Thiel+Yarvin+Heritage+Vance, with Trump as a hood ornament. His job is simply to sign whatever they put in front of him and play golf.
Cholesterol getting the best of Trump isn't going to derail this, since Vance is more than happy to continue the amassing of unchecked executive power.
"You won't have to vote again."
The difference is that it is never about policy with MAGA voters. It’s about Trump.
You see how quickly MAGA voters went from “America first. No foreign entanglements” to “let’s send troops to the Middle East to clear out Gaza” as soon as Trump said we should do so?
Anytime that Trump hasn’t been on the ballot since 2018, Trump voters stayed home.
Presidents have always been about personality and not policy. Biden and Bush I being the exception in my lifetime - or at least since Reagan.
> The difference is that it is never about policy with MAGA voters. It’s about Trump.
This is why there's an effort to centralize power in the executive at a blistering pace, so the opposition can be permanently defeated even without Trump.
Watch for three things: ignoring the courts, snuffing out the influence of non-party sources of authority (the press, academic institutions), and centralization of police power. I don't think they're going to wait past April before they do all three.
When Trump dies, do you think they will they stay home forever? Because he will die eventually (and is already past male US life expectancy), and I’m curious if the cult disbands at that point (if facts and policy don’t matter to them). If so, we’re really just defending against harm caused during his remaining life expectancy (unknown) and term (<4 years).
The other wannabe Trumps don’t have the draw/sway with MAGA folks that Trump does. DeSantis tries and tries but he’s perceived as just a weirdo for the most part. Vance likewise. There’s something uniquely compelling about Trump to the MAGA crowd.
They (Trump and Maga folks) are authentically clueless. The other politicians have to act dumb and it just doesn't connect with the MAGA folks.
Look at all of the other Republican candidates in the last primary. None of them would have ever gotten the cult like following if they had made it through the primaries.
I’m not saying another Republican will never win. But they will be your bland mostly inoffensive Republicans like Haley (2024), McCain, Romney, Bush I and II and Dole.
You might disagree with them on policy around the edges. But they won’t bring the destruction of Trump.
Desantis tries his best to be Trump and he flamed out marvelously on the stage. Even in Florida (where I live), he is losing his grip on the legislature.
I really hope that both sides comes out of this and re-focuses on the people. I strongly doubt it, but we could do with some healthy debate on what the purpose of government is and focusing on providing those services and improving the day to day existence of all of us.
I worry if it goes back to business as usual, it's just ripe for the next generation of con artists to show up and we'll go through this all over again.
"Law and order" has long been code words for using the power of the state to enforce hierarchies that benefits those shouting "law and order".
I see your point, but talking about risks after a de-facto heist could easily lead to misunderstandings. This intelligence operation is a done deal.
If concerned people debate future risks instead, the other team has scored an A+.
If you want to mitigate what had happened, you need to bring your own extremely resourced criminals. I really feel sorry for all affected.
What makes you think they weren't vetted and this isn't what they wanted?
Also worth noting that he made these posts before Musk hired him. And that they didn't fire him.
"Vance tells Musk that DOGE staffer who resigned after posting racist tweets should be rehired" - https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/07/elon-musk-doge-racist-treasu...
My take is that we actually need more efficiency in government, and from a technology standpoint, they might have some good ideas.
I have a very pro-technology worldview. I'm independent leaning left but I thought that Democrats have been extreme, wasteful and untrustworthy in their own ways.
It's very unfortunate that this stuff like efficiency and technology integration is now associated so closely with neo-Nazis. Maybe I just didn't want to believe it. But when Musk did those Hitler salutes, I had to accept a new reality.
I don't think cutting programs or screwing up code is our main worry. The Secretary of Defense is literally an alcoholic neo-Nazi Crusader who talks about almost nothing besides getting rid of affirmative action and how evil Muslims are.
I am scared that they will actually try to deport millions of people, there could be massive detainment camps that become concentration camps. You only need a lack of food and one or two really serious neo-Nazis for that to become a death camp.
I am also afraid that they might trigger WWIII, fully fueled by racial hatred and dehumanization of Chinese people.
I am almost scared to write posts like this because who knows if they will start hunting down people from the internet.
This meme that government is just hugely more inefficient than business is not correct in my experience.
I've worked for both. I have seen massive waste in business, millions spent for no gain, staff employed to build a manager's empire, not to do anything that was actually needed and other terrible outcomes. Obviously that also happens in government too, although the bigger problem there was a whole bunch of lazy staff who were hard to fire.
But... A business can largely choose its market and optimise for that. A government cannot - it has to work for pretty much everyone. Business can choose to skirt the law or even break it. Government departments must comply with all law to the best of their ability.
Not saying there are no ways to improve government efficiency. But the people who think you just need a business approach (unless you just want to break it all) are deluded.
The big difference is that taxpayers are on the hook for government inefficiency and for most services there is no competition, the classic example being the DMV. Having one hour queues frequently is rare in private businesses.
Whereas with businesses they could go out of business if they overspend on inefficient processes and there can be competition on both quality and price.
One of the root causes is that it's very difficult to fire government employees for bad performance so that's why government services suck and cost a lot in almost every level of the government and in pretty much every country with some exceptions, like say the NTSB in the US.
It's not even that low performers should all be fired, but the fact that knowing you it's hard to get fired leads to many people underperforming given natural psychology. The other problem being lack of incentives tied to performance.
When the public government services are privatized, it's not going to look like a bunch of scrappy companies engaging in free market dynamics to deliver services better than the government could; it's going to look like darling contracts granted to crony insiders who leech tax dollars into offshore accounts while delivering the worst possible service they can get away with.
The majority of people I worked with in government were actually very motivated. Sometimes it was public service, sometimes they were ambitious for their career, sometimes they just liked what they were working on.
I have not really seen more motivated people in business due to performance incentives. Even in the financial sector, other than maybe traders and quants, I can tell you most people don't work harder because of the annual bonus.
It was certainly a bit dispiriting working with the minority of people who appeared to do absolutely nothing and just hung around for years. We all knew we had to work harder because of them. Some of them would definitely have been fired in a business.
> we actually need more efficiency in government
Government services should be efficient, but that should never happen at the cost of being independent from the people in office, transparent, auditable, secure, and accountable.
Exactly. There are a lot of things above efficiency on the priority list.
> It's very unfortunate that this stuff like efficiency and technology integration is now associated so closely with neo-Nazis
Do not mistake the Nazi's too. They were very efficient and highly organized. IBM played a great role in delivering the tech the Nazi's needed.
Undoubtedly the IBM's of today are primed and ready to get the train rolling again. It is hard to be pro-technology realizing that the ownership of all that tech is ultimately the brainworm billionaire class. Who we already know are fascists.. as per daily news.
Maybe it's not that new then.. after all, I guess the Nazis did a lot of great work on rockets.. but very unfortunate. That association clouds people's views of technology in general. Technology itself is not biased or ignorant or evil. It's a lever. It should be able to help everyone.
DOGE is just a dipshit rebrand of the US Digital Service, which was created under the Obama administration, and did bring real improvements and efficiency to the Federal Government. They're behind the IRS free to file program that I heard was just killed off. They also did login.gov. There is a huge number of lower profile improvements across the government that they're responsible for.
DOGE is a farce and I hate that I have to type the name of a joke from 2009 because Elon is a child and Trump is a crook.
DOGE (as in the sh**coin) is price manipulation. Elon may own a third of all DOGE in existence. So he pumped it when he appeared on SNL, pumped it on Twitter, and now pumps it via his reach as a newly minted oligarch.
> It's very unfortunate that this stuff like efficiency and technology integration is now associated so closely with neo-Nazis.
I don't think “efficiency and technology integration” is. I think DOGE is because its being done by neo-Nazis and in support of a blatantly fascist administration and doing things that look a lot more like ideological censorship and corrupt self-dealing than efficiency and technical integration, including specifically targeting things in government that actually did efficiency and technical integration.
Blue team is hesitant to use its power in a lot of ways, and due to insisting on consensus most of the time they are handicapped. Red team actually seems to know what power is and how to use it--unfortunately for us, they lack discrimination and strategic planning in its application.
Blue team also required a bunch of thought-killing exercises and public signalling of things that are clearly inefficient and intellectually bankrupt and dishonest--this drove away a lot of smart people that actually wanted to get shit done, and made it easy for red team to point over and say "see, they're lying/delusional/woke?" as covering fire when red team pushed for their own odious agendas.
Blue team also not only failed to address issues but deliberately lied about them: the immigration crisis was pilloried when Trump wanted to build a wall, but once Biden took power a few weeks later suddenly _then_ the immigration crisis was a real policy concern. When people were complaining about the cost of food and goods, that was silly--but now that Trump's in power, suddenly we are told to care again. The attempted manufacturing of consent by the media on the left (and to be clear, red team does the same thing) is now too obvious not to be used against them.
Given all of this:
* Things aren't as bad as they're being made out to be, though they are serious.
* There is an entire industry relying on your fear and anxiety to exist, so practice good information hygiene.
* Maybe look beyond the obvious labels (woke, Nazi, marxist, fascist) to understand what's actually going on--don't be intellectually lazy.
* Revisit the things you think you know and why they're Good or not--and consider what others would think of them (for example, we can't both talk about how it's only a matter of years that "white" will be a minority in the US and that that's a good thing _and also_ claim that reactionary concerns about replacement are wholly unfounded).
Good luck to you.
I would like to believe that those are just intellectually lazy labels. Are you sure it's not 100% accurate to say that Musk and Hegseth are neo-Nazis? Or that we are headed straight for new American Holocaust against Hispanics and a race-fueled third world war? I want that to be hysterical paranoia or "intellectually lazy labels". But look at the historical parallels.
"Goatfucker" is a fair and accurate and intellectually rigorous label.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Popehat%27s%...
Popehat's Law of Goats
He who fucks goats, either as part of a performance or to troll those he deems has overly delicate sensibilities is simply, a goatfucker.
"He claimed he was just pretending to be racist to trigger the social justice warriors, but even if he is telling the truth, Popehat's Law of Goats still applies."
If you're referring to me, you'll have to do better than namecalling.
If you're referring to Musk or the current administration, calling them names doesn't really seem to have worked for what, at least nine years now?
Confessing to fucking goats isn't quite the power move you make it out to be, but if you want to take one for the team, and claim that what you're doing is merely performance art intended to troll, while "things aren't as bad as they're being made out to be" and "concerns about replacement" are actually well founded, then be my guest. The fact that a racist doesn't mind being called a racist doesn't make them not a racist.
I don't think you're reading me in the way that I intended, and I think you're being very uncharitable.
I did not claim that their concerns about replacement were well-founded, merely that they were understandable. Again, go back and read what I actually wrote: we cannot both acknowledge that there is a decline in the proportion of whites in America, that there are policies being pursued that help with this (again, no moral judgement, simply a statement of fact), and also that the people who are scared about losing majority status are completely without basis in their concerns.
If you cannot understand the tiny pier of truth that these people use as a foundation for the massive pile of other nonsense they've stacked (or had stacked) upon it, you will never be able to get them to change.
I'm not asking you to agree with them. I'm not asking you to say that the whole of their beliefs makes any sense at all.
I'm asking you to understand that they aren't pulling this completely out of thin air, and that if you want to have more success than you've had it may be worth it to acknowledge their concerns and try to show how your preferred policies would serve them better and how their current preferred bozos are manipulating them.
You and people like you might assert that they're idiots, misinformed, evil, or whatever else--but their vote counts as much as yours, sometimes moreso, and so you ignore or misunderstand them at your peril.
so when Elon Musk stands at a podium and performs the Nazi salute, it is "intellectually lazy" to use labels like "Nazi" or "fascist"?
> dehumanisation of Chinese people
What?
Hasn't started yet. Give it a few months or a year for the Taiwan situation to start to really boil and for them to have had their fill of rounding up Hispanics.
I don’t doubt there’s a racist element there, but people are blind as to just how deep United Front cells are stuck in the US. From running illegal weed grows, pushing power and doing transnational repression, it’s a way bigger threat that people don’t realise
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/09/nyregion/chan-china-nyc-i...
Why do you think they didn't?
The bigger picture problem is that Musk's grandfather Haldeman was part of the technocracy movement, which wanted to implement the "North American Technate", which includes Canada, Greenland and much of middle America:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy_movement#The_Techn...
The agenda 2025 is eerily similar, including the proposed land grabs and a tech style governance by "elites".
Insane, thanks for sharing
Wonder how Elon is getting the clearance for this , dude smoked weed on camera , isn’t that automatically disqualifying for gov clearance ?
They seem to be coloring entirely outside the lines here. Much like trump with his bulk exec order and see what sticks approach
He doesn't have clearance. They march into the offices, demand access, whoever is there says "no", then that person gets fired (placed "on leave") ten minutes later. Rinse and repeat.
"This is why it's an illegal coup."
Vs ? what? a legal coup? or the other varietys like these agencies under scruteny fund worldwide?
A coup is a sudden takeover or upset, it does not have to be illegal, though it is usually understood to be.
Musk has, and has had, top secret security clearance for years, due to his SpaceX work launching spy satellites for the US government.
The president has top secret clearance and doesn't have access to personal tax returns. I don't believe there is a blanket "all things included" security clearance.
This is correct. There is no "you get access to everything" kind of clearance. That includes the President. Congress has the power to get access to anything, but even then there is a tight process limited to a handful of congresspeople.
A core part of this sort of security is compartmentalization. A person who has "top secret" level clearance has it for specific subject matter. Their clearance is worthless if they're outside those boundaries.
That's not quite right:
"The President of the United States will be given access to any government or military information that they request, even if they would not otherwise be able to normally obtain a security clearance were they not the President."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_security_clearan...
Trump essentially granted Musk his presidential clearance. If Musk hits any resistance to classified information, Trump can just access it and hand it to Musk. If it's a crime to do so, Trump can declassify it, pardon Musk, or just instruct his DOJ not to charge him.
I was merely answering the parent's comment, which they seem to have significantly edited after the fact.
But no, there is no "all things included" security clearance.
And you're right, POTUS does not normally have access to tax returns information, per 26 U.S.C. § 6103:
https://codes.findlaw.com/us/title-26-internal-revenue-code/...
While there are guidelines in the form of an unclassified, gov't-hosted desk reference [1] ultimate discretion seems to be left to adjudicators. There are public archives [2] that talk about such decisions made in tricky cases of criminal activity, financial malfeasance, potential blackmail, etc. I've seen at least one where somebody admitted to doing hard drugs while having a clearance and actually got upgraded to a TS (though this was ~10 years ago and I can't find it via search engine).
[1] https://www.dhra.mil/portals/52/documents/perserec/adr_versi...
[2] https://doha.ogc.osd.mil/Industrial-Security-Program/Industr...
Musk's clearance was already somewhat restricted because of it and limited things he could see at SpaceX
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/07/elon-musk-asks-pentagon-for-...
After he did a $1 million lottery a day only for Registered Republicans, to bypass pay for registration laws, in a swing state during the election.. I'm guessing any leftovers of that will be lifted.
More recent sources, lawyers advised him not to try for higher clearance because of the drug use: https://www.thedailybeast.com/elon-musk-denied-access-to-spa...
Trump did clearance by fiat for a number of officials who he knew could not pass traditional clearance processes; as President he has that power though President’s generally use the process that has been established rather than doing it ad hoc both because they realize that they are fallible so having proper vetting is substantively good, and because they want to avoid the appearance of personal favoritism/corruption (Trump, very clearly, shares neither of those concerns.)
Presidential mandate
By winning a plurality of the vote and being within a couple thousand votes in a few swing states changing the outcome?
He won, but just.
Not that it matters. Serial violators of others' autonomy aren't know for coloring between the lines. Give them a femtometer and they take a light-year. And when you're a star, or president, they let you do it.
To become a dictator? This isn't in the presidential powers. Congress needs to pass a bill if they want to do this.
> This isn't in the presidential powers. Yes it is! It is literally the first sentence of section 1 of Article II of the constitution!
Saying, "I don't like this therefore it's not in his power" is logically identical to seeing Congress pass a law that you don't like and saying, "this isn't in Congress' power"
The power of the purse was deliberately placed with Congress in Article I, Section 9, Clause 7: "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law." This isn't about liking or disliking powers, it's about maintaining the constitutional balance that protects everyone's rights. Article II Section 1 establishes the presidency and electoral process, but the Take Care Clause in Section 3 actually requires the President to faithfully execute Congress's laws. This separation of powers exists specifically to prevent any branch from exercising unchecked authority over public funds. Changing funding requires congressional action because that's a core protection built into our system. It's not an obstacle to be worked around, it's a fundamental safeguard of our constitutional republic.
> "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law."
Yes that's true ...and totally irrelevant.
Trump is NOT drawing money from the treasury. He is performing the executive function - specifically in this case finding fraud.
This exact issue was settled after Nixon tried blocking environmental funds. The Supreme Court ruled in Train v. City of New York (1975) that the executive branch cannot refuse to spend appropriated money. Congress then passed the Impoundment Control Act to make it crystal clear. The president must execute spending as directed by law. Creating new positions to block these payments is just impoundment with extra steps.
Seems like there might be quite a few conflicts of interest in this team https://projects.propublica.org/elon-musk-doge-tracker/
“Elez promised that Indian workers in the U.S. on H1Bs visas are “going back don’t worry guys.”
Are these guys in some alt-universe where Musk and Theil are advocating against more H1Bs?
Or maybe they’re were fine with eugenics and racism but weren’t aware of his H1B smacks?
H1Bs are OK, just not from certain countries. I've definitely heard that before from this group.
Surprised he resigned. After all, it seems transparent that they’re going for a coup.
Don’t worry Musk will rehire him
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c93q625y04wo
> He will be brought back," Musk posted on X, the social media platform he owns. "To err is human, to forgive divine."
Just ignore that’s not on him to forgive.
Will be interesting to see how people like to be Chile 2.0
“DOGE chief Musk asks X users if staffer who quit over racist tweets should be rehired” (https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/07/elon-musk-doge-racist-treasu...)
Musk wants to normalize this kind of racism.
I wonder why he resigned. Half the administration seems to have ties to white supremacy, if not ouright neo-nazism.
Before they got into power
- "They're not that bad, they're just trolling people; they would never say racist things at me... They'll stop once they get into power."
After getting into power:
- "Oh... If only someone had warned me about this!"
They have tried to walk the line just enough to keep the media unwilling to use precise terminology, and to give voters who aren’t committed Republicans plausible deniability. Remember how Project 2025 was open but Trump kept pretending that he didn’t agree with so many of his former staffers, associates, and donors? That was to allow the people who mostly want tax cuts, the Muslims who have religious opposition to LGBTQ rights, the Jews who are Israel hawks, etc. to tell themselves it was safe to vote for him.
Direct statements approving of wiping Gaza and Israel off the earth or disparaging Indian engineers pierce the veil of self-deception and force lukewarm supporters to acknowledge who they’re backing. It’s the same reason why they’re arguing that Musk threw a “Roman salute” hoping that the median voter doesn’t know as much about the Italian fascist movement.
But wait, why? How was he pushed to resign? Isn't one of the core arguments for going after the woke that people should be able to say what they want in their free time, and still keep their jobs in their professional life? And his employer is a group that has a supposed mandate to be going after the woke, so they should be best able to push back against public pressure, right? Perhaps the phenomenon of politics is deeper than merely the woke and can never really be eliminated?
The other day, I read a comment on the Wired post stating: "Really, all this article says is that if you are an auditor for the commission appointed by the president, we will make sure that this comes up in an aggressively negative way when somebody who you want to work for googles you. It's pure intimidation, masquerading as journalism."
Well, it seems these young men were chosen for qualities that should make them feel intimidated. It's our moral imperative as Americans to hold these people accountable, criminally accountable if necessary. If these men are promoting racist and un-American sentiments with the intention of not being caught, they are trying to fool the entire nation at once. Clearly that cannot persist.
I think that unfortunately what's been proven with recent developments is that in some way racism is very American.
When I immigrated to the US, large city in the Northwest, I was still a kid of 7.
My understanding of troubles between people were that they were the historical norm. My country of birth, and all surrounding countries, have long interesting histories. Real ruins to match! Full of everyone and group vying for dominance with lots of periodic organized killing, at various scales, instigated by cultural waves and royal decree.
Every kind of group conflict over time. No reason to fixate and stew on any one. Certainly not any that “defined” the country. Just lots of mistakes.
No false pristine origin myth to wrap oneself up into! Dear Zeus no! What an odd idea!!
And the trend over hundreds of years clearly was one of steady improvement. Minus short term catastrophes.
So no need to continually revisit any particular mistake, or waste time downplaying one either.
When I arrived in the US, we didn’t have TV at my house. And we never did. So my sheltered historical interests continued to be global.
It’s quite remarkable how free my life was from any impact of US racism. I had heard of Martin Luther King. His memory was universally revered by my American family and wider circle. “Obviously” that little episode of slavery, contrasting with the thousands of years of interminable atrocities that were my context for judging such things, was well on its way out.
We had diverse neighbors, and everyone interacted. Lots of interesting adults taught me new things. I don’t remember anyone as being this or that, they were all just very different people, different looks, backgrounds, ideas. To me that is zen. Fun.
Somehow it took me quite a while to find out there were significant US people who were still quite racist. At age 10, I was confused by a conversation, and a friend told me there were still Americans with bad feelings about black people.
I tried to imagine what someone like that could be like? What would they look like? Why, most of all, why?!? No coherent form came to mind.
In the next few years I caught up on US history, or as we say everywhere else on the planet “current events”.
It was appalling to me that there were still small groups of white supremacists, operating mostly in the dark, That there were still people with quiet prejudices. But “obviously” those things were dying.
Today is absolutely unrecognizable. The level of self-reinforcing garbage just bewilders me.
Everything is argued from the most unworkable extreme. No DEI! (So no consideration for real talent in less easy to find places, or who might need a practical accommodation?) To DEI must be enforced, please sign on to our committees un-nuanced statement of diversity? (So no differences on quotas or approaches are ok?)
And the rest of us, including the diverse in question, left to muddle through all these moving barriers and the hate and depression they feed.
Total madness.
I feel like the US is in a tiny time pressure bottle, and a cultural pressure bottle too, isolated from healthy border contact with neighbors of comparable power. Cut off from most human history.
And the result is utter myopia.
Everyone (who talks loudly) thrashing around reacting to threats real, imagined and manufactured from paranoia or opportunism. In the process, making themselves credible threats to others.
I just feel lucky between my childhood elsewhere, lack of media, and early exposure to wider historical & geographic perspectives, that for a long time I was protected from the poison of US racism. I can tell you, it was a happier place to be.
I got to meet and know my adopted black cousin, along with other diverse people who were part of my amazing new large US family, without any thought of racism. For years.
I remember in my 30’s when I realized Prince was black! It was so ridiculous to just notice that I had to laugh. And then a whole bunch of other artists. Of course some artists struck me immediately as black for whatever reason. But I just didn’t think to classify people that way, for the longest time.
Always has been. Trying to right that wrong gets the most violent pushback every single time.
The comment has a point. You should expect it when playing this game, but it's very clear what said game is.
If "don't be racist" is a game you have to consciously play with yourself, you are expressly unfit to rule a nation of immigrants like America.
Paywall'd content.
Not paying for this. Please use some archive website if you are sharing selome article.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42967011 - Someone linked to an archive site of the article 2 hours ago, at least an hour before your comment.