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Comment by eudamoniac | Hacker News Reader

A president could literally shout Korean slurs all day long (I'm Korean) and get a Nazi symbol tattooed on his forehead, and if he continued to do a good job of policymaking I would approve in that poll, though hate the guy. This is what you are not understanding about Trump voters. We really don't care if Trump is racist at all. But that's not because we are racist ourselves. That's just not relevant to the political platform. If he starts passing racist policies, that's bad, but otherwise we don't give a shit.

Leftists, on the other hand, are very highly concerned with the moral purity of their candidates, even above their political efficacy. I don't understand it myself.

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> If he starts passing racist policies, that's bad, but otherwise we don't give a shit.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/03/pentagon-pet...

> Since Trump returned to office in January last year, Pete Hegseth, the rumbustious defense secretary who has made it his mission to remake a military ethos he denounced as “woke”, has fired or forcibly retired 24 generals and senior commanders, with no performance-related reason given.

> About 60% have been Black or female, an approach seemingly driven by the administration’s proclaimed onslaught against “DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] hires”.

so..it's not "racist" when it's "oh all those Black men and women are obviously DEI hires", is that the logic?

60% of any cohort being "black or female" sounds like the population average or below. 50% of people are female, and more than 10% in the USA are black. A random selection of citizens would likely turn up as 60%+ black or female.

I'm not saying this firing wasn't statistically suspect, since I don't know the demographics of that cohort, but I'm guessing based on this misleading phrasing and the lack of information about the cohort that it wasn't.

> I don't know the demographics of that cohort

here it is:

https://www.cfr.org/backgrounders/demographics-us-military

this is upper military leadership. Black individuals account for 6.5%-9% of general officers/admirals, senior female leaders (colonels, generals, and admirals) represent less than 5% of all senior military leadership.

> 60% of any cohort being "black or female" sounds like the population average or below.

doing the math this means a Black or female senior military leader has 8.5-11 times higher chance of being fired by Pete Hegseth compared to a white male counterpart

That seems bad! But at the end of the day it is not bad enough to warrant voting for the other side's policies. I choose conservative policy with some likely *ist firings thrown in over the alternative, for now. Fwiw I voted Obama; the Democrats can win me back, they just haven't.

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