this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2025
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Summary

Army Capt. Rebecca M. Lobach, a highly accomplished pilot and top 20% ROTC cadet, was among 67 killed when her Black Hawk helicopter collided with an American Airlines jet near Washington, D.C.

Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth blamed "DEI" for the crash despite no official cause being determined.

Lobach had 450+ flight hours and numerous military honors.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 20 hours ago

It just so happens I've been reading the book The Invisible Gorilla, and shortly before this accident, I read the part about flight simulators and how they would insert planes turning onto a runway that the simulated plane is trying to land on. Some of the people in the simulator never even saw it.

This is a rather common event IRL - called a "runway incursion". The book says in 2007, the FAA recorded 370 at American airports. Most of these don't end up in collisions.

But I couldn't help but wonder if something like this was in play here...humans are not as attentive as we would like to think we are - in other words, "looking is not really seeing". I wonder what will come of a longer, less politically-charged investigation into all factors here. I doubt it's going to be "DEI", but I also don't know if donvict and fElon's actions played a role either - although they probably are not meant to help the situation.

(And I recommend the book, even though I've not finished it. It's quite good)

[–] Yerbouti 73 points 1 day ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (5 children)

Are women considered "diversity" in the US now? At this point only undereducated-white-trash will have the right to work. Good luck lol

[–] [email protected] 14 points 17 hours ago

Trump clearly wants to go back to the 1900s where women weren't allowed to served, especially colored people

[–] [email protected] 13 points 18 hours ago

Yes and they always have. It just marks the success of the programs that women working in top roles has become so normalized that people don't even realize it was different.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 20 hours ago

I mean, white women were the single demographic group to benefit most from affirmative action, despite racists preferring to paint it as a program that only benefited African Americans in their reverse racism arguments, so yeah, they count in my book. Especially when you consider that a large portion of far-right white men want them to occupy the trad wife role and not been seen outside the home and church again.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 16 hours ago

Indeed they are, there's a place for the woman and it's not considered the workforce by these backwards psychotics.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 day ago

In America, no.

In Trumpistan, yes.

[–] [email protected] 205 points 1 day ago (7 children)

They didn't make that DEI accusation because they expected it to be true, so the fact that it's so patemtly false doesn't matter.

They made the accusation just because they're hateful, bigoted pieces of shit trying to appeal to other hateful, bigoted pieces of shit.

Truth means nothing. Hate and greed are the only things that matter to them.

[–] thatKamGuy 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Firehose* of disinformation, which is par for the course.

The complicit media companies rush to cover every absurdity he spouts, thereby passively covers up the fact that his own rushed policies are likely the ultimate culprit of this crash!

His federal worker hiring freeze, and forcing the head of the FAA to resign/step down apparently led to there only being 1 flight controller in the tower; where there needed to be a minimum of 2.

So Trump falls back on his usual strategy of deny early, deny often, deny 100 ways.

..and y’all less than one month into his 48(+?) month term.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 day ago

Exactly! And disputing it in this way just adds credence to the argument. Failing to rejection the premicr wholesale gives tacit approval that sometimes it might be the case, and sets us up to keep having to respond like this, rather than saying any argument centered on DEI is bullshit.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Nah. They made it to force a fake alternative reality for their supporters. Now they can start to hate DEI workers in their normal life!!! Yay!!!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Nah. They made it to force a fake alternative reality for their supporters. Now they can start to hate ~~DEI~~ any non-white-male worker in their normal life!!! Yay!!!

FTFY

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago

Yeah, if she weren't allowed to be in the military and instead was at home making babies (like a real woman), there would've been an objectively worse male pilot instead and wouldn't have been allowed to fly. Thus preventing the tragedy. Won't someone think of the children?

/s

[–] [email protected] 1 points 17 hours ago

I think the made that statment regardless of what the thought.

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[–] [email protected] 222 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (6 children)

This must be the first president in the history of this country to display this much callousness towards innocent victims of a terrible accident and get away with it.

[–] [email protected] 107 points 1 day ago (2 children)

That is what he was voted in to do. Be a bully to everyone the worst of us dislike.

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[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Also the first (and second) republican president to shit on the military.

[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (8 children)

And veterans
And disabled people
And women
...

I still can't fathom by which feat of mass idiocy a man who showed that much disrespect to that many sections of the population won the election...

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

beCAusE hE tEllS iT lIkE it iS

Basically his voter base hates everyone like he does.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The next four years of American politics will be bankrolls of precedence for callousness and getting away with it. Please welcome Neo-America to the stage.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Stop talking as though this will go away in 4 years with an election. This is the US for the foreseeable future. No dictator has ever been removed from power through an election. You can't vote him away. The only thing that will change this is resistance, protest, and revolution.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago

If this was the only thing to talk about, for a few weeks (like in a normal presidency), it would be a 10% drop in approval rating at least.

But we've got the DOD, HHS, CDC, OPM, Treasury, and DOJ all being dismantled, looted, or turning into autocratic institutions.

The magic of Trump's flooding the zone is that there is a finite amount of attention we have and that a week or two is all it takes to lose urgency on any issue. Not only is it impossible for us to respond to this because of all the other things, this distraction helps make it similarly impossible to respond to the rest.

I held a slim hope this fascist creep would take long enough that opposition could be organized. Nope, Project 2025 absolutely thought this through.

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[–] [email protected] 78 points 1 day ago

He's literally blaming it on a woman driver, what a geriatric sexist prick

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Has he even heard of the concept of dignity? How can someone be so loathsome and lack such awareness of it.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 day ago (2 children)

He says the Military has gotten weak and mocks them. Lloyd Austin whom Trump replaced with a FOX entertainment anchor served in the military from 1975-2016 as a 4 star general holding several high ranking positions working his way up to Secretary of Defense. So that would point to me that he believes the military has been weak for 50 years. Then again when he was called to service he said his little footsies hurt and dodged the draft. So what he really knows of the interworking and what our soilders go through for training is nothing.

Or, he simply doesn't want any competent military members to stand in his way while he's breaking laws.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 18 hours ago

Lloyd Austin would not have deployed troops on US soil. That's a major Trump goal.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I might not know much about the military other than having lots of ex-military family, but I know enough about flying and in particular, helicopters to know you don’t get to fly that sort of kit without a LOT of hard work and skill. ‘Rotary wing’ pilots are absolutely batshit crazy. This sinister DEI dogwhistle is abhorrent.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago

Maybe this is what he was trying to draw with his sharpie.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

RIP Captain Lobach and all those who perished. Mango Mussolini and his side kick Hegseth are shitstains that belong in a broken Russian toilet.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 day ago

Reminder: The wording of the trans military ban made no reference to medical issues caused by transition, and outright claimed we were "Without honor, discipline, or an obligation to truth."

The point is to claim the accomplishments of the "other" are unearned

[–] [email protected] 11 points 23 hours ago

Then we're free to say white DEI (aka plain old racism) hires up till the 60s allowed unqualified people to mess up systems in the US.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (7 children)

I hope nobody expects him to learn anything. This will actually just reinforce his anti-DEI beliefs. He'll blame the crash on the fact that the pilot was a woman, use that as proof that "DEI is making our military weaker", and then start issuing executive orders banning women from piloting or even doing anything noteworthy in the military at all. Because doubling down on the stupid is what Trump does. It's all he does. God help us if that woman was even 1% non-white.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 day ago (1 children)

53% of white women voters approve the rapist.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago

Wasn’t one of the Jan 6th rioters (who got shot) a white woman in the military?

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Stop writing articles debunking the stupid, obviously untrue shit that Trump says. Anyone who seriously believes DEI was responsible for this crash is functionally retarded. They are out of reach. Giving this bullshit attention is why we have to deal with so much of it now and clearly we haven't learned that lesson. All we're doing is exposing more dumb people to dumb ideas.

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