Among the dozens of ground-breakers thrown at us since noon on January 20 by the White House, two have moved me to comment. (I promise to blog more frequently once I become more accustomed to the Pennsylvania Avenue Potentate and to Mrs. Potentate, the $28 million authorette.)

The pearl-clutching occasioned by Washington’s obliteration of diversity, equity and inclusion from the eyes, ears and mouths of government agencies, followed by the same thing at much of corporate and academic America, loses sight of the fact that over at least the last forty years the federal workforce had already become highly diverse, equitable and inclusive.

The reason that this happened is because educational and employment opportunity has become available to millions of Americans previously barred. No longer is there difficulty in finding highly qualified minorities to admit to colleges, graduate schools and good jobs because going to school and learning is part of everyday life.

Forty years ago, getting into colleges and graduate schools for minorities, and getting good jobs as well, was often a matter of “affirmative action”: a process of permitting those technically “unqualified” because of poor grades and test scores to be admitted or hired, qualifications notwithstanding. Now largely illegal, affirmative action produced its own problems including anger and other psychiatric morbidities in those so admitted or hired.

Now, at Yale Law School admitted black and hispanic students are “highly qualified.” A faculty member and alumnus there with decades of teaching experience recently told a group of alumni that his students at today’s Yale Law School are “a lot better than we were” and that he “learns from them every day.”

The fact that highly educated minorities proliferate in government jobs and elsewhere in American society does not justify deprecating DEI, as the White House has done. And racism leading to dismissals may well ensue in some quarters because of this mean-spirited White House edict.

But a balanced view of DEI is that it is already here.

****

Elon Musk, a nasty individual occupying too much of our collective conscious, is now the official White House bro. Whenever, wherever, he is there. His 110-day appointment as head of DOGE (not the ruler of Venice in days of yore, but what the hell, he might as well be), the non-governmental “Department of Government Efficiency.” You might think that government “efficiency” might involve a reduction in blah-blah. No way.

Musk and Trump are bros. They “love” each other, but not carnally. It’s just that they appear to prefer the company of men. Calling Dr. Freud !! Perish the thought that these two are homosexuals. After all, Trump has a history of admiring the ladies (sometimes without their consent) and Musk just had a thirteenth child and not through immaculate conception. Last week Musk brought his four-year-old to the Oval Office to watch his dad briefing the press with a lame assist from the oval’s current occupant. Young “X” wore a gorgeous camel hair coat. (That kid is in for trouble with that name because of the nicknames the other kids will toss at him, such as “exy” and “xyz.”)

But the “First Bro” has no job security with either that title or with DOGE. The Potentate giveth and the Potentate taketh away. Beware the Potentate!