Donald Trump’s war on DEI is not about “merit”

Donald Trump Lies are in everything, but lies are scattered everywhere His Executive Order Shuts Down Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) The policies of the federal government impose special taxes on the gullibility of the individual. Efforts to improve diversity “deny, denigrate, and undermine traditional American values ​​of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement,” the order said. This paean to the importance of “excellence” and “hard work” comes from a man just five years ago, A row of medical researchers and doctors looked into their eyes He suggested that he understood science better than they did, even though he had never studied it for a single day in his life. He then posited that Lysol and bleach could be used to treat COVID-19 patients “by injection inside, or almost by flushing, because, you see, it gets into the lungs,” recognizing the basic scientific principle of coating your lungs with toxic substances. He will kill you.

The new executive order insists that hiring diverse applicants “downplays individual merit, competence, hard work, and determination.” It was signed by a man who nominated Pete Hegseth, a substitute anchor for Fox News, to run the Department of Defense. Hegseth’s only previous managerial experience comes from From running two small charities, which led to his removal from leadership. This ode to the value of skills and knowledge comes from the same half-educated president who also nominated Robert Kennedy to run the Health and Human Services Agency, even though… Kennedy claims cognitive decline from brain worm He also refuses to accept the overwhelming scientific evidence that vaccines are safe and effective. The only reason the so-called “meritocracy” is readable is because someone other than Trump wrote it. It’s well known that a “meritocracy”-loving president can’t read a 240-character social media post without multiple grammatical and spelling errors.

These three men embody the notion of incompetence, but they are white, straight, and male. When Trump or any MAGA fan talks about “meritocracy” or “privilege,” this is what they mean: whiteness, integrity, and masculinity.

The more incompetent or ignorant a white man is, the more he is held up as a model of “merit” in MAGA rhetoric. For all the talk of opposing discrimination and believing in a “color-blind” society, MAGA’s actions show that their real goal is to preserve better jobs and opportunities for straight white men, while alienating women, members of the LGBTQ community, and people of color from others. Low-wage, low-status workers.

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This is very evident in other executive orders signed by Trump. On Monday, he signed a mandatory executive order The federal government discriminates against transgender peopleEven stripping them of health care. He also signed an executive order eliminating federal funds To help black farmers and invest in majority black neighborhoods. Neither program has anything to do with “merit,” unless “merit” is code for “white.” It made it legal for federal contractors to discriminate “In employment decisions based on race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin.” As a caper, he is Admiral Linda Fagan was fired from command of the Coast Guard. There were some empty pretexts for this, but it is clear that she was targeted for no other reason than being the first woman to head a branch of the US military.

But the most obvious evidence that Trump and his MAGA minions don’t care about meritocracy can be seen in their admiration for people ignorant of the subject — as long as they’re white men — and their absolute hatred of anyone who actually knows what meritocracy is. They talk about it. It’s a move that treats podcaster Joe Rogan, a college dropout who never seems to research a topic before latching on to it, as the country’s preeminent medical authority. Meanwhile, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Cornell University-educated physician who ran the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 38 years, has become a favorite target of violent threats from Trump loyalists, due to his unwillingness to reject basic scientific facts.

This is just one example of the countless ways Republicans reject real knowledge and skills, believing that power and authority should instead be distributed to white men whose only skill set is to support the right-wing agenda. Decades of climate science are routinely dismissed by MAGA blowhards, who prefer to put their faith in uneducated Fox pundits who laugh about snow continuing to fall in the winter. The validity of evolutionary biology has been proven time and time again for nearly two centuries, without which all the medical innovations that even Republicans rely on would not have been developed. But MAGA prefers it Believe the preachers who claim that Noah’s Ark was real Adam and Eve had pet dinosaurs. Economics, law, environmental science, nutrition, sociology, psychology: no field is safe from spitting on experts by MAGA, which favors the opinions of know-nothing white males.

As McKinsey’s 2023 report showsCompanies that embrace racial and gender diversity in top regions have 39% better financial performance than other companies. But actually, this is also common sense. Women and minorities are underrepresented not because they are inherently less talented, but because they face overt and systemic discrimination. When efforts are made to include more applicants in the hiring process, they will get in the way of talented people who would otherwise be overlooked in a more discriminatory environment.

This was almost comically true during the presidential election, which pitted an intelligent, capable black woman against a man who had almost never read a book, not even the ones written for him. During the only debate Trump could tolerate against Vice President Kamala HarrisShe wiped the floor with him, displaying her sharp wit and understanding of the issues, while he raved incoherently about conspiracy theories accusing Haitian immigrants of eating cats. But millions of voters gave Trump the election anyway, because for all their talk of “meritocracy,” their real belief was that the dumbest white man should get the job before the best black woman. MAGA even went on to call Harris a “DEI candidate,” explaining that the phrase is just a racial slur, and certainly has nothing to do with someone’s actual level of skill or intelligence.

The pandemic has certainly been the ultimate proof that MAGA doesn’t care about doing a good job or hiring the best and the brightest. They want to put a group of idealists in charge, and if the result is widespread system failure, so be it. Literally, Trump and his followers have allowed hundreds of thousands of people to die, instead of accepting that science is real or that leaders should have qualities other than being proudly ignorant white men. And now Republicans are lining up to confirm the clown car equivalent of Trump’s dangerously unqualified nominees to run important federal offices. It is their lack of qualifications that secures them positions, reflecting this deep MAGA hostility toward competence. The last thing Trump or anyone in his coalition wants is a system that actually rewards merit. Under a true meritocracy, none of them would ever work again.