The hard-left is just nuts.
There’s ample evidence of that, but here’s the latest. There’s a debate on the hard-left about DEI. That’s a little bit surprising, since you’d think they’d all be outraged at Trump’s efforts to dismantle it in government and discourage it everywhere else.
But it turns out that some leftists actually have a sensible view on this… until they keep talking.
“I am definitely happy this stuff is buried for now,” said Bhaskar Sunkara, the president of the leftist publication The Nation. “I hope it doesn’t come back.”
And when the DNC chose its new chairman on February 1st, the candidates were asked if they would increase the number of transgender people appointed to DNC seats. All said they would, except for Faiz Shakir, who said he disagreed with constituting the committee based on people’s identities.
I cheered when I read that.
But then Shakir, a former manager of Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign, said DEI programs often served to divide the working class and “soften the actual confrontation with corporate power we need in society.”
I moaned.
It turns out that Shakir’s wing of the hard-left sees the world in Marxist terms. There has to be this massive confrontation between the corporate power and the people and any moderating influence, like DEI, is evil because it only puts off the inevitable. DEI makes them think they’re victims of racism when, in fact, they’re victims of capitalism. Everybody’s a victim; it’s just a question of who is the oppressor.
This comes down to a debate between those on the left who want to hate people based on race versus those who prefer to hate them based on class. In both cases it’s senseless because 95% of Americans couldn’t care less. They’re concerned about the price of eggs. They don’t see things in terms of either race or class struggle. They see things in terms of the struggle to pay for stuff they need. They think the answer is a better job and lower prices, not a revolution.
And most importantly. they don’t see themselves as faceless members of some tribe — as the hard-left wants to see everyone — whether that’s a tribe of skin color or a tribe of economic class. They see themselves primarily as the individuals they are — independent of the trivia of race, gender and class — and both responsible for and capable of their own self-advancement.
YSDA stands for:
Free speech.
The rule of law.
Reason.
Tolerance.
Pluralism.
Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos 
Dave, I get that you’re a centrist, but it sounds like you are baffled by the very existence of conventional left-of-center politics in this country. It is not “hard left” to be concerned about the extreme wealth inequality and corporate power that characterizes modern America.
If you want the Democrats to win back the working class, the biggest problem they face is that voters are now more likely to say that Democrats look after the rich. How exactly do you expect them to counter that perception if they’re not going to take aim at the oligarchs who are now looting the federal treasury and gutting the social safety net?
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I don’t disagree with your point about income inequality. Where we differ, Jack, is in the approach. I don’t think most working class people are mad at the owners of their businesses. They see them as job providers. They’re not mad at billionaires. They want to BE billionaires. They don’t like the government telling them what to do and they resent DOWN the economic ladder, not up it. I’m not saying that’s right. I’m saying it’s a reality. And messages and policy proposals that are built around “class struggle” will fail every time.
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I think Reagan told you that and you’ve believed it ever since. The most consistent polling trend in politics is that “raising taxes rich” is a very popular proposition:
https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/396737/average-american-remains-higher-taxes-rich.aspx
And Trump’s perceived subservience to fellow billionaires has become perhaps his greatest political vulnerability:
“U.S. adults broadly think it’s a bad thing if the president relies on billionaires for advice about government policy, according to the poll. About 6 in 10 U.S. adults say this would be a “very” or “somewhat” bad thing, while only about 1 in 10 call it a very or somewhat good thing, and about 3 in 10 are neutral.”
https://apnews.com/article/doge-musk-trump-corruption-government-efficiency-16243280f446ea85ef50ff106c7e2841
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Suggested reading:
Chris Rufo’s “America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything”
You will gain appreciation of the truly long game that the hard left played to get us to the pinnacle of DEI.
Relatively speaking Rufo wrote this book ages ago. He didn’t foresee the preference cascade that brought it all down so quickly.
I say “all down” but of course the cancer will still fester in the Universities.
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Ya, and listening to Gaetz and Duffy (the best and brightest?!) try to spin the tragic plane accident last week or Trump blaming the CA fires or the Baltimore Bridge Collapse, really everything, on DEI isn’t crazy. Claiming all hiring will be merit based!!! The irony, of course, is that none of them are in the positions they are currently in based on merit or smarts. What the dismantling of DEI is, is going BACK to nepotism, good old boys club, who knows who and who’s got the most money. At least DEI aspired to do the right thing and cut some of that crap out. They are trying to make the default setting on competence in America be a white guy and you are helping them.
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JD Vance recently posted on threads defending the jerk who boasted about being proud of being a racist before racism was cool. It seems fairly clear that posting things like this is partly to “own the libs” and troll – but it is also being an asshole. For some reason assholery is highly respected among the magats. Virtue signaling is annoying and self serving, but does not qualify as assholery. The war on DEI has real consequences. You’ve said a number of times that there is no room for DEI in Higher Ed. If you take away DEI in higher education you stop the ability to offer services to provide disability accommodations. This LTE shows the importance of DEI for a blind student:
https://www.startribune.com/readers-write-dei-usdot-memo-cancer-treatment-policing/601219691
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To be clear, I hope I’ve never said that there is no place for DEI in higher education or anywhere else. My problem with DEI is how it has been practiced in many cases. DEI programs that try to make institutions more welcoming for diverse populations are wonderful and I strongly support them. What I object to is stuff that keys off of thinkers like Ibram X. Kendi — that is, making people feel like oppressors simply for having white skin, no matter their personal beliefs and actions.
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Ibram X represents an extreme view. There are extremists on both sides.
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True. But Kendi’s views were adopted in DEI programming that was pervasive in government, nonprofits, corporations and especially academia.
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Actually you have said there is no place in Higher Ed for DEI, without the qualifier that you didn’t like the way higher education institutions used Kendi’s work in their work. UW Mission Statement – revised 1988, says: “It also seeks to attract and serve students from diverse social, economic and ethnic backgrounds and to be sensitive and responsive to those groups which have been underserved by higher education.” Your posts about DEI seem to parrot Chris “Ashley Madison” Rufo. Rufo isn’t an honest broker. His “research” on DEI mostly consists of quote mining.
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Never heard Chris Rufo.
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By the way, I am active in the Democratic party, and I’d be fine with reversing that policy. That policy is something I have seen only in the Democratic party, and not in other businesses, non-profits, K12 and Higher Education institutions. Your argument is a huge straw man.
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Anti-DEI policy becomes deadly when applied to health research. Think about it. Sickle Cell Anemia is prevalent in the black community, Tay sachs is concentrated among Jews etc.
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Is this how you want Higher Ed Institutions to behave?
https://www.startribune.com/university-minnesota-law-pausing-dei-leader-hire/601215934
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It takes almost total blindness to history and reality to call race, gender and class trivial. While yes, those traits have no bearing on anyone’s intelligence, they sure do impact people’s lot in life. Whiteness isn’t a race – it’s an ideology that believes in unearned privilege and rigid social hierarchy.
For all the right-wing misinformation about DEI and our current “return to merit,” it should be comically obvious by looking at the presidential administration that merit has little to do with being placed into positions of right-wing power and authority.
While DEI did have examples where it was co-opted by idiots or liberal racists, the basic concept starts with the belief that smart, talented, and capable people exist in similar proportions between all races and cultures. This is a premise that many disagree with (like white supremacists, for example) so of course anyone who rejects that premise will be against DEI efforts.
But, starting with that premise, if your workplace is overwhelmingly one narrow demographic, basic math says there’s a high probability that there’s something screening out merited candidates. So you critically look in the mirror at your culture and hiring practices. Then after you do some internal improvement, suppose you still have this same disparity. The next logical conclusion is that there must be a wider societal, systemic discrimination beyond your workplace, so you might work to fix that, because that is preventing potential highly-qualified candidates from being able to even apply for jobs at your workplace, and that’s a bad thing for your profits.
In summary, DEI is supposed to be about ensuring that merited people can have fair opportunities to profitably use their natural skills and talents. It was not supposed to be a “hire unqualified people of color” effort. Merit has NOT been the primary qualification in most aspects of life in American history: if you’re in the right fraternity or country club or family (thus goes without saying you’re the correct race/gender/class) and you make the bosses feel good about themselves, you don’t have to be the most qualified person for the job, you just have to be minimally capable (if that… reference the current confirmation hearings). Consider the common advice that networking is the way to get ahead, “it’s who you know.” That points to a widespread normalization of non-merit based hiring – not just historically but today.
DEI had potential to dismantle this discriminatory system, so the power structure killed it. Back to the good old days… now White bosses can get back to comfortably blaming people of color themselves for not being smart enough to work for their company.
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