Donald Trump has a habit of blaming everything that goes wrong on “woke” liberal Democratic and diversity equity inclusion policies. This became especially laughable after he blamed DEI for the collision of a military helicopter and a passenger jet, killing 67 people in Washington.
All-Purpose Scapegoat

Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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What happens when Ted finds a real target.
It’s laughable except that it works.
Know that boilerplate at the bottom of the applications? Something like: “Everyone except straight white men is urged to apply.” Know who that pisses off? Well, straight white men. AND gay white men who don’t swish and lisp and who don’t know how to casually mention at a job interview that, wow, could they really go for some erect penis right about now. AND people who aren’t straight white men who don’t want to be looked at as the ones who got in by having the whole system rigged for them and who don’t want to spend their entire career wondering if they got their jobs because they were qualified or because someone wanted to check a box.
The dems, who still haven’t got a plan, and probably won’t all the way up to the crematoria doors — “We’re debating whether to send a sternly, and we mean very gosh darn sternly, worded letter to the New York Times.” — continue to fail to grasp the most important point in political debate: You don’t try to win the people who already agree with you, and you don’t try to win the people who will never agree with you. You go after the ones in the middle, and you convince them you have a better argument than the other side has.
Right now? Trump has an argument that convinces the people who already agree with him and which also appeals to a lot of the people in the middle who simply don’t have the time or energy to listen to a doctoral thesis about how someone who looks like a man HAS TO wear a dress. “But aren’t things like clothing, hair style, jewelry, and makeup social? That is, they aren’t innate. … What? I’m ignorant and a monster for even raising the point? Oh. Hmm, maybe that Trump guy’s onto something.”
The only way to “win” with DEI is to be against it because you will never be able to get enough people to be for what it represents at this point in time. The sooner the dems realize they need to swing to something like universal health care or reducing APRs to no more than 10%, the sooner they’ll have a chance to “come close” to winning the next election.
The DEI blame for the helicopter crash was consistent with their usual rhetoric .. when they thought that one of the three people in the helicopter was transgender. They might still be able to run with the DEI angle because, gasp, it is the case that one of the three in helicopter was not male. They could say that the crash wouldn’t have happened but for the fact that the rightful man that should have been the third was replaced by woman because of some quota. Or maybe they’ll just shut up about DEI for this one, looking for another opportunity down the line.
Yes, the Democrats should be talking about health care, interest rates, inflation, and even climate change and universal basic income. But the Democrats might “win” on DEI too if they admit that they too are against “shaming white people” about prejudice. Then they can roll up their sleeves and talk about specific instances of prejudice that are universally recognized as unconscionable, and recruit people of all ilks to propose solutions to those problems.