Conspiracy, Iniquity and Exclusion, Part 2

In which we meet Reps. Fairchild & Chuck Smith and wish we hadn't, examine how liberals enabled conservatives to steamroll them, and yearn for some Heels

In Part 1 of this post, we’ve established the following:

1. the actual meanings of diversity, equity and inclusion, not only individually, but in the context of how they are combined in higher education to describe a vision of the kind of learning communities universities seek to foster

2. how the right-wing, thanks to its media and political provocateurs’ preachments, conceives of DEI as an insidious conspiracy to advance “woke” liberalism, the replacement Evil Empire it glommed onto after the Cold War ended and it found itself in need of a bogey-ideology, because it needs to sell persecution, paranoia and grievance to rook and rile up its base ever since it abandoned problem-solving good governance for the people

3. how DEI, for the right-wing, is just rehashed code lumping together all those deemed lesser or unacceptably Other in their moral worldview

4. thus a pledge to foster DEI, to conservatives, thanks to how they’ve allowed themselves to be indoctrinated away from plain reality, becomes an intolerable demand to repudiate everything their morality is based upon—a hierarchy of humanity with people like themselves on top—when in reality, it’s just an interview question asking folks how they see themselves fitting into the multicultural work- or study space that a university, well, is.

The Farmer in The Well

With all that laid out, let’s return to how the Kansas House analyzed and discussed HB 2460, because next we will hear from Rep. Brett Fairchild, a farmer hailing from the 113th district in St. John who serves on the House Higher Education Budget Committee.

His take? At 40:30, it’s that HB 2460 is not an “anti-DEI” bill at all. It’s just a free speech and anti-discrimination bill. Why? Because if students love DEI, this bill protects them, because they can't be discriminated against for saying so in an interview, just like it protects students who say they hate DEI in an interview.

That's free speech! That's good!

So the white supremacist incel who hates women, Blacks, Jews, and gays and wants to see them exterminated, and who volunteers all that in his interview with KU cannot have this viewpoint held against him by folks looking to, you know, create a functioning campus that includes a lot of women, Blacks, Jews, and gays.

Because to do otherwise would be intolerable discrimination. We must provide a space for viewpoint diversity, you see, and well, a lot of us—er, um, not US, really, but people, some people, some very fine people probably—have such views, and really, who are we to decide what’s right and what’s wrong?

You know, like we try to do all the time on abortion and homosexuality and transness and what God wants and what the Catholic lobby says we should do and so on.

All that matters to college admissions is whether the kid with the Sonnenrad tats and psychosis in his eye can…um, code. That’s merit and we darn well need to get back to it!

For God’s Sake, Read Some Books

This is textbook “paradox of tolerance” from Karl Popper’s 1945 The Open Society and Its Enemies. It’s why electing folks whose main qualifications are “he’s got a good head on his shoulders” really doesn’t cut it when we’re talking about stuff like resurgent fascism, free speech, discrimination, and academic freedom—at least if the guy with a good head on his shoulders hasn’t been and isn’t busting his ass trying to learn about the history of ideas and political thought and past controversies, because, pretty much, all this shit is just looping right back around again.

I’m really not trying to be a snob here. FFS, I’m a janitor! Before that I worked sanitation in a big food factory. Fairchild’s a farmer, and I have mad respect for those folks’ skills and knowledge—just not categorically and necessarily about politics, philosophy, psychology, sociology, the realities of LGBTQIA+ life, women’s reproductive health, bodily autonomy debates, and theology. What I know about these things is horribly inadequate compared to folks who really make it their life, but I work hard at grasping at least the contours.

But if Fairchild had read his Popper, he’d know he was literally prescribing the paradox of tolerance:

Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.

Hell, he doesn’t even need to know about Popper, because the insights of the Big Brains aren’t all that inaccessible to you and me if we just use ours. Just think through what Fairchild’s saying. How would it work? What are the actual implications here? Apply some critical thought, please. We easily end up with the Nazi-tatted misogynist practically daring the admissions office not to let him in.

Hanlon’s Razor tells us, “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” But Grey’s Law (or Corollary) suggests that “Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.” I end up flummoxed and have to go with Margaret Atwood, who’s particularly relevant to legislatures these days, when she wrote that “stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results…”

Does Fairchild realize that admitting supremacists and assholes is precisely the point of legislation like this? To disarm universities from exercising any wise discretion about whom to admit to their campus communities? To force them to abandon or sabotage the vision described in their lyrical definitions of diversity, equity and inclusion? That this is a battle of worldviews, a deep play for what kind of world we are trying to build? One where we all try to manage the tensions created by our differences respectfully, if sometimes through conflict and heated argument, but built on a bedrock that says if you grant the fundamental humanness of all who are here, then there is a place for you? As opposed to a community under siege by the worst people, people who violently and proudly reject the idea that “all people are created equal,” and the gatekeepers can do absolutely nothing to hold them at bay?

Conservatives are fond of the “barbarians at the gates” metaphor, but much depends on the kind of civilization you envision, because that defines your barbarians. For conservatives, civilization is an ethno-nationalist Christo-fascist pyramid of strict hierarchies where everyone knows their places and keeps to them. Moving up depends on the quality of you mimicry and sucking up to your betters. For the rest of America, civilization is evolving to a flatter space where we all have an equal right to be treated as humans with dignity. The barbarians in Conservative World are all the people who don’t fit the racial-religious-ideological profile, which constantly constricts in the search for new threats. For the rest of us, the barbarians are those who deny the fundamental equal humanity and dignity of their neighbors.

Pearl Station, KS, 9/5/10, Photo by me

How We Got Here: The Liberal-Centrist Contributions

Apart from the impermeable epistemic bubble the right-wing has sealed its followers in over the last 60-plus years, Fairchild’s ignorance—and/or the opening that Howe and FIRE are trying to exploit in university policies—is also modern liberalism’s fault. It stems from the conflict avoidance of liberals.

Conflict avoidance does have practical, political justifications. Democrats, for example, are a party based on the idea of forging a broad coalition of various group interests in advancing specific policies, whereas the GOP has taken the route of pursuing an ideological and symbolic party strategy. If you want a “broad tent” under which lots of groups can gather and get along, you try not to emphasize much in the way of foundational ideals and principles, for that can create divisions and alienate some of your coalition partners, driving folks out of your tent.

But why do the Dems pursue this strategy? From Popper in 1945, we can jump to Kwame Ture in 1969, “The Pitfalls of Liberalism”:

The liberal is afraid to alienate anyone, and therefore he is incapable of presenting any clear alternative.

(The whole essay is pure gold, but damn, y’all are probably not ready for it. Which says a lot.)

The liberal can’t present any clear alternative—like a stirring, fighting vision of what kind of world we want to live in, the kind depicted in McGill U’s and Ferris State’s DEI descriptions, contrasting it boldly and clearly with what’s really going on behind the bad-faith advocacy of FIRE and Howe and the naive Fairchild. To do so might fracture some of their support, but it might also anger the conservatives even more, drawing more fire upon the liberals, perhaps making “liberals” look like…leftists.

Why is the liberal afraid to alienate anyone? Because he is conflict averse. Why is he conflict averse? The victim-of-abuse dynamic—this whole “Don’t make noise, or Daddy will just beat you harder” fear—is relatively recent, actually.

Modern liberalism, the kind forged in the wake of World War II’s atrocities, was deeply traumatized by the war. As the frustratingly centrist but not entirely insane Damon Linker writes:

Postwar liberalism took its distinctive shape in response to these unspeakably gruesome events. Why did Europeans end up slaughtering each other with such savagery and destructiveness? How could it be prevented from happening again? What kind of politics would be most likely to secure and maintain peace? And how could such a politics be consolidated—through the inculcation of which truths about the human condition? These were the questions the postwar liberals were ultimately responding to and attempting to answer.

The answer, Linker argues, for the intellectuals who shaped what’s called the post-war liberal consensus, was to accept that human beings believed in lots of different, often conflicting Truths or ideologies, but that societies couldn’t advance every single one of these equally and simultaneously. They often contradicted one another, they traded off with one another, some were applicable here but not there, some were good in these doses, but toxic in those doses, etc. You just couldn’t have a society dedicated to one value over all others, one ideology over all others—that way led to Holocausts and 75 million war dead.

So the post-war consensus concluded that we should all get used to being disappointed. Societies should let everybody down by never championing any One True Faith, any One Righteous Cause, Any One Eternal Reich. We’d live in a society where we’d administer things, and negotiate compromises among and between people and groups who had different visions of the world and the Good. Sometimes one vision would make headway, sometimes it would recede. Human societies, now armed with The Bomb and industrialized methods of mass slaughter including chemical and biological weapons, were just too powerful to be allowed to fall under the sway of any one ideological or religious fever, fervor, or Führer. We had to be painstakingly neutral about a society’s Ultimate Ends. (For the record, Linker believes in this consensus and thinks we must continue to uphold it or somehow return to it.)

So we fell under the sway of an Absolute Allergy to Violence (while of course waging, funding, supporting, proxying, and instigating wars pretty much non-stop from 1945 through today, just not nuclear ones). This became an Absolute Allergy to Conflict in our institutions, and eventually trickled into the personalities of a lot of folks socialized into those institutions. We came to believe, largely, that institutions could be, or be forced to be, truly neutral, value-blind, purely procedural, utterly objective, indifferent to the substantive viewpoints of actual people who fill them. This turned many people into bloodless Vulcans who lost the capacity for passion and fighting for what’s right, sublimating that deep human need for justice under a socialized norm that told them such things were dangerous, that we must be rational, fair to all the (Star Trek references incoming!) Borg and Gorn out there, objective and logical to such an extent that we could never see the forest for the trees. Sure, we believed in IDIC (Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations), but is it really “belief” if all you do is…tweak code about it?

I don't believe any institution—including a society—can truly be value-neutral, that any institution can truly practice some kind of objective proceduralism that does not take a stand on substantive matters of right, justice, or the good. So-called "viewpoint" discrimination is absolutely necessary when the viewpoint in question runs 100 percent counter to the basis and point of the institution. A town cannot tolerate a citizen whose viewpoint is "I should burn down this town." A no-tolerance policy on violence has to ask itself why violence is so bad it cannot be tolerated. Does it, perhaps, have something to do with the equal dignity and agency of each individual and their equal right to be free and safe in their persons? Well, then there you have a value commitment, and you cannot allow your community to be overrun by folks who reject that value commitment, or else you're a fool or a madman.

January 6 is a perfect litmus test. I wrote above that the liberal consensus held that

“We’d live in a society where we’d administer things, and negotiate compromises among and between people and groups who had different visions of the world and the Good. Sometimes one vision would make headway, sometimes it would recede.”

That’s just another way of saying you win some elections and you lose some. When Trump and his allies tried to overthrow the Constitution that day, it was as bright a neon sign as you could ask for that they were rejecting the foundational premises of the post-war liberal order and seeking to impose one ideology over all others forever and ever, Amen. Anyone who freaked the hell out and demanded instant impeachment and prison for all of them was speaking from the core values underlying the allegedly value-neutral liberal consensus. They were remembering the deep values, the foundations upon all this was built.

The fault for the delusion of neutral proceduralism largely rests with modern liberals, in part because they are now the only remaining heirs to the post-war liberal consensus that used to rope in sane Republicans until, say, Goldwater and Reagan, and only getting worse, perhaps fitfully, after them. Not at all coincidentally, this is the same point at which conservatives took over the GOP. As noted, after the end of the Cold War, the old liberal consensus made little sense to conservatives, and after flailing around and amping up the culture wars even further in the 1990s as they morphed more and more into Pat Buchanan-esque nativists, we cannot in any kind of good conscience say that they hold any sort of “fair proceduralism” as a value in their campaign to impose their worldview on the rest of us.

But liberals have clung to the old consensus, and we see evidence of it in the Lucy-holding-the-football faith that “the institutions will save us” from Trump, while Trump and his allies violate every norm we assumed was sacrosanct for so long. Not to mention the way they continually fall for any argument presented by a right-wing that appeals to “neutrality” or “non-discrimination,” values which the Right scorns and wishes to do away with. So the people who reject the old liberal consensus weaponize its watchwords against those who still cling to it and use that lingering adherence to leverage their way into greater power.

The short version of this bad-faith exploitation of allegedly value-neutral processes and institutions is the right-wing sneer, “So much for liberal tolerance!” And for the most part, liberals fall for it, because they’ve forgotten that even prohibitions against intolerance, against discrimination, even against violence cook down to certain substantive fundamentals (values, core beliefs) that can and must be fiercely defended.

Bluntly, liberals—or at least those dreaded leftists—have an ideology that stands opposed to the Right. They just have to be gusty and clear-headed enough to proudly embrace it.

It’s not “tolerance.” Despite what many of us were raised to believe, tolerance is not a moral precept or value, as Yonatan Zunger put it in 2017:

Tolerance is not a moral absolute; it is a peace treaty. Tolerance is a social norm because it allows different people to live side-by-side without being at each other’s throats. It means that we accept that people may be different from us, in their customs, in their behavior, in their dress, in their sex lives, and that if this doesn’t directly affect our lives, it is none of our business. But the model of a peace treaty differs from the model of a moral precept in one simple way: the protection of a peace treaty only extends to those willing to abide by its terms. It is an agreement to live in peace, not an agreement to be peaceful no matter the conduct of others. A peace treaty is not a suicide pact.

If Rep. Fairchild and the other 80 members of the Kansas house who voted for HB 2460 can't tell the difference between an aspiring student who deeply admires school shooters and one who emulates Katanji Brown Jackson, I don’t know what to tell them. I think they can tell the difference, and they prefer the former. But they’re forbidden universities let the difference make any difference.

Is this because they’re clueless and literally haven’t thought an iota of this through? Or because whatever “owns the libs” is good enough as far as they’re concerned? Or because they really want to populate Kansas campuses with more and more people actively hostile to the real vision behind diversity, equity and inclusion, to help deny that world from ever coming into being, to intimidate those who seek it, to occupy certain public spaces that, however ham-handedly at times, try to model themselves along its lines?

The Democratic Responses

We’ve already sampled one Democratic legislator trying to oppose HB 2460 on the floor, Rep. Brandon Woodard’s speech where he accused a committee witness of lying in testimony, then closing with weak sauce that amounted to “do whatever you’re going to do, I guess.”

The rest of the “debate” on HB 2460 generally falls under this theme.

After Rep. Brett Fairchild told us how the bill was eminently fair and free because it equally protects both Nazis and morally hinged persons against “discrimination” (“very fine people on both sides”), we enter a kind of tangent that takes some explaining, both procedurally and substantively.

Rep. Ford Carr (D), an aerospace engineer from the 84th District out of Wichita, takes the floor and at about 43:00, asks Rep. Steven Howe for “the specific reason the term patriotism was removed from the bill” in committee.

Here’s Howe’s reply:

"I'll do my best, Representative. Basically the word patriotism was included to demonstrate that this bill could also include other topics that aren't say, the mainstream, uh, not mainstream, the topic of the day. You know, this is an evergreen bill. It's meant to be around for a while. It's my hope that it would be enacted into a law. But 5, 10 years, 15, 20 years down the road, it could be something else, it could be about MAGA nationalism or what's your commitment to Judeo-Christian values? I don't know where those tides will turn. But it was to demonstrate that it is not limited to diversity, equity, and inclusion, but it would also include other ideological litmus tests."

To repeat, Carr asked for the specific reason why “patriotism” was removed by the committee. Howe “explained” why “patriotism” was included in the original bill, before the committee cut it.

What can we say about this?

Well, first, that Howe is either dodging the question or he doesn’t listen for shit. That much is objectively plain.

Second, Howe’s answer tries to associate “Judeo-Christian values” with both MAGA nationalism and opposition to DEI and suggest that in the future, anyone who espouses such values (ask some non-reactionary Jews about the phrase “Judeo-Christian values” some time) will be screened out of colleges for that reason. This is a pivot to paranoid pandering, and probably why Howe can’t give a straight answer—he’s too focused on his spin.

But more deeply, it admits how Howe is entirely devoted to concerns about protecting his political fellow-travelers from whatever Tucker Carlson (or Nick Fuentes or Ben Shapiro et al) decides to claim is the new threat next week, month or decade. He’s literally channeling “the topic of the day” in sensationalist pundit fear-mongering from the Right and trying to create “safe spaces” for whatever hot-button signifier it will try to associate with next. And next. And next. 5, 10, 15, 20 years down the road, we may see the GOP morph into an unabashed American Nazi Party. So “discriminating” against them should also be illegal, per Howe’s logic and the way the right-wing opportunistically morphs its messaging.

Whatever the talking heads and influencers of the Right decide to rant about in the future will constitute the basis for a discrimination complaint against our universities, in Howe’s mind, at least the way he wanted the bill to go initially.

The final thing to notice here is that Carr ignores Howe’s non-answer. Just lets him off the hook entirely. I don’t know if he’s procedurally barred from objecting to a non-answer or asking a follow-up or simply saying, “You didn’t answer my question.” Maybe he just wasn’t listening, so intent on what he was about to say after Howe non-answered. But he let him off the hook.

Carr’s Amendment

At 44:22 or so, Carr goes on to speak and offer an amendment to the bill, asking that the term “patriotism” be reinserted. This seems like small-ball in some ways, but it’s significant for a couple of reasons.

First, because Carr is sensing something behind the bill, which is what I’ve been arguing this whole time. Carr is sensing that specifically naming “DEI” is code for “minorities,” specifically people Black and Brown folks, and he’s right. He seems to be claiming that reinserting “patriotism” will somehow dilute this implication, broaden the focus so it doesn’t look like we’re just targeting Black folks. Specifically, I think, by inserting “patriotism,” he seems to have in mind some kind of equity between Colin Kaepernick’s demonstrations of kneeling before the American flag and, say, the January 6 insurrectionists, such that the legislation won’t be used to bar or punish folks for the former while shielding the latter.

It’s murky. Strategically, I think it’s misguided. But at least he’s after something lurking behind the bill, the evil Id motivating it instead of the prettied-up bullshit version Howe is trying to sell. Part of the problem is that Carr can’t come right out and say what he means. Why can’t he say it? Part may be that he’s limited by the same restraints on the conflict-averse Democrats and liberals, but also he may be limited by being a Black man trying to say, “Hello? Racism!” in a room full of, well, really racist white people, which is always fraught as hell. He chooses to thread the needle with this “patriotism” amendment move, and he ends up even adopting the framing that Howe offers—that of “let’s be fair” and “things change”—but that assumes Howe was ever speaking in good faith, and that’s another pitfall for Dems and liberals, so it’s almost never going to work. Every supporter of the bill is viewing this as a poison pill, whether or not they understand any of the reasoning Carr offers.

Howe then speaks on the amendment, but all he says is that the committee felt it was unnecessary to include the word “patriotism” in the bill. This is closer to the answer Carr wanted from him in the first place, but still a dodge, since Carr had asked him for “the specific reason” the term was removed, and “they felt it was unnecessary” begs that question.

Mr. Smith Goes to Dementia-Town

Then we hear from Rep. Chuck Smith (R) from Pittsburg, and this speech has to be what Elvis Costello had in mind when he sang, “I used to be disgusted / now I try to be amused.” Beginning at 48:28, Smith’s remarks may be the death of you, either from demented laughter or contemptuous, rage-filled incredulity.

Here are his remarks in full:

“I asked for the removal of ‘patriotism.’ My dad joined the army in 1940, and he got out in 1945. He went all through Europe. Over 500,000 men died serving in World War II. Over 68,000 men died serving in Korea. Over 68,000 died serving in Vietnam. We're all patriots. A patriot is a very positive word. It should be a very positive word with all of you in here. And it did not belong in that bill so I asked it to be removed. I appreciate the committee removing it, and I thank you very much."

And Nobody. Bats. An. Eye.

WTF is this? Cognitive decline would explain a lot. So would a Trump impersonation, but it’s too, dare I say, coherent. As an answer to the question of why “patriotism” was removed from the bill, it is the language of Cloud Cuckoo Land. If this is the logic behind the committee’s decision to remove it, the committee should be disbanded for incompetence and its recommendations burned, buried, and the land where they are interred salted lest no further idiocy like this ever grows from that cursed place again.

This man represents Pittsburg and has a degree in education. (Football coach, though.)

While Brandon Woodard (D) is recognized briefly to note the “kneeling for the Star Spangled Banner” angle, Carr closes with much of the framing he started with, and the amendment fails, 81-39, the same vote the bill will pass by.

No one notes that, by the very same logic Smith gives to justify the removal of “patriotism” from the bill, “DEI” must also be removed, since there is absolutely nothing about it that is negative—unless we are imagining nefarious, ideological conspiracies and importing them into the term and the university practices around it. That might have actually been useful to leverage somebody to get up and spell out what’s so bad about DEI, or at least shame the hell out of a few of these incompetent nutjobs.

The remaining debate sees Rep. Kirk Haskins (D) from the 53rd District in Topeka give an exasperated and pretty impassioned speech calling the bill overreach that shows unjustified distrust in educational institutions. He insists it will hurt Kansas, Kansas businesses, and the workforce. He’s right on all accounts, and he seems to be pitching for Chamber of Commerce types who allegedly care more about bottom lines than culture wars, but twice he notes how he can “read the room” and tiredly knows that passage is a fait accompli.

We wrap floor debate with Re. Tom Sawyer (D) from the 95th district in Wichita reading some of the same definitions I included in Part 1 for DEI and stressing how these words signify good things. What’s wrong with those things, he asks. But his demeanor is defeated, and he doesn’t leverage anything into a final stand.

Gypsum, KS, 3/13/10, Photo by me

Howe’s Closing of the American Mind

Howe’s closing remarks focus on Woodard’s claim that a committee witness lied to the committee, which gets into the weeds and amounts to “crying foul” and “defending the poor, maligned young woman.”

He then claims the bill has nothing to do with the "merits of DEI” but that DEI is simply “where we identified the problem.” The “problem” identified, of course, that applicants are asked to “demonstrate [their] commitment to DEI by providing a statement” that is then evaluated per a rubric by the universities.

But once again, there is nothing ideological in such a statement, unless you choose to read ideology into DEI. Which the Right does. At the prompting of the worst media and political provocateurs on national stages. Because they need to gin up outrage and support to “own the libs” and demonize anyone who seeks a more equal, dignified world that flattens hierarchies and grants respect more universally. Demonstrating commitment to DEI is no more of an ideological or movement litmus test than demonstrating commitment to a university’s Mission Statement. Will that be next on the chopping block? No, because an “ideology” or “movement” is whatever those in power claim it is. No standards, no definitions, no criteria, no explanations or justifications. That’s just power talking, not reason or accountability.

Howe tries to frame a very normal practice, its analogue seen everywhere in the business world, with ideological programming toward an insidious orthodoxy. To do this, he has to ignore the literal meaning of words and the testimonies of the states’ own institutional authorities about what DEI is and is supposed to do and be in operation, effectively calling them liars. He’ll call out Woodward over accusations that a committee witness was lying, but he and Hawkins can slander and lie about the entire Regents system without a peep or a bit of pushback.

One of the slickest, and sickest, plays Howe makes is by quoting what he claims is a safeguard:

Remember how he went on about his bill being “evergreen”? Meant to stand for 5, 10, 15, 20 years into the future? Take a gander at what Project 2025, the guidebook for the next Trumpian presidency (be it Trump or any future Republican), laid out by the united forces of the Right-wing, prescribes for anti-discrimination law. As Rebecca Gordon writes:

I opted for a deep dive into a single chapter of it focused on the “Department of Labor and Related Agencies.” Its modest 35 pages offer a plan to thoroughly dismantle more than a century of workers’ achievements in the struggle for both dignity and simple on-the-job survival.

First Up: Stop Discriminating Against Discriminators

…the opening salvo of that chapter is an attack on federal measures to reduce employment discrimination based on race or sex. Its author, Jonathan Berry of the Federalist Society, served in Donald Trump’s Department of Labor (DOL). He begins his list of “needed reforms” with a call to “Reverse the DEI Revolution in Labor Policy.” “Under the Obama and Biden Administrations,” Berry explains, “labor policy was yet another target of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) revolution” under which “every aspect of labor policy became a vehicle with which to advance race, sex, and other classifications and discriminate against conservative and religious viewpoints on these subjects and others, including pro-life views.”

…his second “necessary” reform, a call to “Eliminate Racial Classifications and Critical Race Theory Trainings.”

…the elimination of “racial classifications” would be consequential for many working people, as Berry makes clear. “The Biden Administration,” he complains, “has pushed ‘racial equity’ in every area of our national life, including in employment, and has condoned the use of racial classifications and racial preferences under the guise of DEI and critical race theory, which categorizes individuals as oppressors and victims based on race.” Pushing racial equity in employment? The horror!

…The solution to the problem of discrimination in employment in Project 2025’s view is to deny the existence of race (or sex, or sexual orientation) as a factor in the lives of people in this country. It’s simple enough: if there’s no race, then there’s no racial discrimination. Problem solved.

And to ensure that it remains solved, Project 2025 would prohibit the Equal Economic Opportunity Commission, or EEOC, from collecting employment data based on race. The mere existence of such “data can then be used to support a charge of discrimination under a disparate impact theory. This could lead to racial quotas to remedy alleged race discrimination.” In other words, if you can’t demonstrate racial discrimination in employment (because you’re enjoined from collecting data on the subject), then there’s no racial discrimination to remedy. Case closed, right?

By outlawing such data collection, a Republican administration guided by Project 2025 would make it almost impossible to demonstrate the existence of racial disparity in the hiring, retention, promotion, or termination of employees.

Right-wingers in my state of California tried something similar in 2003 with Ballot Proposition 54, known as the Racial Privacy Initiative. In addition to employment data, Prop. 54 would have outlawed collecting racial data about public education and, no less crucially, about policing. As a result, Prop. 54 would have made it almost impossible for civil rights organizations to address the danger of “driving while Black” — the disproportionate likelihood that Black people will be the subject of traffic stops with the attendant risk of police violence or even death. Voters soundly defeated Prop. 54 by a vote of 64% to 36% and, yes, racial discrimination still exists in California, but at least we have access to the data to prove it.

There is, however, one group of people Project 2025 would emphatically protect from discrimination: employers who, because of their “conservative and religious viewpoints… including pro-life views,” want the right to discriminate against women and LGBTQ people. “The President,” writes Berry, “should make clear via executive order that religious employers are free to run their businesses according to their religious beliefs, general nondiscrimination laws notwithstanding.” Of course, Congress already made it clear that, under Title VII of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, “religious” employers are free to ignore anti-discrimination laws when it suits them.

Recall that Howe, having spent seven years in Jerry Moran’s orbit, then six more in Tim Huelskamp’s, is unlikely to be a complete waif when it comes to the large, overlapping and internecine networks that back Project 2025. So no one should ever trust his assurances that all will be well because we’ll still have federal anti-discrimination protections. Even if we do, it will be in spite of what he and his fellow travelers dearly wish to see for our country.

Another Neat Little Catch

Something nobody mentioned about HB 2460 is how easy it is to weaponize. Remember, there’s no penalty for complaining without any reasonable basis whatsoever. Any complaint would trigger a Board of Regents investigation, and either a defense or a capitulation by the university. If no basis is found to sustain the complaint, the complainant can go to the AG, and then things get really political.

Interview for admission or a job at a university, volunteer some opinion about DEI or some “other ideology or movement,” get turned down (probably on the merits because you’re just another mediocre right-wing grifter aiming for his own podcast or made-up think-tank ‘fellowship’), then complain. You won’t get the $10K, but you’ll help the conservative movement prove there was hanky-panky “woke” orthodoxy going on, and you’ll probably be rewarded for that work. I’d bet money the Alliance Defending Freedom or the Federalist Society is gaming out how to recruit and create a pipeline for exactly this scenario. The reward will be a nice teaching position or scholarship to Hillsdale College or Liberty U. or that wacky school in Wyoming that the head of Heritage used to run.

We Deserve So Much Better

So, to sum up: Do I think Howe is a mastermind, moustache-twirling evil genius, hip to all the awful things the worst of the worst fascists want to do to America and the world? I have no idea. There’s suggestive circumstantial evidence, but ultimately it doesn’t matter. Margaret Atwood again. It doesn’t matter if he’s just too dim or bloated with his watered down ideology from soaking in it so many years…or a true believer with actual knowledge of how things would play out. The results are the same.

He’s awful. He shouldn’t be in office. We shouldn’t give a second’s worth of credence to what he says either because he’s dumb or because he’s a tool or because he’s a liar. Whatever the case, it’s the same conclusion.

And the larger point here: This is what your state government looks like, up close, on camera, where you might expect them to try to perform at their best. Sure, nobody watches this shit except for politicos, and even I avoid it for my sanity.

But this is who we defer to? This is who we allow to control the town halls where our public servants deign to show up to “answer” for their actions and words? Nonsense. Those forums should be in our hands, and we let these guys off far too easily. They’re lazy or sloppy or ignorant or out of their depth or assholes or liars or in the pockets of billionaires.

Even if your representative didn’t speak on this bill, they voted on it. If they voted for it, they should stand and give an account of how they perceived and judged the arguments that were presented to the house there on the floor. If they have shitty answers, press them further. If they rehash talking points, they’re dodging: press them further. Use your critical intelligence—it’s got to be better than theirs in a lot of cases—and demand answers that actually make sense. If they sound more coherent in reply than they ever have in person? A staffer wrote that, or they stole it from some think tank. Hell, Google the phrasing to see if they straight-up plagiarized it, then bust their chops or spread it all over social media. If they condescend to you—and that’s what they do when they don’t bring their A-Game every single day, intellectually and ethically—then they deserve to get roasted and embarrassed until they shape up or ship out.

Counterarguments Be Damned

I can think of two ready counterarguments to what I’ve been laying out here.

The first is that I’m being hopelessly naive. That debate on the bill is beside the point after the committee has met and sent it to the House with amendments and recommendations. The backroom negotiations have been done, the word is out: we have a bill that the GOP can pass without suffering too much backlash from folks with real power…and that’s not the Dems or the people who vote for them. Kvetching about piss-poor argument and reasoning and lies in floor debate is pointless: the fix is in.

If that is the case, why bother televising the thing? It’s just the circus in the coliseum for the few weirdos who like to watch such a sad spectacle. Just cancel it all and rule by fiat. Y’all are heading that way anyhow. If 80 people have their minds made up to support this travesty, it’s not because they thought it through, or because they sat through the committee work either live or on video. It’s because they got word from leadership or their peers or the party that it was kosher to support it. Either it was a safe symbolic bill because it won’t pass this session or else the backlash won’t matter compared to the plaudits they’ll get from big donors or their loony supporters.

But if that is the case, then opponents should do absolutely everything they can to expose it and use floor time on every done deal to shame, mock, ridicule, and reveal the laziness, unaccountability, and, yes, corruption of the democratic process. Then publicize the hell out of their work and work together to put a megaphone on it. If you’re already hosed, why not?

Which brings us to counterargument number two: that alienating certain members of the GOP—either very powerful ones or semi-reasonable ones—by doing such things as I describe, will undermine what little progress the outnumbered Democrats and progressives can make in the legislature. This argument maintains that bipartisan bills, like the one creating the Office of Child Advocate in Kansas, need Dems to stay on reasonably decent, collegial terms with their GOP colleagues in order to persuade them in the halls, gently, reasonably, with facts, over time.

If Dems were to go scorched earth as I suggest here, they’d burn all bridges by embarrassing their colleagues publicly, courting personal grudges and killing any chance of winning movement on things voters actually want or need, like Medicaid expansion.

Sure, that’s a judgment call. But I fail to see why we can’t have a few Dems designated as Heels whose job it is to nuke the crap out of every bit of hypocrisy and bullshit they can, every chance they get. Let them be pariahs. Let the rest of the Dems play nicer than that. It might free up more room for the nice guys to haggle. Regardless, the whole party should be out there helping the Heels behind the scenes, because as they self-immolate, hopefully they can catch some attention and maybe bring down a few truly atrocious conservatives with them.

If we’re gonna lose democracy, at least go down fighting.