Donald Trump lies about everything, but the lies strewn throughout his executive order shutting down diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies in the federal government are especially taxing on one's credulity. Efforts to improve diversity, the order reads, "deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement." This paean to the importance of "excellence" and "hard work" comes from a man who, a mere five years ago, looked a row of medical researchers and doctors in the eye and suggested he understands science better than they do, despite having not studied it for a day of his life. He then theorized that Lysol and bleach be used to treat COVID-19 patients "by injection inside, or almost a cleaning, because, you see, it gets in the lungs," aware of the basic scientific principle that painting your lungs in poisonous substances will kill you.
The new executive order insists that recruiting diverse applicants is "diminishing the importance of individual merit, aptitude, hard work, and determination." It was signed by a man who has nominated Pete Hegseth, an understudy Fox News host, to run the Department of Defense. Hegseth's only prior administrative experience comes from running two small-time charities into the ground, resulting in his removal from leadership. This ode to the value of skills and knowledge comes from the same half-literate president who also nominated Robert Kennedy to run the Health and Human Services agency, even though Kennedy claims cognitive decline from a brain worm and also refuses to accept the overwhelming scientific evidence showing vaccines are safe and effective. The only reason the alleged testament to "merit" is even readable is because someone other than Trump wrote it. The "merit"-loving president famously can't get through a 240-character social media post without multiple grammatical errors and misspellings.
All three of these men embody the concept of incompetence, but they are white, straight and male. When Trump or any MAGA devotee is talking about "merit" or "excellence," that is what they mean: whiteness, straightness and maleness.
And the more incompetent or ignorant the straight white man is, the more he is held out as the exemplar of "merit" in MAGA-speak. For all the talk about opposition to discrimination and belief in a "color-blind" society, the actions of MAGA show that their true goal is reserving better jobs and opportunities for straight white men, while relegating women, LGBTQ folks and people of color to underpaid and lower-status employment.
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This much is evident in the other executive orders Trump has been signing. Monday, he signed an executive order forcing the federal government to discriminate against trans people, even stripping them of health care. He also signed an executive order to repeal federal funds to help Black farmers and investments in majority-Black neighborhoods. Neither program has anything to do with "merit," unless "merit" is code for "white." He made it legal for federal contractors to discriminate "in employment decisions on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or national origin." As a capper, he fired Admiral Linda Fagan from commanding the Coast Guard. There were some empty pretexts for this, but she was obviously targeted for no other reason than being the first woman to head a branch of the U.S. military.
Republicans are lining up to confirm a clown car worth of Trump's dangerously unqualified candidates to run important federal offices. If anything, their lack of qualifications is what is securing them the positions, reflecting this deep-seated MAGA hostility to competence.
But the most in-your-face proof that neither Trump nor his MAGA followers care about merit can be seen in their admiration of subject-matter ignoramuses — so long as they're white men — and their utter loathing for anyone who actually knows what they're talking about. It's a movement that treats podcaster Joe Rogan, a college dropout who appears to never research a topic before holding forth on it, as the nation's preeminent medical authority. Meanwhile, Dr. Anthony Fauci, a Cornell-educated doctor who ran the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 38 years, has become a favorite target for violent threats from Trump loyalists, due to his unwillingness to reject basic scientific truths.
That is but one example in an infinity of ways that Republicans reject real knowledge and skills, believing that authority and power should be doled out instead to white men whose only skill set is supporting a right-wing agenda. Decades of climate science are routinely dismissed by MAGA blowhards, who prefer to put their trust in uneducated Fox pundits chuckling about how it still snows in the winter. Evolutionary biology has been repeatedly proven true for nearly two centuries, without which all the medical innovations even Republicans depend on would not have been developed. But MAGA would prefer to believe self-styled preachers claiming Noah's ark was real and Adam and Eve had pet dinosaurs. Economics, law, environmental science, nutrition, sociology, psychology: no field's safe from having experts spat upon by MAGA, which prefers the opinions of white male know-nothings.
As a 2023 McKinsey report shows, companies that embrace race and gender diversity in higher have 39% better financial performance than other companies. But really, this is also common sense. Women and minorities aren't underrepresented because they are inherently less talented but because they face both overt and systematic discrimination. When efforts are made to include more applicants in hiring, you will snag talented people who were overlooked in more discriminatory settings.
This truth was almost comically on the nose during the presidential election, which pitted a smart, capable Black woman against a man who has almost certainly never read a book, not even the ones ghost-written for him. During the only debate Trump could even tolerate against Vice President Kamala Harris, she mopped the floor with him, showcasing her sharp mind and understanding of the issues, while he raved incoherently about conspiracy theories accusing Haitian immigrants of eating cats. But millions of voters handed Trump the election anyway, because, despite all their talk about "merit," their true belief is even the dumbest white guy should get the job before the best Black woman. MAGA even kept calling Harris a "DEI candidate," showing that the phrase is just a racial slur, and certainly has no relationship to someone's actual level of skill or intelligence.
Certainly, the pandemic was the ultimate demonstration that MAGA does not care about doing a good job or hiring the best and brightest. They want to put a bunch of idealogues in charge and if the result is widespread system failure, so be it. Literally, Trump and his minions allowed hundreds of thousands of people to die, rather than accept that science is real or that leaders should have qualities other than being proudly ignorant white men. Now Republicans are lining up to confirm a clown car worth of Trump's dangerously unqualified candidates to run important federal offices. If anything, their lack of qualifications is what is securing them the positions, reflecting this deep-seated MAGA hostility to competence. The last thing Trump or anyone in his coalition wants is a system that actually rewards merit. In a real meritocracy, none of them would ever work again.
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