What does Elon Musk have against D.E.I. anyway?
Conventional wisdom would have us believe it's an adverse reaction to the gender transition of one of his children.
Here's an alternate theory. Although D.E.I. ostensibly is an acronym for the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion marketing slogan adopted by government agencies and their corporate sponsors, giving a nice liberal gloss to predatory capitalism - in lieu of, say, legislating a living wage and guaranteed universal health care to all people - DEI is also a derivative of the Latin word for God.
And as the richest person in the world, Elon Musk is effectually a deity, the self-appointed ruler of the world. We must have no other gods before us.
In "As Gods Among Mn." his history of wealth since the times of the earliest civilizations, Guido Alfani cites medieval philospher Nicole Oresme, who in his own turn cited Aristotle:
"The super-rcih (superabuntaes) are so unequal and exceed and overcome the others regarding their political power so much that it is reasonable to think that they are among others as God is among men... the cities which are governed democratically should relegate these people, i.e. they should send them into exile or banish them. as such cities try and pursue equality for all."
Before there were nation states there were city states, which brings us to another acronym: DOGE. Today it stands for the Musk-controlled Department of Government Efficiency. But back in the time of late feudalism, Doges were ultra-wealthy oligarchs in Venice who bought their way into lifetime positions of political power. (In one of those weird events of history repeating itself, the demi-god Donald Trump Jr recently got caught illegally slaugjtering a protected species of duck on an island off the coast of Venice. Like any Doge worth his salt, we can assume he just bought his way out of his crime, or at least paid no price for his bad behavior.)
While the Musk-Trump administration (call them President Eldon Mump)go about their merry pranksterism of tearing things down just because they can, there is no talk of building things up, other than building Trump-branded seaside resorts above the bones of aslaughtered Palestinians in Gaza).
And you're not hearing any talk from the feckless Democrats of redistributing the savings that supposedly will be gleaned from paring back government waste. On the contrary, the recently elected chair of the DNC openly calls for more billionaire moeny from the donor class. There is no talk of taxing Elon Musk and his oligarchic cohort, let alone banishing him from power let alone giving him a one way ticket to Mars on a government-subsidized rocket ship.
They should just cut to the chase and redefine DEI as Elon Musk, or even better, as the de facto state of affairs in global capitalistic rule: Deprive, Extract, Immiserate. To be really smart and streamlined and transparent about it, they could simply scramble the letters a bit and call their official policy "Just DIE already!"
Why else would both government agencies and the corporations that own them already be re moving all mention of diversity, equity and inclusion from their websites voluntarily and proactively?
It was mostlya sham to begin with, a way to substitute nice words for policies for the greater public good. It's the same thing as the USAID acronym falsely implying all these decades that it is a charity rather than first and foremost a regime-change CIA cutout and a tool for corporate plunder abroad.
The only good thing you can say about all this manufactured chaos is that it's ripping the facade of democracy into a million tiny shreds.
You can have democracy or you can have billionaires. But you cannot have both. So let's go full Aristotle. Let the catapulting of the fat cats into deepest outer space begin!
9 comments:
USAID is indeed a "regime change CIA cut-out" and far more. DOGE diggers just hit paydirt and discovered USAID also operates an extensive system of funding 'independent' and corporate media all over the world (InterNews) which includes biggies like BBC and Aussie's AB along with our own Politico, NYT, CNN, AP, CBS, et.al. to coordinate imperial propaganda.
USAID taxpayer funding for media across the USA and over 100 countries is like that other appendage of the Beast, the arms industry. Just as the MIC intentionally spreads its weapons manufacturing arms into every Congressional district to protect itself from budget cuts, generating screams and outcries of opposition if anyone dares, the many mouths of state-sponsored media propagandists protect U$AID. Think of the poors!
Thankfully, the size and nature of the Beast is finally becoming clear.
Many thanks to patriot Edward Snowden for first giving us a view of the eyes, ears, and brains of Obama's unconstitutional Surveillance-Industrial Complex Beast.
Thanks to Musk for opening up the Twitter files revealing the heavy hands of the Censorship-Industrial Complex and social media collusion with the Beast.
Thanks to Trump for establishing DOGE by appropriating Obama's Dept of Digital Service. DOGE diggers are now discovering the many mouths of the Propaganda-Industrial Complex of the Beast.
DOGE is also discovering the connective tissue and soon the whole skeleton will be revealed. Watch out because the Beast will lash out powerfully to defend itself just as it did in the 1960's when it wasn't even half the size it is now. Spoiler alert - it has no heart or soul.
If it wasn't for Obama rolling back the Smith-Mundt Act we wouldn't be so totally immersed in propaganda. The S-M Act prohibited government propaganda targeting Americans but Obama sided with the CIA over Americans and did away with that inconvenient prohibition. Truth be told, Obama was the first CIA President, in effect if not by recruitment in college.
Think what you will about Trump but he says the quiet part out loud and exposes the Empire - at least what he knows of it so far.
As Gil Scott-Heron said, 'The Revolution Will Not Be Televised' and we know why. This is a revolution in the making, just not the USAID's 'Color Revolution' regime change kind. Oh, the irony!
jesus christ. This is not Church committee 2. anyone who suggest so has probably sent a few dollars to a Nigerian prince.
Musk's anti DEI stance is much more likely a product of being a Afrikaner(ie Boer) who got out of South Africa one step ahead of Mandela. Now one of his hobby horses is the plight of fellow white South Africans having their land confiscated by the govenment.
Welcome back, Karen! You seem in fine fettle! Diversity, Equity, Inclusion in no way included diversion of equity to the governed. Your transmutation of DEI into "Just DIE already" neatly encapsulates the tenor of the Times.
Stay safe and vigilant. Chaos will continue to reign in The Free World(TM) until the woke and the unwoke awaken.
The use of the term "DEI" now is no different than the use of "states rights" in the past. The left criticism of USAID has been that it offers a pitttance compared to the harms the US has inflicted on recipient nations. The use of NGO's also prevents these nations from building up their own bureaucracy. Have no fear though, Elon Musk and Doge are doing their best to bring parity with these nations. The information was always available on government web sites and Elon claiming "fraud" does not make it so.
"You can have democracy or you can have billionaires. But you cannot have both."
This makes me think of Ralph Nader's book, in which he gave up on democracy and put his hopes on billionaires. "Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!" is his 2009 work of fiction, proposing our democracy is now so hopeless and corrupt that it will take the deus ex machina intervention of huge money to save us from our own corruption. I don't endorse it, but he makes some troubling points that now Musk brings into high relief.
I think the proper Gil Scott-Heron song for this administration would be "Whitey on the Moon" except this whitey isn't sending anyone to the moon-- just trashing a poor community with a launch padand complex built on fragile lands with his vanity project. I cannot think of a better example of why billionaires should not exist. What a complete disaster in Texas. They could probably at some point use some of those funds designated for poor communities under the inflation reduction act. These were not race based-- many grants went to rural, predominantly white communities--
https://www.thejustice40.com/
And here is an article about communities impacted by the funding freeze.
https://www.texasobserver.org/climate-funding-freeze-tribes-community-groups/
This is what they mean by DEI, not some corporate sensitivity training initiative.
But all is good! Cancel culture is cancelled! Ketamine addled Elon was bemoaning that "you couldn't make fun of anyone". Thank god that is over.
I think that the only way for democracy in the U.S. to be saved, is, unfortunately and paradoxically, for the U.S., "led" by its current batshit-crazy right-wing ideologues, to fail in one or more major areas --- such as in its economy, financial/banking, food supply, public health, military action or defense, or world influence --- and for that failure to be so big and clearly the consequence of both the right-wing ideologies and their proponents now in power that both will be so badly discredited that they will be washed off the political stage, for at least several generations, by a tidal wave of public outrage.
However, as a rough estimate of how big, at minimum, the failure necessary for adequate public outrage, recall that even Trump's gross mismanagement of the Covid-19 response, combined with the general batshit-crazy right-wing ideological opposition not only to vaccines, but also even to masks and basic common-sense precautions, produced several hundred thousand preventable, excess deaths --- all of them people's spouses, brothers and sisters, parents and grandparents, in some cases even children --- over what would have occurred with proper leadership. Even so, Trump barely lost the 2020 election to Biden...
Is Anonymous one or two people? - I am getting the feeling that it is two. Can you please give yourselves a made up name? Also, I'd like to respond but I'm not sure which Anonymous to refer to. Thanks
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