You are absolutely correct. Several years ago I warned that the alphabet community and other minorities were really gonna get hammered because the politicians don’t care about them at all. They care about division. DEI has always been about division. But they’re gonna rename it and the censorship train will continue to travel loudly on the tracks. I am no fan of the current administration, but I was definitely no fan of the prior one. Trump is not about balance he’s about viciousness. I don’t think he cares anymore about the people of this country than the last guy did but I do believe he knows that many Americans were sick of the status quo. The confirmation hearings sure exposed the paid off senators! Wow…
We should require an annual competency, meritocracy and intelligence module. We’ll call it CMI. If you don’t have the common sense to value these things then you shouldn’t be included in exclusive institutions for talented and exclusive individuals
To every Trump initiative, there will be a counterattack. Lawsuits are raining down like a winter in Seattle. They will continue for as long as Trump is in office. They've been going on for 8 years now. The question is how successful they will be. I believe that the population is tired of all the divisiveness, and tired of discrimination being relabeled as tolerance. The hypocrisy is starting to stink so much that almost no-one can avoid smelling it.
If intelligent life is to come back to Earth, I think we should stop the name calling, which characterizes our era, and go back to argumenting, listening to the other side’s arguments and looking for common grounds and eventually compromises. For instance, I think that VP would help his cause a lot if he would refrain from insulting people and their work (shitty, stupid, idiot, …). My spouse has taught me that you can be firm, tenacious and convincing without insulting people; in fact, you get much better results this way. I believe the silent majority wants the return of centrists, which is the only hope to end this childish and destructive behavior. In Canada, there is a Centrist party trying to form and I read in Politico that centrists in the US are working in a Project 2025 of their own.
Let’s call DEI what it is: indoctrination. You are inadvertently discriminating until we show you how to stop. This is a very Soviet style policy. Stalin would kill you, but here, you get to live and experience career loss and humiliation. I don’t think Trump gives a crap about DEI, but liberal elites gave him something to run with that he could not resist.
I dont disagree. However, people arent afraid to speak up anymore. I dont think we’ll go back to fear of cancellation over DEI. Why are the academics so adamant about this ideology? Why cant they let it go?
The left vanguard has always been over-represented in academia. In a previous time it was old fashioned Marxism, more focused on material matters, the economy.
Then the Frankfurt school and critical theory came to America via Marcuse, Foucault and friends, and the Marxist ressentiment was transmuted and turned toward more cultural concerns. That's where we've been ever since. Some academic fields are dominated by it, embrace it in earnest, e.g. branches of the humanities. Others have a loud minority that the rest are frightened to speak against because that minority, like good Marxists, is exceptionally good at wielding bureaucratic power and psychological manipulation to achieve their goals. DEI is one perfect such weapon - it preys on the guilt of well-meaning liberals.
Ex-KGB agent Yuri Bezmenov warned of these tactics in the 80s, warned that there were very motivated minority factions who wished to wield them for revolutionary change from the inside. Antonio Gramsci also gave Marxists a blueprint for the "long march through the institutions" for effecting cultural revolution via slow domination of cultural institutions. It's well under way and has been for decades. There are highly motivated and highly strategic ideologues in the academy with these ideas.
The question is not only why academics won't let go of the ideology (much is explained by simple fear of the ideologically uncommitted), but why revolutionary ideologues won't let go of the academy. The answer is that they need it for strategic reasons; it's where much of culture and policy is born.
im a simpleton. I understand this in theory. However, pragmatically speaking, are they not jeopardizing their own jobs? I cant imagine the majority of professors are black, trans women with a missing leg?
No, in fact Marcuse and Foucault and pretty much the whole Frankfurt school were all white men. When I said "minority factions" I was referring to ideology. The majority don't belong to one of these rarefied identity categories but the majority *are* sympathetic to neo-Marxist ideas or susceptible to manipulation by threats to job security coming from bloated academic bureaucracy crafted by ideologues in their own image. Everyone toes the line to keep their jobs and stay in their colleagues' good graces.
As a recent retiree from an organization that has a DEI program, I have to say that my experience with it is pretty different from the hysteria I’ve been reading about on social media and other places. Jon Stewart said in a recent podcast, that the goal of DEI is not “to change the color palette.” The goal, as I see it, is to add depth of experience that improves our organizations. If your DEI program is akin to a quota system, then you’re doing it wrong.
In the aforementioned podcast, Jon Stewart was interviewing former NJ Governor Chris Christie. Governor Christie described his DEI experience as the following: as a US Attorney, he made sure to interview as many ethnic (and other) groups as he could, and if they were good lawyers, he would hire them. That’s it. They had to be good lawyers. I can’t find anything wrong with that.
Helen I totally agree with you and Christie. I just don’t think the majority “get it” - is it fear? Is it demand from the DEI police? I worked for a very large healthcare org. We were told that 30% of hires were to be minority. Full stop. MOST are clearly doing it wrong.
Well, maybe someday we can figure out how to actually do it right, rather than dismiss it entirely whilst pronouncing it evil, divisive, and other things I’ve been hearing. I’m not saying it’s easy. I just think we probably benefit from diverse points of view (there’s that “D” word again, Diversity). I agree with Dr. Prasad that family income is probably an important consideration that should be included (oh, there’s that “I” word, Inclusion).
I love how you’ve picked up the flag and started fighting on all fronts. So much of these battles are about common sense unmasking supposed compassion for past or present injustices based on skin color, sex, or other markers.
It would be good to hear from you some ferocious, evidence based criticism of Trump, and less on the Covid response, DEI, etc., as valid as your assessments may be. We get it.
Tell us about Marty Makary and why you like him. I liked his book Unaccountable. But, according to Merrill Goozner, Makary's recent book Blind Spots: When Medicine Gets It Wrong, has only two short critical mentions of the pharmaceutical industry. And you want him to head the FDA? See https://gooznews.substack.com/p/the-contrarian-addiction for more on Makarty. Give us your response to Goozner and why you like Makary. You think he'll take on Big Pharma and Big Food? I don't.
Trump IS the evidence for criticism. I abhor his style, his narcissism, and his way of “reporting.” However, I have to admit I prefer it over the smoke and mirrors that, for example, were cleared during kennedy’s confirmation hearings; Warren was the clearest along with sanders.
There's a reason political scientists and political historians make very few predictions, and when they do, they're very often wrong. And they rarely anticipate seismic changes like Hitler, collapse of the USSR...Trump's unconstitutional seizure of power after a 1.5 percentage point electoral swing, one of the smallest ever, not even a majority. Only 0.15 percent of all voters determined the ghastly outcome. Did you predict that?
I don’t think many would take issue with supporting equity, diversity, and inclusion. But “DEI” is something else again. It seems to be a specific thing that must conform to a certain set of rules or else it doesn’t truly qualify as DEI. And as VP says, not all diversity applies. I see very little mention of diversity of age, for example.
DEI = DIE and is a trojan horse. The central goal of DIE is to subvert meritocracy and use the hierarchical "intersectional oppression" metrics to eliminate competition along with true diversity of thoughts, views and opinions. It certainly could come roaring back from academia, unless enough people in academia wake up when it is in a state of torpor during the Trump presidency. Second, we don't know what is going to happen with federal policy to perhaps put it into permanent quiescence - so far, the last month politically has already been one heck of a year. If enough competent people get into the political system in the right positions, we will have a chance.
You are absolutely correct. Several years ago I warned that the alphabet community and other minorities were really gonna get hammered because the politicians don’t care about them at all. They care about division. DEI has always been about division. But they’re gonna rename it and the censorship train will continue to travel loudly on the tracks. I am no fan of the current administration, but I was definitely no fan of the prior one. Trump is not about balance he’s about viciousness. I don’t think he cares anymore about the people of this country than the last guy did but I do believe he knows that many Americans were sick of the status quo. The confirmation hearings sure exposed the paid off senators! Wow…
We should require an annual competency, meritocracy and intelligence module. We’ll call it CMI. If you don’t have the common sense to value these things then you shouldn’t be included in exclusive institutions for talented and exclusive individuals
Scratch that. Replace intelligence with integrity, that’s more important.
To every Trump initiative, there will be a counterattack. Lawsuits are raining down like a winter in Seattle. They will continue for as long as Trump is in office. They've been going on for 8 years now. The question is how successful they will be. I believe that the population is tired of all the divisiveness, and tired of discrimination being relabeled as tolerance. The hypocrisy is starting to stink so much that almost no-one can avoid smelling it.
Agree.
If intelligent life is to come back to Earth, I think we should stop the name calling, which characterizes our era, and go back to argumenting, listening to the other side’s arguments and looking for common grounds and eventually compromises. For instance, I think that VP would help his cause a lot if he would refrain from insulting people and their work (shitty, stupid, idiot, …). My spouse has taught me that you can be firm, tenacious and convincing without insulting people; in fact, you get much better results this way. I believe the silent majority wants the return of centrists, which is the only hope to end this childish and destructive behavior. In Canada, there is a Centrist party trying to form and I read in Politico that centrists in the US are working in a Project 2025 of their own.
Yes, please to a centrist party in Canada.
More nightmare speculation than evidence-based?
Let’s call DEI what it is: indoctrination. You are inadvertently discriminating until we show you how to stop. This is a very Soviet style policy. Stalin would kill you, but here, you get to live and experience career loss and humiliation. I don’t think Trump gives a crap about DEI, but liberal elites gave him something to run with that he could not resist.
I dont disagree. However, people arent afraid to speak up anymore. I dont think we’ll go back to fear of cancellation over DEI. Why are the academics so adamant about this ideology? Why cant they let it go?
The left vanguard has always been over-represented in academia. In a previous time it was old fashioned Marxism, more focused on material matters, the economy.
Then the Frankfurt school and critical theory came to America via Marcuse, Foucault and friends, and the Marxist ressentiment was transmuted and turned toward more cultural concerns. That's where we've been ever since. Some academic fields are dominated by it, embrace it in earnest, e.g. branches of the humanities. Others have a loud minority that the rest are frightened to speak against because that minority, like good Marxists, is exceptionally good at wielding bureaucratic power and psychological manipulation to achieve their goals. DEI is one perfect such weapon - it preys on the guilt of well-meaning liberals.
Ex-KGB agent Yuri Bezmenov warned of these tactics in the 80s, warned that there were very motivated minority factions who wished to wield them for revolutionary change from the inside. Antonio Gramsci also gave Marxists a blueprint for the "long march through the institutions" for effecting cultural revolution via slow domination of cultural institutions. It's well under way and has been for decades. There are highly motivated and highly strategic ideologues in the academy with these ideas.
The question is not only why academics won't let go of the ideology (much is explained by simple fear of the ideologically uncommitted), but why revolutionary ideologues won't let go of the academy. The answer is that they need it for strategic reasons; it's where much of culture and policy is born.
im a simpleton. I understand this in theory. However, pragmatically speaking, are they not jeopardizing their own jobs? I cant imagine the majority of professors are black, trans women with a missing leg?
No, in fact Marcuse and Foucault and pretty much the whole Frankfurt school were all white men. When I said "minority factions" I was referring to ideology. The majority don't belong to one of these rarefied identity categories but the majority *are* sympathetic to neo-Marxist ideas or susceptible to manipulation by threats to job security coming from bloated academic bureaucracy crafted by ideologues in their own image. Everyone toes the line to keep their jobs and stay in their colleagues' good graces.
As a recent retiree from an organization that has a DEI program, I have to say that my experience with it is pretty different from the hysteria I’ve been reading about on social media and other places. Jon Stewart said in a recent podcast, that the goal of DEI is not “to change the color palette.” The goal, as I see it, is to add depth of experience that improves our organizations. If your DEI program is akin to a quota system, then you’re doing it wrong.
In the aforementioned podcast, Jon Stewart was interviewing former NJ Governor Chris Christie. Governor Christie described his DEI experience as the following: as a US Attorney, he made sure to interview as many ethnic (and other) groups as he could, and if they were good lawyers, he would hire them. That’s it. They had to be good lawyers. I can’t find anything wrong with that.
Helen I totally agree with you and Christie. I just don’t think the majority “get it” - is it fear? Is it demand from the DEI police? I worked for a very large healthcare org. We were told that 30% of hires were to be minority. Full stop. MOST are clearly doing it wrong.
Well, maybe someday we can figure out how to actually do it right, rather than dismiss it entirely whilst pronouncing it evil, divisive, and other things I’ve been hearing. I’m not saying it’s easy. I just think we probably benefit from diverse points of view (there’s that “D” word again, Diversity). I agree with Dr. Prasad that family income is probably an important consideration that should be included (oh, there’s that “I” word, Inclusion).
This is not evidence based. Crystal ball based. Why put that out?
I love how you’ve picked up the flag and started fighting on all fronts. So much of these battles are about common sense unmasking supposed compassion for past or present injustices based on skin color, sex, or other markers.
It would be good to hear from you some ferocious, evidence based criticism of Trump, and less on the Covid response, DEI, etc., as valid as your assessments may be. We get it.
Tell us about Marty Makary and why you like him. I liked his book Unaccountable. But, according to Merrill Goozner, Makary's recent book Blind Spots: When Medicine Gets It Wrong, has only two short critical mentions of the pharmaceutical industry. And you want him to head the FDA? See https://gooznews.substack.com/p/the-contrarian-addiction for more on Makarty. Give us your response to Goozner and why you like Makary. You think he'll take on Big Pharma and Big Food? I don't.
Trump IS the evidence for criticism. I abhor his style, his narcissism, and his way of “reporting.” However, I have to admit I prefer it over the smoke and mirrors that, for example, were cleared during kennedy’s confirmation hearings; Warren was the clearest along with sanders.
There's a reason political scientists and political historians make very few predictions, and when they do, they're very often wrong. And they rarely anticipate seismic changes like Hitler, collapse of the USSR...Trump's unconstitutional seizure of power after a 1.5 percentage point electoral swing, one of the smallest ever, not even a majority. Only 0.15 percent of all voters determined the ghastly outcome. Did you predict that?
Yeah! That. I hope that is not the future
I don’t think many would take issue with supporting equity, diversity, and inclusion. But “DEI” is something else again. It seems to be a specific thing that must conform to a certain set of rules or else it doesn’t truly qualify as DEI. And as VP says, not all diversity applies. I see very little mention of diversity of age, for example.
DEI = DIE and is a trojan horse. The central goal of DIE is to subvert meritocracy and use the hierarchical "intersectional oppression" metrics to eliminate competition along with true diversity of thoughts, views and opinions. It certainly could come roaring back from academia, unless enough people in academia wake up when it is in a state of torpor during the Trump presidency. Second, we don't know what is going to happen with federal policy to perhaps put it into permanent quiescence - so far, the last month politically has already been one heck of a year. If enough competent people get into the political system in the right positions, we will have a chance.
It's always blood in the end.