Snapshot: Trashing the Legacy of Courageous Achievement
By plans to rename ships, Trump's Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is seeking the erasure of brave Americans like Harvey Milk, Harriet Tubman, Thurgood Marshall and Medgar Evans
How dare they. This disgraceful regime comprised of incompetents, sycophants and miscreants is now seeking to remove from U.S. Navy ships the names of great and courageous Americans because they don’t align with their sick and twisted view of the world. This might seem like a minor story amid the daily flood of transgressions, but it represents their abhorrent and ongoing effort to deny our history and fuel doubt about the meaning of America.
The first renaming concerns the USNS Harvey Milk, a John Lewis-class oiler, christened in 2021 for the assassinated gay rights activist and elected San Francisco politician who was also a Navy veteran. Note this hostile act—instigated by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth—comes during Pride Month.
Other trailblazers reportedly on the hit list: the unimaginably courageous Harriet Tubman, the former slave who risked her life again and again to bring hundreds of souls out of the bonds of slavery; Thurgood Marshall, the first Black Supreme Court justice; Supreme Court Justice and feminist icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg; Medgar Evers, a civil rights leader who was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan; and Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, both influential labor leaders.
How did the Defense Department justify its plans? “Secretary Hegseth is committed to ensuring that the names attached to all DOD installations and assets are reflective of the commander-in-chief’s priorities, our nation’s history, and the warrior ethos,” read the statement released by the Pentagon.
Get that? The warrior ethos. In the Trump regime’s commitment to destroy any signs of diversity, equity or inclusion, they are disgracefully targeting women, people of color and gays—as if their bravery and dedication to American values lacks our respect and their achievements should be forgotten.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was quick to condemn the plan. It “is a shameful, vindictive erasure of those who fought to break down barriers for all to chase the American Dream,” the California congresswomen said in a statement. “Our military is the most powerful in the world—but this spiteful move does not strengthen our national security or the ‘warrior’ ethos. Instead, it is a surrender of a fundamental American value: to honor the legacy of those who worked to build a better country.”
As a news article from the U.S. Naval Institute explained the actions expected to be carried out by Navy Secretary John Phelan, “Renaming a Navy ship is rare and an order for the Secretary of the Navy to rename a ship has almost no historical precedent.” Military.com, which first broke the story, noted that “Navy traditions consider renaming a ship to be taboo.”
But no act of desecration is taboo for Trump sycophant Hegseth, Trump himself or the rest of his hateful regime when they see an opportunity to degrade the public’s capacity to know and remember American history. That’s why it’s important to spotlight these grotesque attacks on diverse Americans who contributed to our county by living lives of meaning and purpose.
Let’s all continue to sing the praises of the great pioneering Americans who’ve helped sustain the American democratic project, pursued justice and sought to create a better life for us all. They are a reminder of what we’re fighting for in the face of anti-American Trump cultists who imagine white nationalist rule won’t make us poorer, uglier and increasingly irrelevant.
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This has nothing to do with DEI. It is simple and plain bigotry, misogyny, and racism. What happens when these hateful acts discourage people of color from enlisting? They are already having trouble making their quotas.
Toddler Hegseth believes that if he cannot see these people they cease to exist. Clearly, he does not know of the old maritime superstition that re-naming a ship is bad luck. It is also an abomination, as he tries to wipe out courageous people. He needs to see their names everywhere he goes. What a small, petty man he is--one who knows that he will never demonstrate even a fraction of the courage that these people did.