Making everything worse
From the Guardian’s live updating:
[A]mid nightmarish images eerily evocative of Cormac McCarthy’s dark post-apocalyptic novel, The Road, a political firestorm has sparked from Donald Trump and his supporters that seems as scorched earth in its characteristics as the blazes ravaging neighborhoods across Los Angeles.
Far from calling a temporary truce, the president-elect and his Maga (make America great again) acolytes have used the fires to attack the Democratic political ruling establishment in Los Angeles and California – possibly foretelling power struggles ahead over a range of issues after Trump assumes office this month.
The attacks have used disinformation, wild claims, conspiracy theories and extremist culture war tropes. But absent from their critique has been any acknowledgement that climate change has played any role in igniting the catastrophic fires – despite a consensus among experts that they have been caused by exceptional environmental conditions, including near hurricane-strength winds, low rainfall and unseasonably high temperatures.
The Republicans have instead blamed Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, for supposedly failing to ensure enough water was available to douse the infernos – along with his fellow Democrat, Karen Bass, the Los Angeles mayor, who drew flak for not returning from a pre-planned trip to Ghana until after the fires began. Also targeted has been the head of LA’s fire department, Kristin Crowley, derided as a “DEI [diversity, equity and inclusiveness] hire” in reference to her being the first openly gay woman to hold the position.
Ah yes, a “DEI hire.” I guess that’s a popular sneer in Trump world these days – it certainly annoyed the hell out of me the other day when it was applied to Kamala Harris, as if she has zero value apart from the DEI type.
The climate catastrophe deniers have long given up on any attempt to argue a case. They tried that long and hard but there’s only so many times you can use sleight of hand* as an argumentative technique. The Trump technique of more or less random abuse of anyone perceived to be less than 100% supportive of your grift is just so much more effective so everyone is doing it now.
*Favourite sleight of hand techniques that I have personally encountered, in most cases multiple times:
1. cite a scientific paper as demonstrating your point when the paper does no such thing. Indeed in many cases the paper is only tenuously related to the subject under the discussion – the important thing is that the title suggests that it might do what you say since the sucker is not actually intended to follow the link let alone do any reading
2. If 1. seems too much like hard work just make up a title and give it a non-working link to a reputable scientific publication. If someone bothers to follow the link they will hopefully just put it down to link rot or some sort of screw-up.
3. If you’re cashed up hire a PR agency to call itself an institute and have it put out a “report” saying whatever you want them to.
4. Lord Monckton. Just bloody Lord Monckton.
Hahaha I love item 3.
Ah, yes, the Paul Simon ploy. “Why don’t we get together and call ourselves an institute?”
It seems bizarre to me that supporters of DEI-based hiring practices would be so bothered by acknowledging that DEI played a role in someone’s hiring. One would think that they would be proud that their favored policy works as intended. It’s as if they actually can see the problem, just as supporters of gender ideology actually do know and can tell what a woman is when it matters to them or when deciding whom to fuck over. They know that DEI-based hiring necessarily undermines confidence in competence, because competence is made subordinate to “identity”. A DEI hire could be the best person for the job, but the process prioritizes unrelated traits, so …
*shrug*
@NIV #4
And previous to DEI, the process prioritized different unrelated traits.
NiV – But when people sneer about a “DEI hire” they don’t mean DEI played a role along with other factors. The phrase doesn’t imply other factors; it implies that DEI is the only factor.
@ Colin: … tu quoque? Yes, in some cases; no, in others. Where yes, that’s bad, and bad for reasons that most of us intuit, because we’re primates who were raised properly. Where no, that’s good, for the same reasons. In the former case, implementing DEI-based discrimination is a sidegrade, a wash, six of one. In the latter, it’s actively bad. Ergo, DEI is monotonically bad.
@ Ophelia: My father said nearly the same thing to me a few months ago, except that he went further and asserted that everyone who says “DEI hire” or complains about DEI is really just a racist. To which I responded, “Um, Dad? I have critiques of DEI. Am I a racist?” He knows I’m not, so he was put in a cognitive pickle, which he resolved by (correctly) moderating his take from “everyone” to “many”. And thus I did my duty as the family pedant.
All’s I’m saying is that, because natural language is often ambiguous, it isn’t clear whether you mean everyone or many. I’ll happily and enthusiastically agree with the latter, but I can’t accept the former, because I have my own mind as a counter-example.
Except that DEI hires don’t (have to) work that way. The notion of ‘the best person for the job’ is, in most cases, a bit of a myth. Rather, there’s a pool of candidates that are all roughly equivalent, and will do similarly competent jobs (with some variance, but generally equivalent). In such cases, I would argue, “DEI hires” (ie, advantaging racial minorities, women and LGB candidates) are, in fact, a good thing–they encourage previously underrepresented groups to enter the profession, which can also, in the case of government services, reduce the institutional bias that such organizations have often shown in their dealings with the public.
Another point is that Diversity itself tends to have some benefits, like for instance making “diverse” people themselves more willing to use the service in question, more comfortable when they do, more likely to return, and so on. If all hospitals, schools, shops, transportation, cops, fire departments, restaurants are staffed by pale men, then all other people are going to feel unwelcome or intimidated or angry or all three.
Colin Day #5
Of course in the Trump era the process prioritizes personal loyalty to the Orange one. Either way the idea of “meritocracy” is dead.
DEI in practice often isn’t great, but “DEI” now is just their equivalent of “everything is racism”. Really just a new version of “diversity hire” but it seems to be something like their theory of the universe now.
You can critique it without bigotry, but that’s not happening here.
Here as in here or here as in there?
[…] a comment by Francis Boyle on Making everything […]