Category Archives: DEI

The Naval Academy Library’s Magical Minstrel Show for Massa Hegseth

I hate to admit it, but my authorial ego was bruised by wading through the list of 381 books pulled from the Nimitz Library of the U. S. Naval Academy last week. It tallied the volumes  expelled by order of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, for committing the grave sins of advocating and documenting aspects of work for racial and gender justice, particularly its recent incarnation in programs lumped together as DEI.

I was bummed out because, after all, I’ve published four books on racial justice. They got several decent reviews, sold some thousands of copies, and have turned up in footnotes and bibliographies of much better-known tomes. This is a sign that at least a few serious people had taken note of them.
My books were forged from direct experience and much research on a time of wide-ranging and often violent struggle for racial justice. They covered   Selma’s Bloody Sunday; the Poor Peoples Campaign; Black Power (“By any means necessary!”). Writing them, I considered each as documentation of radical challenges to an evil status quo.  Surely at least one of them should have caught the sharp eye of a diligent censor.

But no.

None made the cut for the Naval Academy’s dishonor roll.

Continue reading The Naval Academy Library’s Magical Minstrel Show for Massa Hegseth

EXCLUSIVE: A Leaked View of the “Afterlife” of the U. S. Institute of Peace

March  22, 2025

From confidential Washington sources, the following excerpt is drawn from an account of the aftermath of the March 17 seizure and closing of the U. S. Institute of Peace, by armed agents of the DOGE administration. The account has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Brief Encounter at 2301

Mid-March, 2025, on the edge of the National Mall, not far from the Vietnam War Memorials.

It was almost break time, the leftover dinner pizza was hours cold, and Hennigan thought he heard something.

Standing up from the desk chair, he closed the Security Inc. employee handbook, which was making him drowsy anyway, and peered across the open atrium: first left, then right, following the protocol.

Everything seemed in order: several tiers of closed offices rose or each side. Lights were dim. Nothing moving.

Continue reading EXCLUSIVE: A Leaked View of the “Afterlife” of the U. S. Institute of Peace

A Shadow on the Daffodils: Preaching from the Big Book of Nobody

Daffs, going wild again.

 

This past First Day (Quaker talk for Sunday) I Zoomed into worship in my Friends meeting, the one out in the farmland of Flyover County, North By-God Carolina, where I missed one of my favorite annual scenes there: the appearance in the back 40 of a big unruly spread of wild daffodils. But I did hear a stirring message.

No one among the elders knows when or by whom the daffodils came. Their location, out behind the community building we fondly call The Hut, isn’t visible from the road, so passersby mostly miss the spread, too bad for them. Continue reading A Shadow on the Daffodils: Preaching from the Big Book of Nobody

Shot Down & Sunk: Pete Hegseth’s “American Crusade” Bags its First High-Ranking Victims: A General, an Admiral, — and Black History Month

 

If Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth should fall off the wagon and be dragged off the public stage to rehab, his Pentagon tenure, however brief or long, will surely be remembered for one thing; or maybe two.

The second would be turning into the answer to a question of the sort that haunts a generation, to wit: “Who lost Ukraine?”

During his maiden visit in mid-February to U.S. bases in Europe, he seemed to be auditioning to head the  honor guard that salutes Vladimir Putin’s victorious entry into the rubble of Kyiv. He acted ready to serve it up on the faux silver platter of MAGA incompetent, arrogant indifference. That would surely be one for the record– and textbooks, fodder for many poignant Banksy wall murals.

But I digress. That is one possible landmark, and (hopefully) the less likely one. Continue reading Shot Down & Sunk: Pete Hegseth’s “American Crusade” Bags its First High-Ranking Victims: A General, an Admiral, — and Black History Month

Pete Hegseth The Crusader Reveals the Two Truly-Madly-Deeply Lethal Loves of His Life

In official statements, Pete Hegseth calls the first one, “Lethality.”

Usually it’s a dry, abstract word. A term that’s launched a thousand PowerPoint slide shows. It’s ideal for air-conditioned classrooms, lit by rows of long tubular fluorescent bulbs. Under the lights, as it is repeated, rows of men in uniform listen, many taking notes, or (if it’s shortly after lunch, struggleto keep their eyes open).

Or at a crowded congressional hearing. “If you’re confirmed as Secretary of Defense,” asked a U. S. Senator, “what would be your mission, Mr. Hegseth?”

It’s the first  significant noun he emits (after, of course, the name Trump), in a crisply-memorized litany:

“He, like me, wants a Pentagon laser-focused on lethality, meritocracy, war-fighting, accountability and readiness.”

Continue reading Pete Hegseth The Crusader Reveals the Two Truly-Madly-Deeply Lethal Loves of His Life