Part of this can be explained by our all-voluntare military, which incentivizes enlistment by providing higher-education opportunities, job training, and world travel that is otherwise mostly unavailable to people in lower socioeconomic strata.

I joined the Marine Corps Reserves to help pay for college. I accepted an ROTC scholarship for the same reason.

After I graduated, serving as an officer in the Air Force, my professional military education often emphasized the critical nature of integration in the ranks, not out of some sense of morality or human decency but for practical, even existential reasons.

The late 20th century military and today's military simply could not function if it were riven by racist animus.

So, the Air Force when I served in the 1980s emphasized what we would call DEI today. And I mean emphasized it hard.

Senior military managers know how critical respect for diversity is in today's armed forces. Yet somehow, Trump was able to find a racist low-level officer to take over the Pentagon. And Trump fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a Black man, reportedly because of a very moving and sensitive speech he gave in the aftermath of George Floyd's murder.

Talk about racist animus in the ranks!

Trump is deliberately fomenting it. And out military will be much the poorer for it.