Tinfoil Hat Territory

Landscape - Ivan Rabuzin (1960)

Ready for a crackpot conspiracy theory?  I have one!  Two years ago, it was Critical Race Theory.  Last year, it was Gender affirming care and Trans Rights.   This year it's Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.  It's as if every year about this time, some council decides what diversionary tactic is going to be used this year to keep the heat off of endtimes capitalism as the major culprit in its own and our society's death. That might be just a little bit nutty, but to really slather on the almond sauce, what if the same neoliberal forces of the elite that introduce these concepts to the corporate workplace and to our national discourse-- the convenient nebulous scapegoat of the populistic rightist social media bloviation machine as well as their tailers on the horseshoe left-- are in fact actually in cahoots with those who annually seek some new ruse to rile up and muddy the waters with?  What if namby pamby liberal neoliberalism is itself a plot of the far right-- the avant garde for the development and testing of loathsomely performative and transparently self-serving versions of legitimate leftist theory and concerns.  No neoliberal has to actually believe in the ostentatiously obnoxious albeit toothless formulations of social justice that they are creating additions to the C-Suite for in order to implement, just as no mouth-foaming conservative talking head has to actually believe that the latest liberal fad has anything to do with the deterioration of standards in the pursuit of corporate profit.  All that is needed is a steady supply of fodder for the diversionary spectacle of rightwing blather and an army of loudmouths to highjack the conversation with it. 

Frankly, with DEI, I think they have hit the bottom of the barrel-- or certainly jumped the shark.   DEI is being blamed on the right for the rash of safety failures on airplanes in flight and now for the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse.  In both cases, the company at fault (Boeing in the first case, Maersk in the second) has demonstrably put profits over safety -- the new American way-- explicitly cutting corners for the bottom line for their shareholders, and in each case, right on cue the right-wing talk machine has chimed in in unison to divert attention from the true cause to DEI as what is behind the decline in quality.  "What?!" you may well ask.  Elon Musk tried to explain the ruse in his recent contentious conversation with Don Lemon in the fifteen minutes of their public association before Musk booted Lemon's new venture off of his platform.  Two more perfect representatives of the bloviating right and the simpering neoliberal left respectively could hardly be imagined.  In this frustrating exchange (which I've extracted and edited for space), Lemon unfortunately interrupts Musk at the point at which his badgering questioning gets closest to getting Musk to having to put his money where his mouth is (bolded and italicized below):

Don Lemon (45:59): Okay, so listen. After the door blew off this midflight and this Alaskan airline flight, do you remember that you responded [with] a post claiming that the average HBCU grad was less intelligent than the average airline pilot and stated that it will take an airplane crashing and killing hundreds of people for them to change this crazy policy of DIE? I don’t know if you… misspelled it on purpose, which should be DEI. Do you believe that women and minority pilots are inherently less intelligent and less skilled than white male pilots?
Elon Musk (46:37):  No. I’m just saying that we should not lower the standards for them.
Don Lemon (46:41): Okay. But there’s no evidence that standards are being lowered when it comes to the airline industry.  
Elon Musk (47:00):  The incentive structure I believe at Boeing changed to include DEI as a fundamental executive incentive, but in my view, it should be purely about passenger safety.
Don Lemon (48:06):  Okay, but do you understand how by saying just that standards are being lowered, that you’re implying that they’re being lowered because people are less skilled and less intelligent and you’re talking about people of color and or women?
Elon Musk (48:24): Look, I’m saying we should not lower standards, that’s it.
Don Lemon (48:33): But you’re implying that they’re lowering standards because of people of color or women because someone is not a white male. You’re saying that they’re less skilled and less intelligent, that’s what you’re saying?
Elon Musk (48:42):  No, I’m not saying that. I’m simply saying that they are-
Don Lemon (48:43): Then why would they be lowering the standards?
Elon Musk (48:45):  I don’t know. Why are they lowering the standards?
Don Lemon (49:01): Well, you’re saying that the standards are being lowered because of certain people. You don’t believe in DEI, right? Do you not believe in diversity, equity and inclusion?
Elon Musk (50:17): Like I said, my view is that the only basis for promoting somebody should be [their] skills, talents, and their integrity. And that’s it.

What Musk meant to say was that the performative promotion of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in a company that hires pilots or engineers who are not white males gives cover to the bigot in all of us to overlook the profit incentive as what is behind the lowering of safety and quality standards of American corporations in late stage capitalism. The beauty of the trick is taking a problem that any two observers can agree on (the decline of quality and safety in capitalist enterprises) and tarnishing a handy liberal project (the promotion of diversity in boardrooms and in the workplace) with it by eliding a spurious association.  The outrageous non sequitur nature of it demands a change in subject from the problem that can be agreed on to the spurious association that can only inspire intense wheel-spinning debate.  

Both sides of the debate are happy!  Meanwhile, actual critical race theory, actual trans rights and healthcare, and actual diversity equality and inclusion are weakened and diminished by being on the receiving end of attacks for the sins of the ersatz corporate versions of them.   And the swelling of corporate coffers and the decline of safety and standards continues apace.