One National Family

 The recent attempt by the DOD to delete from the National Archives Jackie Robinson’s web page as part of a larger purge of DEI related material (without coherent justification) revealed a profound misunderstanding and misapplication of the underlying concept of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. The current administration conceives DEI as an imposition of a set of mandates the purpose of which is to elevate a wide range representatives (eg: POC, women, LGBTQ+, veterans, and the disabled) from the population at the expense of a presumptively more qualified group (eg: white men). The utter fallacy of this conception was vividly exposed when the eminently qualified Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General CQ Brown, and the Chief of Navel Operations, Admiral Lisa Franchetti, were summarily dismissed by a DOD Secretary (whose own qualifications consisted of excellent camera presence, undying loyalty to the top executive, and the alleged ability to perform 100 sit ups in a single day) in deference to a misguided interpretation/understanding of DEI policy while replacing them with manifestly less qualified individuals. The zero sum notion implicit the current administration’s actions fails to understand that DEI is not a threat from without but rather an affirmation of a fundamental reality within American society; namely, that we have been, and are ever-more-so now, a multi-cultural nation represented by a diversity of people expressing a wide range of ethnicity, gender, identity awareness, physical conditions, history of national service, and individual talents to be celebrated and included into the fabric, consciousness, and character of the nation. It is clearly apparent that the Trump administration and its assembly of loyalists are keenly aware of the nation’s rapidly changing demographics and instead of welcoming this reality as the inevitable and positive expression of an open, pluralistic society, the current regime regards this social evolution as a threat to the white dominated culture of our often inglorious and diminishing past. Not unlike the extinction of the dinosaur, this iteration of a dying species of political mentality is causing considerable havoc in its final death throes. And die it must to eventually give way, as a result of its own depleted moral core and the vacuity of its corrosive hateful message, to the emergence of a people embodying the truly universal values of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Let us demonstrate to the world that we are such a population.