Simanaitis Says
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ON “WOKE” WORDS
WHEN ONE AS DESPOTIC AND “WEAVING” (i.e., deranged) as Trump enforces MAGA ideologies on us, it’s no wonder that linguistic chaos prevails. Karen Yourish, Annie Daniel, Saurabh Datar, Isaac White, and Lazaro Gamio researched and assembled “These Words Are Disappearing in the New Trump Administration,” The New York Times, March 7, 2025.
The Times researchers observe, “As President Trump seeks to purge the federal government of ‘woke’ initiatives, agencies have flagged hundreds of words to limit or avoid, according to a compilation of government documents.”
Image from The New York Times.
Here are tidbits gleaned from the article, together with my observations.
Administration Changes. The researchers acknowledge, “All presidential administrations change the language used in official communications to reflect their own policies…. Still, the words and phrases listed here represent a marked—and remarkable—shift in the corpus of language being used both in the federal government’s corridors of power and among its rank and file. They are an unmistakable reflection of this administration’s priorities.”
God help us all.
The Dreaded D-Word. I’ve already noted “On Trump—Of All People?!—Controlling the English Language” how the word “diverse” has been transformed from a favorable descriptive to a “foul, dirty word.” The Times researchers provide another asinine assault on this word in a Federal Aviation Administration job page: “You’ll be a part of a diverse workforce utilizing the latest technology and systems dedicated to maintaining the safety and integrity of our civil airspace.”
Nineteen Eighty-Four, anyone?
Climate Crisis, Climate Science. Whose demented ignorance of reality could object to the terms “climate crisis” and particularly “climate science”? Perhaps one who has called climate change a “hoax.”
“Indeed, in some cases,” the Times researchers observe, “guidance against a term’s usage has arrived alongside directives intended to eliminate the concept itself. Federal diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives are one example; the Gulf of Mexico is a very different one.”
Black, Disabilities, Disability, Ethnicity, Female, Hispanic Minority, Latinx, Native American, Women. “For example,” the Times staffers observe, “the Trump administration has frequently framed diversity, equity and inclusion efforts as being inherently at odds with what it has identified as ‘merit,’ and it has argued that these initiatives have resulted in the elevation of unqualified or undeserving people. That rhetorical strategy—with its baked-in assumption of a lack of capacity in people of color, women, the disabled and other marginalized groups—has been criticized as discriminatory.”
Reuters describes recent actions of differential firings that only exacerbate this. See also military.com.
Men Who Have Sex With Men. Curiously, there is no listing of “women who have sex with women.” Or have we reverted to the quaint concept of “Boston Marriages”?
Image from boston.gov.
Note as well, though “female,” “females,” and “feminism” make the list, the binary equivalents do not. Apparently, as NPR observes, masculinity is in.
Dirty Sex Words. In a return to when “binary” was merely a mathematical term, the word “gender” has entered the list in a multiplicity of Trump government deletions. By contrast, see the Canadian Institutes of Health Research definition. See also “What Do We Mean by Sex and Gender?”, Yale School of Medicine, September 19, 2021.
“Sex,” “sexual preference,” and “sexuality” make the Trump list. Curiously, “fitting room abuse” does not.
Gay—Not on This List, But…. The Associated Press, March 7, 2025, reports, “References to a World War II Medal of Honor recipient, the Enola Gay aircraft that dropped an atomic bomb on Japan and the first women to pass Marine infantry training are among the tens of thousands of photos and online posts marked for deletion as the Defense Department works to purge diversity, equity and inclusion content….“
The B-29 Enola Gay bears the name of Enola Gay Tibbets, mother of the craft’s pilot Paul Tibbets.
Forbes, March 7, 2025, reports, “The purge follows Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s directive last week for the Pentagon to ‘remove all DoD news and feature articles, photos, and videos that promote Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI),’ citing Trump’s executive order.”
Geez, even surnames “Gay” led to removal. What utter imbecility.
LGBTQ, LGBT, Non-Binary, Nonbinary, Trans, Transgender, and Transsexual. Times researchers found this at the National Park Service Stonewall National Monument web page: “Before the 1960s, almost everything about living openly as a lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) transgender, or queer (LGBTQ+) person was illegal. The Stonewall Uprising on June 28, 1969 is a milestone in the quest for LGBTQ+ civil rights and provided momentum for a movement.” See NPR‘s report on this; I find its 2019 image particularly haunting.
How much longer before some Hays/McCarthy/MAGA batshit-crazy advocate recognizes that remaining “B”? By the way, “advocate” is on Trump’s list too, but not “hypocrisy.” ds
© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2025.
Simanaitis Says 
How soon before the Trumpists ban “Freedom of Speech”, or just “Freedom”, or even “Free”? And the ignorant, manipulated population remains ignorant and manipulated. The Democracy of the US of A dies so quietly and easily while a few complain quietly and futilely.
Agreed. Let’s not just complain, though but explain what’s rational—and what’s irrational.—ds
The last time something like this happened on this scale in the US outside of Congressionally-declared wartime (the McCarthy/Red Scare period), it lasted between 10 and 15 years depending on how you define its endpoints. There was a buildup to full scale and a slow fadeout that time. This time, it’s coming on more quickly, probably as a function of the Internet. Hopefully, it won’t last as long, but I’m not optimistic about that; if it lasts as long as it did last time, I probably won’t live to see the end of it, and can only hope my child will eventually see some moderation. Happy Monday (is it Thursday already?)!
PS: interesting that the last time around, “Red” was a liberal (Communist, Russian-aligned) identifier and pejorative, while “Red” is now an extremist “Republican” strongly aligned with a Russian dictator. What’s that old line? “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.” 🙄
The Red/Blue identity of American political parties can be linked to the advent of color TV. Real time election reporting was in its infancy in the black/white era, complicated by slower results reporting and TV stations signing off at midnight.
The graphs were also challenged by poor resolution and shades of gray. Color reporting first had Republicans in blue, Democrats in red, and various other parties then active in yellow, green, etc. This somewhat matched their similar parties’ political colors in the UK.
Oddly enough, somehow this only lasted one or two elections, and the networks flipped the colors for the major parties.
Yes, and it occasionally trips in its meter.—ds
One word I’d like to see go a way is “woke”. It’s used to describe ANYTHING that isn’t deeply MAGA, and makes no allowance for any common ground when dealing with topics relating to common human decency. Rational people can discuss matters of differences of opinion, and mediate a compromise that allows for respect and human decency for both sides. MAGA allows no such nuance. To them, when you are woke, you have no legitimacy, deserve no respect and need to be destroyed.
Dennis is right above. It’s up to us to do more than complain, but to raise hell, loudly, widely. Bratman, aka Orange Julius, we know is scarcely educated; his father’s money got him into Wharton, even bought his high school diploma. While at Wharton, Professor William T. Kelley, who taught marketing there 31 years, said repeatedly “‘Donald Trump was the dumbest goddamn student I ever had!’” Kelley retired 1982, died 2011 at 94.
We’ve also heard from a leading linguist that Bratman has the speech of a third grader, and of course, Exxon-Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson and four-star Marine General Jim Mattis, who both spent much time with Bratman, said he has “the reading ability and understanding of a fifth- or sixth-grader.” That was during Trumpty Dumpty’s first term. He’s of course gone further downhill eight long years later, remarkably so.
But the RNC’s hefty donations let the new KKK buy smarter PR flacks and advisors, hence the range of banned words above. A distracted nation of texting, tweeting vidiots will accept the above as the new normal if we don’t act.
The founders of this nation, as well as Thomas Paine, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Twain, George Bernard Shaw, dozens of former Supreme Court justices, thousands of patriots in and out of government, would be aghast at the above meld of dementia and duplicity replacing basic literacy.
Interesting that “female” and “women” are banned but not “male” and “men.” Worse yet, “sex” is banned!