By Emil Amok Guillermo
Make no mistake, affirmative action is not dead. Trump declared it to be last week. But as per usual, he was lying.
When the U.S. Senate confirmed the oft inebriated Pete Hegseth, whose own mother declared him an abusive womanizer, and for whom there was ample evidence that as a former head of some small veterans non-profits, he was supremely unqualified, it all just didn’t matter.
We now have the least qualified person to lead the Department of Defense, the largest and most demanding of our government’s bureaucracies.
But Hegseth had one thing going for him.
He was Trump-like, which pleases the most important person in the nation.
When 47, Trump, first saw the former FOX weekend host, it was like he saw his own image, someone with the skill to filibuster and bully the media. That’s the job, after all. Not governing. Not budgeting. Not being an expert on defense matters.
In addition, just like Trump, Hegseth showed an adeptness in handling salacious claims to match the Trumpster’s Hall of Shame that includes Stormy Daniels and E. Jean Carrol.
Did Hegseth know to get a non-disclosure from a woman? Of course he did.
These are the critical things that say to Trump, this guys a keeper.
But in December, even J.D. Vance had his doubts. When details of Hegseth’s less than stellar record came out, Axios reported Vance said, “Pete isn’t 100 percent dead. But he might be 90 percent dead. “
But like Trump, Hegseth didn’t give up. And he survived. Friday’s 50-50 vote showed some Republicans had a spine. But not enough to rival homo erectus.
Remember how people cheered when Trump heralded in his inaugural address that America was a now meritocracy?
I guess Hegeseth sets the new standard. But it can get even lower when the commander is chief is a guy whose been convicted of 34 felonies.
Perhaps it’s time for a redefinition of American exceptionalism. The freest country bound by the Constitution, so different from the rest of the world?
Not really.
No, “exceptionalism” now means we make exceptions for friends of Trump.
Compromised. White. And beholden to him.
White affirmative action.
Bad for the nation. Good for Trump.
When Trump asked former Pentagon Secretary Mark Esper to shoot Black Lives Matter protestors in the legs, Esper revealed in his memoir, “Sacred Oath,” his answer.
Esper said no.
Would Hegseth answer the same way today?
WHY MCKINLEY MATTERS
The most significant Trump moment for Filipino Asian Americans at the Inaugural may have been when 47 first mentioned Denali in Alaska–the highest peak in the nation, renamed by President Obama–would get a sex change.
It had been just a massive hill, a big white mountain peak, the largest in North America. But it was named Mt. McKinley when a New York writer, impressed by then-Republican candidate William McKinley, transformed the mountain into a big white male.
Kind of made sense.
The U.S. bought Alaska from Russia in 1867 for $7.2 million. It was all about American expansion. (Sound like someone’s hankering for Greenland?) McKinley was our imperial president whose expansion vision included the Philippines as the first U.S. colony.
Obama’s renaming of the peak in 2015 was not political correctness but simply the recognition that a rock is a rock. And so he named it after the Alaskan Athabascan people’s word, meaning “The Great One.”
It could be a woman.
And so when Trump reclaimed the name of the big white rock through executive order, you know he saw himself first.
But that would be too much.
His meme crypto coin launch last week was me-me-me enough for now. His $Trump coin, in less than a week, was worth tens of BILLIONS of dollars, a coin with no underlying value except for what people have been willing to throw at it. So far, it’s been bid up close to $60 billion. He can afford a little humility in his first week in office.
In Trump’s view, McKinley was great but not greater than him. After all, Trump survived an assassination attempt. He prefers assasination survivors.
Also, Trump doesn’t want to be just the tallest peak in North America; he wants to remake all of America in his image.
That’s why after week one the subtext of McKinley is important. He’s the backward milestone.
Military assisted deportations, birthright citizenship challenge, it all sends the country back in time.
McKINLEY CLUB MEMORY AND BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP
Years ago, I once sat under McKinley’s portrait at a private club in Ohio. I didn’t realize until later that I should have been vomiting my lunch.
McKinley is the man who colonized my father and all the Filipinos after the Spanish-American War.
If you wondered how far back we are going as Trump drives his cybertruck in reverse, it’s like a wrong way “Back to the Future.” More like back to the past to at least 1898, when Filipinos were seen as colonial toys, and few were allowed into America.
McKinley was Trump’s soft introduction in his inaugural address to his true intentions. He didn’t mention birthright citizenship until much later in the day.
But to undo the Constitution is a bold move, and it would reverse an Asian American pillar in our Constitution’s 14th Amendment, the Wong Kim Ark decision.
I’ve written so many times about Wong Kim Ark since conservatives started barking about birthright citizenship in the 1990s. But now everyone should be aware of the issue and the Asian American born in San Francisco to Chinese parents in the 1890s.
Wong’s saga begins when his non-citizen parents go back to China, and he subsequently visits them. But when he returned home, Wong was barred from re-entry. He had to fight the Supreme Court in a case that affirmed the 14th Amendment’s birthright citizenship to those born on American soil.
That was in 1898, and it’s been law ever since. But now Trump is defiantly challenging it all.
Because he can.
It’s make-work noise. Already, one judge has called the attempt “blatantly unconstitutional.”
But Trump’s pressing on, setting the tone for 2025 and beyond.
Think of the forces that said no back in 1898 to birthright citizenship. They were the same Americans that didn’t like anyone of color in our country. Mexicans weren’t the key targets back then. It was Asians, specifically the Chinese, the hatred for whom inspired the first Chinese Exclusion Act, of 1882, the first time an ethnic group was singled out that way in America.
The history subtext is overwhelming.
Trump is sending America in reverse, to the days of McKinley, when people of color didn’t measure up to the big white peak.
Add Hegseth’s approval, and make no mistake, after week one Trump has us hurtling backward toward a country where white was supreme.
That’s not 2025, but it’s why Trump yearns for McKinley. That’s how far back we’re going in Trump’s time machine.
Emil Guillermo is an award-winning journalist and commentator. He’s written a weekly “Amok” column on Asian American issues since 1995.
Watch his micro-talk show “Emil Amok’s Takeout/What Does an Asian American Think?” on www.YouTube.com/emilamok1 Or join him on http://www.patreon.com/emilamok
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