Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (Biden’s DEIA) sounds like a utopian ideal. And it is. But, just like the utopianism promised millennia ago at the Tower of Babel—reaching God’s perfection by human means—its a diabolical lie.
John Gentry is a former U.S. Army Green Beret and CIA analyst. He’s spent his life in government service and in higher education. His new book, Diversity Dysfunction is a highly detailed analysis of DEIA, and its origins.
The left loves euphemism because they’re always hiding something from liberty loving people. So, phrases like “the affordable healthcare act,” or “hope and change” litter our political lexicon. Affirmative action, the kinder progenitor of DEIA, promised a level playing field for those deemed by politicians to be disadvantaged. For those of us who remember the 70’s and 80’s, racial quotas were the ugly reality of affirmative action programs. It exemplified critical race theory without fangs.
As Gentry describes in his book, “The DEI perspective, as we now know it, is a relatively recent phenomenon.” Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion was a policy development of the Obama administration. It was a radical departure from affirmative action programs designed to grant privilege to those deemed underprivileged. DEI was a brilliant mechanism of social policy cloaked in the mysteries of bureaucratic directives. Gentry told Townhall that John Brennan, Obama’s CIA Director and close confidant, said,”on the basis of his lengthy personal involvement with the president that he thought that Obama was trying to change the country dramatically in a evolutionary not revolutionary way…he understood that the country was not ready to become bolshevik overnight.”
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It may sound shocking, but the philosophical foundations of current DEIA policy are purely Marxian. It finds its intellectual roots in the Marxist critical theories of the German “Frankfurt School.” Gentry’s book states, “During the Nazi era, most members of the Frankfurt school relocated to the Unites States, where they began instructing generations of American intellectuals in their philosophy.” Karl Marx’s theories about Hegelian historical dialectics proved to be woefully overstated. Simply put, workers in democratic republics, though beset by very real challenges, found life to be far superior in democratic societies than inside the blighted walls of collectivist enclaves. Marx’s hoped-for worker’s revolt never came close to materializing. Collectivism, politically and economically, was a tough sell while Joseph Stalin murdered tens of millions of Russians through starvation, the gulag, and execution.
With the failure of the “worker’s revolution,” a permutation in Marxist tactics occurred. Critical theory became the method of operation. And, social Marxists sought subtle social transformation, the corruption of democratic institutions, as social agitation became a mechanism for evolutionary change. As Gentry told Townhall, “What I believe, and I think there’s lots of evidence for this…we’re seeing a large scale, broad spectrum attack by Marxists who have been working for a long time…cultural Marxists…basically attack societies..they want revolution to destroy (a Marxian term) Western civilization and Western governments and replace them with socialist societies. And, they’re doing it in five general areas: education, the press, the law, the family, and religion.”
The work of social Marxists is fairly evident in higher education. A critical pedagogy has been employed for decades, resulting in the intellectual torpor which makes wokeism possible, and creates a rationale for racist policies which effect social and cultural agitation. The press, and the law, are directly impacted by the infiltration of academe, and perhaps to a lesser extent, religion. The church and the family are competing loci of allegiance, which cannot be tolerated by a political philosophy that demands total dedication to the state. Looking at our culture today, it’s evident that Marxian operatives have gained much of the field of battle. From this perspective, the LGBTQ community is properly understood as simply another threat vector seeking to destroy the traditional family—the fundamental building block of the civil society—which, in turn, is the social prerequisite for democratic republics and capitalist economies.
Gentry makes an incredibly important distinction in his book, delineating functional diversity from demographic diversity. The old virtue of functional diversity is characterized by a diversity of “outlooks, foreign experiences, language expertise, and other skills related to the practice of intelligence by individuals.” In contrast, Obama’s DEI prioritized demographics and orients hiring, retention, and promotional opportunities based simply on group characteristics. A formula for enterprise-wide division and incompetence. Inherent talent, acquired ability, expertise, or professional competence are all ignored in favor of racial and sexual orientation quotas. Moreover, all federal agencies are bound by reporting requirements contained in Biden’s DEIA executive orders, enshrining quota metrics in executive authority.
Gentry told Townhall, “When you inject ideology—and that’s what DEI is…a symptom of Marxian ideology. A divisive ideology…—it shatters the unity of effort of the workforce…there is tension within the workforce, and damages the coherence of the work effort…Teamwork is important in this kind of work…The emphasis on hiring, promoting, assigning, and awarding [by] identity group is damaging the quality of the workforce. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that.”
Diversity Dysfunction is a throughly researched work and footnoted liberally. Though Gentry is an academician, his book is an easy read that imparts a copious amount of incisive analysis bolstered at every important junction with an unassailable logic. There is no better treatment of DEIA and its central role in government weaponization. This book should be in the hands of every policy maker serious about deconstructing the mechanisms of politicization. You can find my complete interview with Mr. John Gentry here. Diversity Dysfunction is available on Amazon now!
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