Of course, Trump’s defense secretary wants to striped the name of Harvey Milk, the murdered gay rights pioneer.
Remember that milk in the Korean War served as diving instructor, eventually discharged because of his sexual orientation. Or that he showed courage to face haters as the first elected official of the country. After all, when Pete Hegseth does not send confidential war plans via signal to people who should not be to them, he is bleeding over the ‘Warrior -ethos’.‘
Hegseth is a military veteran, a national watchman who has conducted tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. But he is also someone who has made a career from telling Americans that, above all, he knows what our veterans need and what our armed forces need to defend the US in an increasingly volatile world. So Hegseth may know something about warriors and fighting. So did milk.
But Hegseth is too busy playing Rambo to recognize it. Instead, he claims Bigory to redesign the US Army as a scorched earth, hetero-Christian outfit ready to vote for liberal heretics here and abroad. It doesn’t fit anyone who calls themselves a fighter no matter how many pseudo-patriotic tattoos and American flag garments attached to sports.
A true fighter follows an honorary code that makes respect possible for those they disagree with and sometimes even fight. For Hegseth to specifically ask that the USNS Harvey Milk has changed its name during the Pride month – the same month he requires that all transdiens people have to extend themselves and leave their positions voluntarily or dismiss them – do not represent the “relocation [of] the fighter culture ”which calls the Navy as the reason for the movements.
Instead, it reveals Hegseth’s Achilles heel, one he shares with Trump: a fundamental uncertainty about their place in a country that diversified long ago.
CBS News also reports that the Navy is renaming ships named after the civil rights icons Medgar Evers, Cesar Chavez, Sojourner Truth and Lucy Stone, along with ships that are not yet built, but scheduled to carry the names of Dolores Huerta, Thurgood Marshall, Ruth Biter Ginsburg and Harriet Tubman.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell gave my colleague Kevin rector the same malarkey as he gave the rest of the media when asked to comment on this matter: That Hegseth ‘is committed’ to make sure that all nominated military assets’ are a reflection of the chief commander, the priorities of our country, and the Warrior-ethos.
Marine -Col. Alison Thompson, left, talks to Jenn Onofrio, Center, a co -fellow of the White House of the Secretary of the Navy and Patrik Gallineaux, to the right, of the Richmond/Ermet Aid Foundation before the launch of the USNS Harvey Milk, a fleet supplement oil -which was named after the first openly gay in San Dgo.
(Alex Gallardo / Associated Press)
I can understand that the argument can be made that naval ships must first be called to those who have served, who would eliminate people like Huerta, Ginsburg and truth. But there was a beauty in the idea of having the names of Civil Rights decorated in the so-called John Lewis class, Oilers named after the late Congressman. It was a reminder that wars occur not only on the front lines, but also on the home front. That those who serve to defend our democracy do not just do it through the military. The win doesn’t just happen to bullets and bombs.
That sometimes the greatest threat to our country was not the enemy abroad, but the enemy inside. It’s not just mine wokoso Opinion, one of the oath that all Navy newcomers and custom officers must make them swear to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
You may not associate Huerta, Truth and Marshall with the army – I was indeed surprised that the Navy honored them, period. But I and millions of Americans do remember them for fierceness in their respective battlefields, a steelness that any sailor must strive for. For everyone in Hegseth’s world to even think about eradicating their name is a shame for the stars and stripes – but what else should we expect from a department whose boss has evaded military service by claiming that he has weakened bots?
The striking of milk’s name of an oil and proposed renaming of dry cargo ships named for Evers and Chavez is especially Vaal.
Milk joined the fleet in the footsteps of his parents. He was so proud of his military background that he was wearing a belt with the insignia of his Navy Diver on the evening when he was killed. Evers was inspired to fight Jim Crow after serving in a segregated army unit during World War II. Chavez, meanwhile, was shortly after the good war during his two-year Navy lead in the Western Pacific.
I called Andres Chavez, executive director of the National Chavez Center and grandson of Cesar, to hear how he feels about this mess. Andres was there in 2012 when the USNS Cesar Chavez was launched in San Diego, with a Champagne bottle by Helen Chavez, Cesar’s widow and Andres’s grandmother. He said: “It was probably the second most memorable anniversary I saw from my Tata after Obama” assigned the Cesar E. Chavez National Monument in the Central Valley that year.
The USNS Cesar Chavez was the last of the Navy’s Lewis and Clark class boats, all named after pioneers and explorers. Andres said his family was initially “reluctant” to have a fleet ship in honor of their patriarch “because so much of the identity of Cesar is wrapped in no -violence”, but is accepted when they realized that the push of shipyard workers from San Diego’s Barrio Logan is coming.
“And there were so many Latinos that served in the military in this country, so we also accepted on their behalf,” he said.
The Chavez family found out about the possibility that the USNS Cesar Chavez is losing its name from reporters.
“We’ll just wait and see what’s next, but we’re no longer surprised by this administration,” Andres said. “It’s just not an insult to Cesar; It is an insult to all the Latino veterans of this country. ‘
He pushed back Hegseth’s definition of what a fighter is by raising the work of his grandfather and milk. The two supported each other’s causes in the 1970s and met, according to Andres ‘many’ times.
“They served by creating and fighting more opportunities for other people for their respect,” he concluded. ‘It is the definition of a fighter. “