The line Right wing apologists and MAGA acolytes use is that DEI robs us of meritocracy and incompetent people gain an advantage simply because of their identity as opposed to their ability.
Meritocracy is one of the illusions the Right use to justify stamping out anyone who might gain power and influence without being part of the right ‘club’.
The truth is that the vast number of mega wealthy earned it through inheritance, not hard work…
All billionaires under 30 have inherited their wealth, research finds
All of the world’s billionaires younger than 30 inherited their wealth, the first wave of “the great wealth transfer” in which more than 1,000 wealthy people are expected to pass on more than $5.2tn (£4.1tn) to their heirs over the next two decades.
There are already more billionaires than ever before (2,781), and the number is expected to soar in the coming years as an elderly generation of super-rich people prepare to give their fortunes to their children.
Research by Forbes magazine found there were 15 billionaires aged 30 or under but that none had created their own wealth, instead benefitting from huge inheritances.
…Meritocracy as a value is something we should absolutely fight for, but not when the cost of that is anyone who isn’t part of the ‘club’.
Which is why Trump’s attack on DEI is so fucking disingenuous – he has anointed his Children not because they are talented, but because they are family!
The cavalcade of political circus freaks he has assigned to his Cabinet are not there because they are the best qualified, they are there because they are filthy rich and totally loyal to him!
You could accept the Rights critique of DEI and the fight for meritocracy if they weren’t all inbred with nepotistic arselickers.
The Right don’t gain power because of Meritocracy, they gain power and then hold it for their club while attacking everyone else as a DEI hire.
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So Meritocracy is the club with which to attack nepotism, right?
Success builds success?
Who should hold the reins of political influence?
Democracy should at first prevail.
There’s a fantastic now cancelled podcast called ‘Grubstakers’ that documents the life stories of billionaires. Every single one shares the common element of having been able to borrow a little sum of a few hundred thousand dollars or so from a family friend or more usually just from immediate family.
Nah, Sinwar and Haniyeh got theirs from the EU, Qatar and by diddling the Palestinian people.
Then presumably invested the money wisely and worked hard.
Then presumably invested the money wisely and worked hard.
Perhaps they just did one thing and repeated it over and over and over and so looked as if they had worked hard,
All the evidence shows that the successful ones paid someone to invest the money wisely, those who invested it themselves had variable results. What does it profit someone to gain the world and lose their soul anyway?
Oh fuck they’re at it again with the double posting, Bob the knob. I suppose if you do it often enough you start to believe your own bullshit.
How many failed casino’s did Trump have again and the many of those that lost their investments in Trumps failed businesses?
‘double posting’…..FFS Squeaky, you do know that any comment that makes it onto a thread on TDB is placed by a moderator, it’s not ‘straight through’ once Post Comment is hit.
Bob the First really does live rent free in your head, you are obsessed with him….you are a rather sad creepy wee boy.
And the witch hunt is on. Seems that in the pursuit of cancelling terms in policies related to gender diversity, women have been cancelled. Who would have guessed this would happen ?
” Thanks to Donald Trump’s sweeping executive orders attacking “gender ideology” and DEI programs, the word “women” – along with a number of other terms – is quite literally being erased. ”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/15/trump-banning-words-women
There is a great opportunity here for a trend setter who gets the super-wealthy to feel powerful and kindly towards others and makes them want to go about throwing cakes rather than crumbs to the peeps. Your whole attitude Martyn shows a lack of imagination and hence
a little ahead of those with none or a real imagination deficit, who have to take drugs to get anything new past their neurons; they constitute a huge world-changing opportunity for someone.
Perhaps follow Edward Bernays approach.
…Press agent: After his foray into the world of theater, Bernays worked as a creative press agent for various performers and performances. Already, he was using a variety of techniques that would become hallmarks of his later practice. He promoted the Daddy Long Legs stage play by tying it in with the cause of charity for orphans. To create interest in Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, he educated Americans about the subtleties of ballet—and publicized a picture of Flore Revalles, wearing a tight-fitting dress, at the Bronx Zoo, posed with a large snake. He built up opera singer Enrico Caruso as an idol whose voice was so sensitive that comically extreme measures were taken to protect it..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays#Family_and_education
I think of Bono and his concerts for charity etc. But bigger than that. After all what fun is there in just sitting gloating over money. They are cheating themselves by not letting their inner entrepreneur, whizz-kid, innovator, pathfinder, free from stultified conventions. They could try reading marathons. All those great ideas being thought through with joined-up words into complex sentences and plots, but untouched by human hands of so many non-readers, by the money-blinded class. This comes to mind:
Lines from ‘A fish called Wanda’ express my sentiments –
Otto: Don’t call me stupid.
Wanda: Oh, right, to call you stupid would be an insult to stupid people. I’ve worn dresses with higher IQs. I’ve known sheep that could outwit you, but you think you’re an intellectual don’t you, ape?
Otto: Apes don’t read philosophy.
Wanda: Yes, they do Otto, they just don’t understand it.
Now let me correct you on a couple of things here. Aristotle was not Belgian.
The central message of Buddhism is not ‘every man for himself,’ and the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes, Otto. I looked them up.
A Fish Called Wanda written by John Cleese & Charles Crichton
https://www.whysanity.net/monos/wanda.html
But [this] is on us. We, the people. Us lot. And how’s zat? , one might ask? Well, that would be an easier question to answer if we, the people, still had inquiring minds born of commonsense and self confidence. Instead, we live in fear of that which should fear us. After forty years of greed oriented abuse we’re too dumb to dare to know any different.
Instead of we the people being connected and involved with not only our politics but with each other we’ve instead been gaslighted into worshiping the false idol that’s ‘individualism’. A logical fallacy that markets freedumbs and the God given right to die a wretched, impoverished death in a shit, piss and garbage chocked gutter while billionaires fly overhead in Gulf Streams.
The troubles matured with the dawn of *neoliberalism when we were told the lies we’re all now far too familiar with. It’s to back there, that we must go. We must turn around and go back to where dirty little roger and his acolytes rolled in and stole our shit. We must return our stuff and things back to us. We must reclaim our politic, our economy and our now privatised world-first infrastructure and we must de-louse ourselves from foreign bankers suffocating our economy and you must remind yourselves that it’s not just our economy that they could help themselves to. Nope. It’s the actual land. Lock, stock, rock and 29 thousand square kilometres larger than the UK but with a population of 5.2 million of it.
How about we give the King a ring? Here’s his phone number. I just found it on the internet.
+44 303 123 7300. Seriously. Give him a ring? We could ask K Charles to convene a snap election. We have to get rid of Baldylocks and The Gimp Club somehow and urgently.
* Neoliberalism. Just another limp cock -ism. But 14 multi-billionaires, 3118 multi-millionaires each with a net minimum of $50 million and four Australian owned banks; bnz, asb, anz and westpac who are stealing our $180.00 net a second 24/7/365 think neoliberalism’s sweet-as. What do you think?
I have thought positively about the Brit Royal Family for a while. Can we get King Charles to reverse a common law matter through the Privy Council or somewhere?
And in the meantime does anyone else know how to gather people into a Kiwi Trust that buys up some of our infrastructure that the rich kids at the top have thrown out of their cots because teddy lost an eye etc. Or the batteries have run flat on the toy train. Petulantly they claim to be unhappy and go into a huddle about what mischief they can get up to. I’d put some money into Citizen Bonds – both from myself and on behalf of my dead father buried in France with his bomber crew (one survived). He/they didn’t go through all that in a casual way. And I don’t want NZAO abandoned or fractured by earthquakes or people quakes.
Our minds are often opaque to us. While looking up Bernays I came on this about men.’s attitudes, and embracing women also? And of course there should be one for women whom I find hard to understand en masse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda:_The_Formation_of_Men%27s_Attitudes
Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes (1965/1973) (French: Propagandes; original French edition: 1962) is a book on the subject of propaganda by French philosopher, theologian, legal scholar, and sociologist Jacques Ellul…
After being discharged as a professor from French universities by the Vichy regime Ellul became a leader in the French resistance during World War II.[1] After the Liberation of France, he became a professor at the University of Bordeaux and wrote 58 books and numerous articles over his lifetime, the dominant theme of which has been the threat to human freedom created by modern technology. ..
…Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes is divided into five substantive chapters discussing Ellul’s analysis.
Introduction
Regardless of the State, propaganda should be viewed as situated at the center of the growing powers of governmental and administrative techniques.
“Differences in political regimes matter little; differences in social levels are more important; and most important is national self-awareness. Propaganda is a good deal less the political weapon of a regime (it is that also) than the effect of a technological society that embraces the entire man and tends to be a completely integrated society. Propaganda stops man from feeling that things in society are oppressive and persuades him to submit with good grace.”[7]
“The Four Great Collective Sociological Presuppositions in the Modern World:
That an individual’s aim in life is happiness.
That man is naturally good.
That history develops in endless progress.
That everything is matter.
The Collective Myths:
of Work
of Happiness
of the Nation
of Youth
of the Hero”[11]
Further: Leonard Doob, an American specialist, defined propaganda in 1948 as “the attempt to affect the personalities and to control the behavior of individuals towards desired ends”.[5] Unending definitions show the uncertainty among specialists and the inability of definitions to encompass all that is propaganda. Just because the term propaganda cannot be defined with any degree of precision does not mean that attempts to define it should be abandoned. Ellul’s definition in 1973 was as follows:
“Very frequently propaganda is described as a manipulation for the purpose of changing idea or opinions of making individuals ‘believe’ some idea or fact, and finally of making them adhere to some doctrine—all matters of the mind. It tries to convince, to bring about a decision, to create a firm adherence to some truth. This is a completely wrong line of thinking: to view propaganda as still being what it was in 1850 is to cling to an obsolete concept of man and of the means to influence him; it is to condemn oneself to understand nothing about propaganda.
The aim of modern propaganda is no longer to modify ideas, but to provoke action. It is no longer to change adherence to a doctrine, but to make the individual cling irrationally to a process of action. It is no longer to transform an opinion but to arouse an active and mythical belief.”[6]
The Chinese and Japanese don’t bother with diversity. It works fine for them.
Japan’s government does
https://www.japan.go.jp/topics/Diversity_Equity_and_Inclusion.html
Mea culpa. Employing women isn’t diverse; it’s normal. Which Africans and Indians are in power ?
Japan is a failed s**thole country whose young girls have been subjected to systematic gang rapes by American occupiers of a variety of hues for going on 80 years, and China recognizes 55 different minority languages.
You really are a downer in your thinking and to read MK.
How so? I would celebrate Japan liberating themselves, overrunning the American bases and either kicking every American out or making them good Americans.
The American bases in Japan are indeed contentious, and everytime a Japanese national is violated by ‘the occupiers’ it all flares up. What is reported less are that some – a tiny minority in actual fact Japanese women hang around the bases in hope of snaring a partner and getting out.
Every nation has at least a few degenerate traitors, sadly.
The scary shit.
https://www.facebook.com/TrumplandDiary/posts/pfbid0H6GzDgEhW2vD2FhEYe7pvuQy1LzjeEHowmBAamtW4HRgMtdP8prtyZgMTqrvFNtFl
more classic projection from the perpetual liars in chief who went on to install Hegseth, Dr. Phil, Kennedy, Bondi, Bove and possibly Patel, a list of DEI appointments if ever I’ve seen one. The alcoholic, the celebrity doctor, the roadkill dumper, the blond, the bimbo and the Indian. And of course there’s Musk and Trump – the austistic penius (sic) and the fake tan golfer.
What are you complaining about then?
That to get rid of DEI is bad, then tell every one Trumps cabinet is DEI….
Which is it, hell you don’t even know your own name!
Woopty fuckin do. Die DEI.
Woohoo, Up and at ’em Vance. Bring back free speech to Britain, Germany and France