Trump's DEI

Disorder. Entitlement. Impunity

The second Trump regime came into office pledging to get rid of DEI. What it has actually done is replace it with something worse.

Goodbye to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Hello to disorder, entitlement, and impunity.

The group chat debacle only highlighted what has been true for the entire season since the inauguration: these are not even top-shelf authoritarians. These are not some of history’s brightest aspiring autocrats. These are people who need the help of Elon Musk’s satellites to tell their head from their colon.

Everything with them is disorder. They can’t even implement their own tariffs without panic and chaos that freaks out a core element of their base — Fraidy Cat CEOs. They can’t accomplish their goal of cutting unpopular programs without veering into highly popular ones like Social Security and freaking out everyone. They can’t securely coordinate a bombing campaign even though they have all the tech broligarchs on their side — freaking out everyone who wonders what they can be trusted with if not with top-secret war plans.

To paraphrase Toni Morrison, what they perhaps fear most is that, beneath all the bluster and the racism and the sexism and the chest-thumping nationalism, they are simply not that good, not that smart, not much of anything. A lot of hot air in the hope you don’t notice.

And entitlement — oh, the entitlement. A crucial pillar of their new regime of DEI. They won on faux populism, and immediately got to work demonstrating the faux part. Hiring every billionaire possible as a cabinet official. Putting the world’s richest man, a highly unpopular man, in co-charge of the government. Having some of these billionaire officials prancing around telling people they shouldn’t complain if their Social Security doesn’t show up, since their own mother, the mother of a billionaire, would never complain. Whiners!

And everything they are doing is premised on a hope, a fantasy, of impunity. The ignoring of court orders. The disappearing of people from the streets. The disregarding of court orders. Lawbreaking not as an incidental add-on, but as the main course. As a way of testing and showing and re-showing political power. As a way of demonstrating to people that there is nothing you wouldn’t do for the sacred purpose of inflating your memecoin value.

We used to have a kind of DEI whose aspiration was to make sure that everyone was given a seat at the table and a voice in the forum and a booth in the bazaar. It wasn’t perfect, but it was an aspiration worth pursuing.

Now we have Trump’s DEI:

Disorder.

Entitlement.

Impunity.

People are going to start being nostalgic for the old one.