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Comment by Moomoomoo309 | Hacker News Reader

The problem with this idea is that "woke" is a moving target that its enemies are defining. Will they change the definition to include things you don't want? Moreover, does it currently actually have the goal to make meritocracy? For example, they've allowed discrimination based on race in government hiring, for example, so that does not bode well for the idea of being judged on merit alone. Explicitly, they are now allowed to judge on race where they were not before. Read through project 2025 - is that what you actually want, because that's what he's gonna implement.

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>For example, they've allowed discrimination based on race in government hiring ... Read through project 2025

I advise you read through the actual Executive Orders than some false propaganda material of at best questionable value.

What Trump is mandating with his EOs are a move back to judging people strictly by their merit, by their character. We are once again on the path to making Martin Luther King's dream a reality.

Here are the EOs with regards to the subject matter at hand:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/endi...

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/refo...

>Americans deserve a government committed to serving every person with equal dignity and respect, and to expending precious taxpayer resources only on making America great.

>Federal employment practices, including Federal employee performance reviews, shall reward individual initiative, skills, performance, and hard work and shall not under any circumstances consider DEI or DEIA factors, goals, policies, mandates, or requirements.

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>This Federal Hiring Plan shall: ... prevent the hiring of individuals based on their race, sex, or religion, and prevent the hiring of individuals who are unwilling to defend the Constitution or to faithfully serve the Executive Branch;

>prevent the hiring of individuals based on their race, sex, or religion, and prevent the hiring of individuals

Did you know the EO that was rescinded had similar verbiage too?[1]

[1] https://archives.federalregister.gov/issue_slice/1965/9/28/1...

MLK explicitly supported reparations for black people. He did not support a system of institutional colorblindness. You can only get this from his writing if you take one famous line from one famous speech and ignore the rest of what he wrote.

> What Trump is mandating with his EOs are a move back to judging people strictly by their merit, by their character. We are once again on the path to making Martin Luther King's dream a reality.

Trump has outright been banning transgender individuals from enlisting in the military and serving. Presumably in a merit-based society you would judge them on the basis of merit, not on a secondary characteristic.

>What Trump is mandating with his EOs are a move back to judging people strictly by their merit, by their character.

Conservatives are OK with rolling everything back and hiding behind words, since right now, most people at the highest levels of power - that do the judging - are white men.

How else do you explain such "merit" based nominations like Hegseth for SecDef, Gaetz for Attorney General, etc. (Gaetz withdrew but getting nominated at all was ridiculous). And if Hegseth is qualified to lead the DoD, then so is anybody who ever served in the military at the rank of Major or higher.

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