The attempted assassination of President Trump highlights the failures of DEI under pressure.
The extraordinary pictures that came out of Butler, Pennsylvania, will become a part of American history. Donald Trump’s raised fist, his bloodied face, his calls to fight. These will become a part of American lore along with Teddy Roosevelt continuing his speech after being shot. On the one hand, President Trump benefited from the diminutive female Secret Service agent immediately in front of him as we could see his face, he could communicate to the crowd, and he could show his resolve in the face of a nearly-successful attempt on his life. On the other hand, unless her job is to protect Donald Trump’s tie, she is unqualified for her work.
I don’t have the slightest doubt as to this agent’s dedication to the job. I do not question her ability to pass all physical and mental requirements, whether they are the same for men and women or if they are women-directed. I would never ask if she is ready to take a bullet for the president. But at the end of the day, because of her size, she cannot stand fully between the president and a potential shooter. While audio can be heard with “shooter is down,” who at that crazy time could know that there absolutely was no second shooter? While I again have no doubt as to the seriousness of this agent as well as Trump’s entire Secret Service detail, the bottom line is performance. Seeing a guy hold his hand over the president’s head as if that would protect him from another shot is just to the left of pathetic.
Imagine if I somehow got a shot to play with the Chicago Bulls. I would show up to every practice on time, would work really hard, change my dietary and life behavior and would be the last guy to leave the weight room. I would also suck. The idea that we can throw anybody into any job is ridiculous, and as we are seeing more and more frequently, when crunch time comes, the DEI (“Diversity-Equity-
I was first made aware of this demented way of thinking when one of our boys was placed on the dean’s list for his studies at a local university. While most of the classes are online, we went to the physical campus for the presentation of awards. While no one would mistake the place for Yale or Princeton, it is a campus. I grew up with the ideal of a professor from the turn of the last century: brilliant polymath, speaker of multiple languages, player of at least one musical instrument, and a man of the world. Even in my father’s day, no student ever called him by his first name. It was always Professor or Doctor Bauer. Not today. We live in the age of the narrowly-focused “Call me Bob” professor. The professors who spoke at the Open University event looked as if they were part of the custodial staff. There was nothing impressive in their appearance, and when they opened their mouths, there was nothing impressive from what was coming down from their brains. One woman said that if a person simply practiced incessantly, he too could become the next Paul McCartney. I kid you not. What she and the rest of the DEI crew do not understand is that without a kernel of skill or capability, all of the practice in the world will only lead to highly-trained mediocrity. The great winners of our day—think Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and Tom Brady—harnessed incredible raw, innate talent and worked harder than anybody to transform it into out-of-this-world performance. DEI ignores the talent aspect and wrongly assumes that if one works hard, he or she will simply succeed. Wrong.
Claudine Gay probably would have been a typical, bland Harvard president for a decade if the events of 10/7 had not created pressure under which she collapsed. Will she show her grandchildren video of how she told a congressional committee that being a Jew-hater on campus depends on context? The same with our several mini-Secret Service agents. If no one ever shot at Donald Trump, their job would continue on towards a pension. But when the bullets are flying the president needs someone who can protect his head and not just act as a human belt buckle. Boeing, who has put DEI front and center, does not enjoy a week without a plane losing a wheel, having an engine catch fire, or experiencing horrific turbulence leading to hospitalizations. Half of the UCLA medical school failed basic medical exams—would anyone want them for an intricate brain tumor operation?
The one area of human endeavor that does not bow to DEI is sports. There is so much money involved in modern professional and college sports that there is no room for such nonsense. Picture if basketball teams were required to recalibrate their teams to be 14 percent black, as in the general population. No one would go to the games to see a bunch of second-rate white guys throwing a ball around. And each fan means hundreds of dollars in seat licenses, tickets, parking, food and merchandise. Thus, nobody is demanding that the Bears or the Lakers change their rosters to reflect the overall population profile or add more gay/trans guys to be inclusive. Sports means winning. DEI means losing with a good conscience.
DEI is transitioning to DIE right in front of our noses. President Trump has female secret service agents who cannot screen him due to their size. Jewish students at Harvard were threatened by DEI professors and students due to the failure of the DEI president. United has made DEI their core hiring policy, while their customers simply do not want to be extras in a new episode of Mayday: Air Crash Investigation. Give people who deserve it the jobs and the college slots. If minorities are under-represented, then your work is back in the neighborhood and schools which are failing blacks and others. America’s historical success has been based on the best people being in the right place at the right time—think of General Groves and Robert Oppenheimer pairing up at Los Alamos. DEI pretends to want to fix the world; in the end, it may get people killed.