Enter Divers Spirits

Is DEI DOA?

“I feel liberated,” said a top banker. “We can say ‘retard’ and ‘pussy’ without the fear of getting cancelled . . . it’s a new dawn.” - Is corporate America going Maga?

The story goes something like this. Once upon a time, in the 60s probably, in galaxy far, far away a group of far left student radicals - influenced by the twin hallucinogens of LSD and the Frankfurt School - decided to take over society. As Frankfurt Schoolie and former CIA operative Herbert Marcuse himself wrote in 1972: “To extend the base of the student movement, Rudi Dutschke has proposed the strategy of the long march through the institutions: working against the established institutions while working within them, but not simply by 'boring from within', rather by 'doing the job', learning (how to program and read computers, how to teach at all levels of education, how to use the mass media, how to organize production, how to recognize and eschew planned obsolescence, how to design, et cetera), and at the same time preserving one's own consciousness in working with others.”

So the Long March began. Over the course of 50 years, the far left took over universities and media organizations and, er, HR Departments. Some, allegedly, even learned to program and read computers. They achieved their goals and took over the world with their woke agenda and DEI (Diversity Equity and Inclusion) policies. At one fell swoop, all existing CEOs were immediately replaced with black lesbians, private property was abolished, and the revolution was underway.

And then an orange-toned Luke Skywalker figure emerged to smite DEI Vader and free the CEOs and bankers and consultants from the yoke of woke. And all was well with the world and we could call people retards and pussies again rather than labour in the gulag of awkward conversations where everyone wonders if they’ve said something inappropriate.

Am I being unfair? Perhaps. A little. Most university staff and students are left of center. Frequently they do dumb things because students are children with little experience of the world. And academics are the same except a little older. However the most popular Batchelor’s degrees in America by a long way are Business-related (with Health coming in second). Which is not really what you would expect from Post-Modern Neo-Marxist institutions.

But the rhetoric I have heard about the woke tyranny and what I have seen with my own lying eyes do not match - esp. in organizations. According to the story, hirings used to be solely on merit before the evil spectre of diversity forced us to hire black lesbians. In my experience, hiring has always been a shit show. Often hiring managers don’t really know what they are doing and some definitely engage in homosocial reproduction. You go into a meeting with a team of people and it’s like a cloning experiment gone horribly awry. A few people have definitely been hired to hit quotas of race and gender but don’t for a moment think that all of those that haven’t are good hires. Many organizations are still Boys Clubs at the exec level. You might say: “Yes but that’s because these gentleman are obviously superior” and I would reply: “Yes but would you say that if you were the one repairing their iPhones after they had broken them by downloading too much bondage porn?”

Now if you were to quiz me I would have to admit that many DEI corporate initiatives suck. But that’s not because the ideas of diversity, equity and inclusion suck. Most of the time I have worked in constrained environments and I do not have the luxury of bigotry. I take the talent where I can find it. These things are a no brainer. No, DEI corporate initiative suck not because of the “DEI” bit but because of the “corporate initiative” bit. Most corporate initiatives suck. Most are simply virtue signalling. Senior management want to be seen to be doing something about an issue - innovation, collaboration, cybercrime, ethics diversity,, etc. They don’t really care. And they don’t want to spend real money or expend real effort. So they run a few half-assed training courses and put out a few comms and maybe hand out some awards and there you are. We are now Diverse, Equitable, and Inclusive.

Now Shut The Fuck Up.

About a decade ago, I remember sitting at a Quarterly Town Hall at a Big Professional Services company. They were announcing their first Head of DEI. And it was… a middle-aged straight white dude who had attend one of the finest Public Schools in the UK. Who knows that challenges he had had to surmount? At this point a sudden, inexplicable bout of eye-rolling broke out among everyone around me - perhaps there was an issue with the aircon. Of course, diversity was too important a role to be left to a woman or a person of colour or even, gasp, a homosexual. Then they had on a famous person on to talk about the importance of culture - who I was to encounter in a different context a few years later and who turned out to be a war criminal. It was very powerful to see diversity and acceptance in action. People are so prejudiced against murder.

*Ahem*

Most DEI training is ineffective. But then most corporate training is ineffective. And I say that as someone who spent a number of years churning out corporate training. Its opponents talk about DEI like it actually worked. But it didn’t. And it was never supposed to. It was supposed to look good in annual report and make executives feel good about themselves. These facts are inconvenient for many people. For both Left and Right, they call into question the validity of simple narratives.

Now that everyone is redpilled and full MAGA, some vulnerable people are going to get hurt. And that is bad. But at least the mask is off, the play is over, and the real game can begin.

Retard!

Pussy!

What a time to be fingered by a new, rosy dawn*.

*Get your minds out of the gutter, that’s Homeric.