Sorting the madness of King Donald
Separating the Trump-swamp from common sense
First of a series.
Let’s start with Donald Trump’s war on DEI.
By week 2 of Donald’s Blitzkrieg month, everything has been colored by his war on DEI, and his pre-fab edicts that make DEI ‘illegal’, in US federal agencies and programs that depend upon federal funding or charter.
As everyone knows, DEI stands for Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion. Useful, then, to review the question, What are the roots of the acronym, and why has Maga been mobilizing its base against it so easily?
Quick answer. Someone about 20 years ago created a 3-letter acronym, DEI, and along with it, a unified political campaign or movement. Today that might be called a big mistake.
To understand this, examine each letter of the acronym. D stands for diversity, which means promoting a non-homogenous workplace or popular base culture; also, recognizing what many Western countries have now become: ‘visibly mixed’ or mixed in other prominent ways as opposed to the majority-European landscapes of the past.
Then, there is Inclusivity. This is generally defined as ‘including in the general workforce, people who have traditionally been excluded’. However, in some European-based cultures, it means ‘including new immigrations in the whole picture of the country’.
In both cases, the strategy or tactic would often be to arbitrarily set goals or benchmarks, or less arbitrarily, favor one person over another for social gain and opportunity. This can be done in certain cases by discretion.
Then, there’s E, Equity. In the current online Merriam-Webster (2025), Equity is defined as ‘fairness or justice in the way people are treated’.
Problems
D and I are social aspirations based on the abstract values of a society and on expressions of group identity, with outreach to those groups that have been rationally judged marginalized, either by privilege or prejudice, or by crass commercial calculation such as ‘the target audience’.
Equity, however, is customarily not about outreach; it’s justice and fairness, two closely allied concepts that should have nothing to do with identity. Justice and fairness compose the bedrock of constitutional rights and legal codes and practices. Justness means adherence to written law or regulation, and fairness should be in the operation or application of that adherence.
Justice is usually adjudicated in criminal courts or less formal legal chambers like a traffic court; it may be found in a judge’s legal right to color the law, by mitigating punishment in sentencing. Fairness is sometimes found in the law, but most often adjudicated in civil courts or tribunals. Fairness can also be embedded in extra-legal and special codes, such as a union wage scale, or a code of personnel evaluation, promotion, and treatment; or, the judging of competitors for state contracts and artistic contests; sports; and betting.
All of which means that the E is a formal, measurable, and legalistic standard, while the D and I are largely aspirational.
We can probably say that equity has been tested and defined over thousands of years in many civilizations. Historic court precedent forms part of its interpretations, not just the original ‘law’. However, aspirations change with the times and are sometimes massive and sudden. They may not be restricted to the philosophy of the Law, but go toward the goals of cognitive growth, social cohesion, order, and even ‘happiness’. This can undercut formal ‘justice’.
I cite examples of this in an earlier post on this stack: the current ban on the term ‘color-blind’ for policy and law, a term that was a liberal benchmark for 200 years; and the validation of a new demand, that applicants for programs or grants identify themselves in non-bona-fide ways, ways that are not relevant to qualifications of the applicant, and even by photograph, a practice that was decried as ‘racist’, ‘biased’ or discriminatory, over the history of liberalism.
So we can ask, why was the E thrown into the acronym?
Practical outcomes
The DEI configuration, if left intact, is a conflation — a bit like calling up a roofer to get your shingles redone, while he also reinstalls your electrical wiring and sewer line. It really doesn’t add up. Not occupying someone else’s lane can be a benefit. If you write a court finding that says “This law violates the right of a defendant to legal representation and protection of his right not to self-incriminate,” you are a judge in a high court; if, on the other hand, you legislate the superseding privilege of certain participants in any disputed matter, and which is not regulated by ‘law’, and you do it for groups you have defined as under-represented or ‘exceptional’, you might be violating Equity in order to achieve Inclusivity.
(On the other hand, if a judge rules that, by offering prior privilege to an alleged victim of an injustice, e.g., the right to not be named publicly in procedure, you reasonably and demonstrably allow justice to be done in the first place, and this can be perfectly legal.)
My own take
When the outreach of DI overtakes the law and order of E, it’s over-reach. Law is not allowed to coincide with political favor, political policy, or any other favor; but outreach is definitively skewed. On the face of it, D and I say that formal equality isn’t enough, we shouldn’t legislate, for example, that only 51% of a public service agency be D-I staffed by women to achieve ‘historic reparation’ by virtue of being 51% of the population; we should go further, pushing aside formal equality, to negate it for a higher benefit. That’s a matter of debate, at the very least. Still, the latter-day women’s movement has repudiated formal equality because women’s lives and thoughts are not just female versions of male lives and thoughts.
Based on that, a hiring entity wouldn’t practice formal equity but rather, social improvement through overloading. That could be beneficial to the hiring entity in the long run; but the system is then an inequitable hiring policy. (On the other hand, you might allow a policy of calling in more members of such minorities for a second interview; or for allowing a larger margin for on-the-job upgrading; or, for arguing that an applicant has roots in a community that add value to his or her application.)
If you look at some DEI policy legislated during the past 20 years, you’ll see part of the reason why a dangerous demagogue is now in power (unchecked, it seems) in Washington. The ‘culture’ wars were prime weapons for the far-right, and altruism, an easy pick-off. Certainly, wanting people to commit to high-minded delay of gratification is reasonable, if hard; however, civic virtue only means something if you’ve benefited from it, otherwise, it can dissolve.
In other words, general consent to principled delay of gratification, for services, or for getting daughters and sons jobs and social mobility is quite another matter, and besides, the country’s founding charter may not promise it. Resistance to inequitable policy is inevitable.
In the end, DEI being a conflation, it provided the low-hanging fruit for the Heritage Foundation and the Magasphere. This seems to have been the on-ramp for the current assault on American institutions.