I think that DEI -- I call it "DIE" -- just had its Titanic moment. Harvard's board, with Captain Gay at the helm, just steered DIE straight into the iceberg. And not just any iceberg, but the biggest iceberg on the highest of high seas. Harvard. As in, 1636. As in US presidents. SCOTUS justices. Congress. Business. Religion. Arts. Culture.
Cruuuunch! Whoops!
Fools. They thought that their DIE ship was unsinkable. Put Gay in charge? Hey, why not? But also go to the minor trouble to scrutinize her thin and flimsy academic past? Hey, why bother? She meets the spec, right? (Well, turns out that plagiarism-detection software these days works quite well, as we have seen in recent events.)
Think positive... The Harvard-Gay fiasco has elevated the DIE issue high into public consciousness. Up to now, only right wing cranks have bellyached about what's going on across academe, K-12, college, grad skool, law/med/business skools, boardrooms, govt offices, churches, national labs... you name it.
But Harvard-Gay has now given the whole edifice a face. Helen of Troy, whose countenance allegedly launched a thousand ships, must weep at the lost opportunity.
In the future, when one criticizes DIE, it will be possible to say something simple, like... "Hey, look what happened at Harvard." And people will get it. They'll say, "Yeah, right."
When you say, "Hey, look at all the things happening to US Naval Academy, West Point, Air Force. It's DIE in action. Just like at Harvard." And people will say, "Yeah, right."
When you say, "Hey, look at how Disney is all screwed up and making terrible movies and ruining the franchise. It's DIE in action. Just like at Harvard." And people will say, "Yeah, right."
When you say, "Hey, look at how (fill-in-the-blank) is all screwed up and making terrible (fill-in) and ruining the franchise. It's DIE in action. Just like at Harvard." And people will say, "Yeah, right."
In other words, Harvard-Gay has shifted the Overton Window... To where it is now appropriate to criticize DIE. And not just me saying it. Look at, say, the comments section of the NY Times... As in... did you see Gay's weepy, self-pitying, article of lamentations yesterday in the NY Times??
Distilled to its essence, she says, "Buncha bad peeps took away my soccer trophy!"
Boo-hoo, Claudine. I'm astonished that the lawyers permitted that stream of consciousness BS diary entry copy-paste from the private side of the word processor into the editorial stream of the NY newspaper. Holy smokes, dear. You should've gone on a long trip to someplace warm. Hey, there's still that eternal Harvard faculty gig at $900,000 per year. Nice work, if you can get it.
But the comment section? Wow... By the hundreds of commenters, and tens of thousands of up-votes, people ripped Gay a brandy-new one. Take a gander... It's brutal.
And these are NYT readers... Not exactly a bunch of MAGA red-hat Trumpist insurrectionists, storming the Capitol cuz maybe a few votes got slightly miscounted at 3am in some Detroit or Philadelphia warehouse.
No, these NYTimers are the "educated" class. Been to skool! Kollege, even! Middlebury. Amherst. Yale. CUNY. Delaware State. They've read Howard Zinn. They know how Custer Died for Your Sins!
And they shredded Claudine Gay... Both the Jewish thing (the "context" of October 7 and all), but especially the plagiarism. Cuz most of those NYTimers have enough academic background to know that you don't shoplift passages sans attribution. Cuz if you do it to this guy or gal, then he/she gonna do it to you. And there goes your Google-Scholar rating, down the pipe.
As in, to the academic class of our declining culture, plagiarism is real and a serious threat. Stealing words is not like some flash-mob gang of underprivileged youths overrunning a gas station convenience store, or a swarm of unhoused druggies walking out of Walmart or Walgreens with shopping carts full of unpaid goods. No, who steals my publish-or-perish paperwork has wounded me to the heart, to sort of borrow from that dead white Shakespeare dude.
Yes, Harvard-Gay have turned themselves into a shorthand way of discrediting much/most/all(?) of the very idea of DIE. And not a moment too soon, some might say.
I could agree with you more. We’ve all seen this insidious weed slowly creeping into our navy and beyond. It’s a massive death cult out to kill the country. The aftermath of their campaign of destruction I can only visualize as a trash dump.
See a fair number of optimistic comments. Nope, stop, hold your horses. This ain't going away. It may slow down for a while, most likely it will get a new name and continue. The Progressive Left likes it's chaos and more importantly we as a society lack the discipline to stop it. It may drop from sight for a while. But it will be there under the surface and like herpes and the terminator, it will be back.
"We know most of you are just trying to do your job." Agreed. Serious professionals constrained by an unserious, debilitating agenda. That said, have you seen who has been walking the halls of Langley for the past 25 years?
Sal, you commented to the effect that it is a good and encouraging sign that the affinity groups that hold an organization in thrall are no longer plainly in sight. I disagree. My view is that these organizations are populated by smart people who are good at good at hiding their budget line items and other evidence of their activities.
Do not underestimate the Left. They will retreat, regroup and attack. They suffered three landslide defeats in 1980, 1984, and 1988 and yet here they are in control of most of the centers of power.
We are not dealing with a political ideology, but a religion whose tenets cannot be questioned by empirical evidence like their spectacular failures and the misery they have heaped upon mankind. (USSR, Red China; Cuba; North Korea, East Germany; American inner cities; etc.)
They have their version of Genesis (evolution); Revelations (climate change); prophets (Marx); scripture (It Takes a Village); martyrs (The Hollywood Ten); etc.
I'm still in active civilian service, though no longer in the IC. I spent the first decade+ of my civilian career (post USMC) in the IC, and a large portion of that at ODNI.
Sal, reconsider your mantra that "most are just trying to do a good job".
Like with the FBI (where I still have many friends, all basically in hiding and praying for retirement to come quick), the younger 1/3-1/2 of the workforce are ideologically committed to the party. They no longer value our generations mantra's of non-partisan service. They have been raised and inculcated to believe that anything even remotely right of center is EVIL and NAZI and RACIST and (whatever)-PHOBIC.
Ergo, anyone who does not express the right ideas on those topics is BAD, and no longer deserving of A) civil discourse and debate of ideas and B) due process and C) Freedom of speech
Their rationale goes something like this - "You wouldn't let Hitler preach Jew murder based on "freedom of speech" so anyone expressing these ideas is literally just as bad as Hitler, ergo, not worthy of free speech"
...Unless they are preaching Jew hate from the left - that's OK.
and the ODNI is the WORST of the worst.
The first DNI thought the office needed more "Joint'ness" so he made 50% of the billets detailee's.
ODNI is super top-heavy. More than 80% of all billets are GS13+, 70% are GS14+ and at least 35% are SES/SNIS
What happens when you demand hundreds of GS14, 15 and SNIS detailees from across the IC and NT-50?
You get the worst of the worst. The literal sociopaths that no one wants to work with. The literal incompetent diversity hires that are promoted up to avoid being accused of an 'ism or 'phobia.
I watched GS-15's LITERALLY sabotage other GS-15's successful programs just so they themselves could get the best marks on annual review when their program was more successful, with ZERO regard for cost to country, taxpayer and national security.
I abandoned the IC in 2014, at the recommendation of a good friend at the CIA OIG, who told me my formal complaint would go nowhere and likely get me fired (I was a contractor at the time).
However bad you imagine ODNI could be, I 100% guarantee it is worse. There is NO way to excise the rot. The next POTUS must absolutely disband and remake the effort, if it is in fact needed at all.
To paraphrase Groucho Marx, "I wouldn't belong to a group which wanted me as a member". Equity of result is not Equality. If it was, I would have gotten A's instead of High C's in college. Oh, but then in the 60's there was still a culture based upon Merit.
To take it a little further, I get a kick out of ads run by the Seattle Mariners, saying proudly that the organization does all it can to promote, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Good thing they don't follow those rules when staffing the team. However, by how the team performs, perhaps they do follow that premise.
In the name of diversity from a space force officer…
https://youtu.be/uc0Ta4-Dt3o?si=eA99lR_3nJLvLiBg
I have been forced to watch Women's Beach Volleyball.
The fact it doesn't have higher ratings than MLB, NBA, and NFL is proof we don't deserve to continue as a civilization.
I think that DEI -- I call it "DIE" -- just had its Titanic moment. Harvard's board, with Captain Gay at the helm, just steered DIE straight into the iceberg. And not just any iceberg, but the biggest iceberg on the highest of high seas. Harvard. As in, 1636. As in US presidents. SCOTUS justices. Congress. Business. Religion. Arts. Culture.
Cruuuunch! Whoops!
Fools. They thought that their DIE ship was unsinkable. Put Gay in charge? Hey, why not? But also go to the minor trouble to scrutinize her thin and flimsy academic past? Hey, why bother? She meets the spec, right? (Well, turns out that plagiarism-detection software these days works quite well, as we have seen in recent events.)
Think positive... The Harvard-Gay fiasco has elevated the DIE issue high into public consciousness. Up to now, only right wing cranks have bellyached about what's going on across academe, K-12, college, grad skool, law/med/business skools, boardrooms, govt offices, churches, national labs... you name it.
But Harvard-Gay has now given the whole edifice a face. Helen of Troy, whose countenance allegedly launched a thousand ships, must weep at the lost opportunity.
In the future, when one criticizes DIE, it will be possible to say something simple, like... "Hey, look what happened at Harvard." And people will get it. They'll say, "Yeah, right."
When you say, "Hey, look at all the things happening to US Naval Academy, West Point, Air Force. It's DIE in action. Just like at Harvard." And people will say, "Yeah, right."
When you say, "Hey, look at how Disney is all screwed up and making terrible movies and ruining the franchise. It's DIE in action. Just like at Harvard." And people will say, "Yeah, right."
When you say, "Hey, look at how (fill-in-the-blank) is all screwed up and making terrible (fill-in) and ruining the franchise. It's DIE in action. Just like at Harvard." And people will say, "Yeah, right."
In other words, Harvard-Gay has shifted the Overton Window... To where it is now appropriate to criticize DIE. And not just me saying it. Look at, say, the comments section of the NY Times... As in... did you see Gay's weepy, self-pitying, article of lamentations yesterday in the NY Times??
See: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/03/opinion/claudine-gay-harvard-president.html
Distilled to its essence, she says, "Buncha bad peeps took away my soccer trophy!"
Boo-hoo, Claudine. I'm astonished that the lawyers permitted that stream of consciousness BS diary entry copy-paste from the private side of the word processor into the editorial stream of the NY newspaper. Holy smokes, dear. You should've gone on a long trip to someplace warm. Hey, there's still that eternal Harvard faculty gig at $900,000 per year. Nice work, if you can get it.
But the comment section? Wow... By the hundreds of commenters, and tens of thousands of up-votes, people ripped Gay a brandy-new one. Take a gander... It's brutal.
And these are NYT readers... Not exactly a bunch of MAGA red-hat Trumpist insurrectionists, storming the Capitol cuz maybe a few votes got slightly miscounted at 3am in some Detroit or Philadelphia warehouse.
No, these NYTimers are the "educated" class. Been to skool! Kollege, even! Middlebury. Amherst. Yale. CUNY. Delaware State. They've read Howard Zinn. They know how Custer Died for Your Sins!
And they shredded Claudine Gay... Both the Jewish thing (the "context" of October 7 and all), but especially the plagiarism. Cuz most of those NYTimers have enough academic background to know that you don't shoplift passages sans attribution. Cuz if you do it to this guy or gal, then he/she gonna do it to you. And there goes your Google-Scholar rating, down the pipe.
As in, to the academic class of our declining culture, plagiarism is real and a serious threat. Stealing words is not like some flash-mob gang of underprivileged youths overrunning a gas station convenience store, or a swarm of unhoused druggies walking out of Walmart or Walgreens with shopping carts full of unpaid goods. No, who steals my publish-or-perish paperwork has wounded me to the heart, to sort of borrow from that dead white Shakespeare dude.
Yes, Harvard-Gay have turned themselves into a shorthand way of discrediting much/most/all(?) of the very idea of DIE. And not a moment too soon, some might say.
The push back is going to be epic.
So is there a WASP affinity group?
I could agree with you more. We’ve all seen this insidious weed slowly creeping into our navy and beyond. It’s a massive death cult out to kill the country. The aftermath of their campaign of destruction I can only visualize as a trash dump.
See a fair number of optimistic comments. Nope, stop, hold your horses. This ain't going away. It may slow down for a while, most likely it will get a new name and continue. The Progressive Left likes it's chaos and more importantly we as a society lack the discipline to stop it. It may drop from sight for a while. But it will be there under the surface and like herpes and the terminator, it will be back.
"We know most of you are just trying to do your job." Agreed. Serious professionals constrained by an unserious, debilitating agenda. That said, have you seen who has been walking the halls of Langley for the past 25 years?
Marxism is a strange animal, adopting all sorts of coats, feathers, and markings to camouflage its presence and hide its intentions. DEI is Marxism.
Academiae delendae sunt.
I'm sorry, but the cancer has gotten to Stage 4. Euthanize all five schools, wait five years, and start from scratch with mustang faculties.
Sal, you commented to the effect that it is a good and encouraging sign that the affinity groups that hold an organization in thrall are no longer plainly in sight. I disagree. My view is that these organizations are populated by smart people who are good at good at hiding their budget line items and other evidence of their activities.
Do not underestimate the Left. They will retreat, regroup and attack. They suffered three landslide defeats in 1980, 1984, and 1988 and yet here they are in control of most of the centers of power.
We are not dealing with a political ideology, but a religion whose tenets cannot be questioned by empirical evidence like their spectacular failures and the misery they have heaped upon mankind. (USSR, Red China; Cuba; North Korea, East Germany; American inner cities; etc.)
They have their version of Genesis (evolution); Revelations (climate change); prophets (Marx); scripture (It Takes a Village); martyrs (The Hollywood Ten); etc.
Eternal vigilence is needed to keep them at bay.
I'm still in active civilian service, though no longer in the IC. I spent the first decade+ of my civilian career (post USMC) in the IC, and a large portion of that at ODNI.
Sal, reconsider your mantra that "most are just trying to do a good job".
Like with the FBI (where I still have many friends, all basically in hiding and praying for retirement to come quick), the younger 1/3-1/2 of the workforce are ideologically committed to the party. They no longer value our generations mantra's of non-partisan service. They have been raised and inculcated to believe that anything even remotely right of center is EVIL and NAZI and RACIST and (whatever)-PHOBIC.
Ergo, anyone who does not express the right ideas on those topics is BAD, and no longer deserving of A) civil discourse and debate of ideas and B) due process and C) Freedom of speech
Their rationale goes something like this - "You wouldn't let Hitler preach Jew murder based on "freedom of speech" so anyone expressing these ideas is literally just as bad as Hitler, ergo, not worthy of free speech"
...Unless they are preaching Jew hate from the left - that's OK.
and the ODNI is the WORST of the worst.
The first DNI thought the office needed more "Joint'ness" so he made 50% of the billets detailee's.
ODNI is super top-heavy. More than 80% of all billets are GS13+, 70% are GS14+ and at least 35% are SES/SNIS
What happens when you demand hundreds of GS14, 15 and SNIS detailees from across the IC and NT-50?
You get the worst of the worst. The literal sociopaths that no one wants to work with. The literal incompetent diversity hires that are promoted up to avoid being accused of an 'ism or 'phobia.
I watched GS-15's LITERALLY sabotage other GS-15's successful programs just so they themselves could get the best marks on annual review when their program was more successful, with ZERO regard for cost to country, taxpayer and national security.
I abandoned the IC in 2014, at the recommendation of a good friend at the CIA OIG, who told me my formal complaint would go nowhere and likely get me fired (I was a contractor at the time).
However bad you imagine ODNI could be, I 100% guarantee it is worse. There is NO way to excise the rot. The next POTUS must absolutely disband and remake the effort, if it is in fact needed at all.
To paraphrase Groucho Marx, "I wouldn't belong to a group which wanted me as a member". Equity of result is not Equality. If it was, I would have gotten A's instead of High C's in college. Oh, but then in the 60's there was still a culture based upon Merit.
To take it a little further, I get a kick out of ads run by the Seattle Mariners, saying proudly that the organization does all it can to promote, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Good thing they don't follow those rules when staffing the team. However, by how the team performs, perhaps they do follow that premise.
From the get-go, “multiculturalism” has been totally about dividing this country. Group/ethnic identities. The “Balkanization” of America.
Multiculturalism/DEI is the antithesis of the “melting pot.”
Sorry different guy.
Too many of us around.
Just a little old semi retired Insurance Broker in WA, the state.
Best