Erasure of diversity, equity and inclusion. Competence and merit, instead!

In the same document on the National Security Strategy that we discussed previously, there is yet another revolutionary or counterrevolutionary bombshell that strikes a blow at the Trotskyist ideology that took root on American soil, namely that of diversity, equity and inclusion, known as DEI. This bombshell is the return to competence and merit. The (quasi-communist) ideology of DEI, as the document states, degraded American institutions and held the whole country back. DEI was in its essence discriminatory and anti-competitive.

Isn’t it weird that so obvious a thing as rewarding competence and merit should constitute a serious issue? Isn’t it weird that competence and merit should ever be questioned as pillars of society, economy, any kind of advancement? Isn’t it strange that there are people who think they can include the lazy and the untalented, that they can apply equity to the unresourceful and the reckless, that they can employ with preference for race or disability, and hope for the sustainability of such a society? Even the communists in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe did not have such ideas. Yes, they tried to distribute things equally among all the members of society, but only to a certain extent and they soon realized that it was not workable. People need stimuli in order to put effort in their work, in order to come up with inventions, and so on. Members of society who are unproductive but nonetheless enjoy the comfort of state care tend to act like – forgive the word – parasites. They expect more and more giving less and less in return.

That alone is bad enough, but that entails even worse consequences. Those members of society who are otherwise willing to contribute to the well-being of all will sooner or later lose interest in applying themselves to any effort. Why, if you can have all the benefits without straining yourself, why should you strain over your work, why should you put in effort? This demoralizing effect spreads like wild fire and brings about the downfall of any society. No wonder then that the document on the National Security Strategy calls for “rooting out” DEI. The so-called socialist states of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union were virtually eaten away by the masses of people who contributed less than they consumed. Since competence and merit were not properly rewarded, almost any initiative was nipped in the bud. Picture to yourself a socialist factory manager who rather than employing a skilled and resourceful engineer employs someone with little competence simply because she needs to be included, simply because she has children to feed (and no husband), simply because the state ideology says that no one should be left behind. It all sounds very well on paper but is divorced from reality. You can only distribute what you have, and you cannot have goods nor can you dispose of services unless you have people who manufacture those goods or perform the services. So, in order to include and diversify and equalize you still need to reward competence and merit, you still need to preserve inequality in income. A square circle, isn’t it? But that’s what reality is all about, and that’s what ideology is not about.

The do-gooders in Washington obviously thought that if they decree an equal distribution of goods and services, that if they treat everybody on a par irrespective of his or her talent and effort, that if they cease to differentiate between individuals, then they can create a model society where all participants are happy. That’s a fantasy, a fantasy that does not stand to reason, a fantasy that runs counter to reality. When fantasy clashes with reality, it is always and invariably reality that wins. Reality means that people are unequal and that the unresourceful can only count on alms. Yes, you heard it right: alms. Because that’s what any welfare means in plain language. Whatever you get without having earned it is properly called alms. And yes, alms can be distributed by magnanimous, resourceful and hence affluent people who… are affluent because they are rewarded for their competence and merit.

The document on the National Security Strategy says that the American administration will “re-instill” a culture of competence. Note the prefix re in re-instill. That means that the culture of competence on which the United States was built and which made America once great has been eradicated, has been obliterated. Loss of the spirit of competence is a fatal blow to any state, organization or society. How do you go about re-instilling a virtue once it has been lost? Not an easy task, certainly. Individuals accustomed to being taken care of by the government will naturally resist any change, they will further demand benefits and even call for their increase. Any curtailment thereof may instill the spirit of riot against and disappointment in the government. This in turn may be exploited by the opposition – by the democrats – so that the whole process of re-instilling the culture of competence might be stopped in its tracks.

But then, America has no other way out of its current crisis, for even communist China (communist!) has for decades emphasized competitiveness and merit. If the hard-liner communists have eventually understood human nature and reality, why have the American political class failed to do so? Why has the American political class let itself be fooled by such – childish – ideologies? Are the members of that class really the graduates of the Ivy League?

“American prosperity and security,” we can read in the document on the National Security Strategy “depend on the development and promotion of competence. Competence and merit are among our greatest civilizational advantages.” The document goes on to explain the obvious, namely that competence and merit translate into hiring, promoting, and honoring the best Americans (not just anybody), which secures innovation, which in turn is followed by prosperity. Wow! That twenty-first century citizens of the most developed nation need to have such basics spelled out…! That Americans need to be lectured about the simplest of natural economic rules that “should competence be destroyed or systematically discouraged, […] infrastructure, national security, education, and research will cease to function.” That Americans should be reminded of the obvious fact that “radical ideologies that seek to replace competence and merit with favored group status would render America unrecognizable and unable to defend itself”! Isn’t it the ABC of social and economic life?

Indeed, while communism died in the Soviet Union and has morphed into capitalism in the People’s Republic of China, it re-emerged in the bastion of capitalism: in the United States during the rule of the democrats. History can play pranks, can it not? The current administration and this part of the American political class that backs it have reversed the course. Will they be successful, though? Will they not be followed by the Trotskyist democrats in a few years’ time who will revive their communist ideas of diversity, equity and inclusion? America’s domestic policy appears to have been highly volatile over the recent decades, just as volatile are the decisions and statements of America’s current president, so this strategy – as correct as it is – may be put on hold or… cancelled.

Now it is official: Europe may not be European. Soon.

What has been stated over decades by many an observer in France and the United Kingdom, in Germany and the Netherlands, in Sweden and in Belgium, what has been denied and dismissed by the powers that be, eventually has been authoritatively and officially recognized and identified as the problem of utmost importance. It has been recognized and identified by no less an authority than the United States of America in the latest document on National Security Strategy drafted November and made known in early December this year.

The document that does an about-face in all American policies constitutes also a scathing attack on the policies that have been pursued for a couple of decades in the European Union. The documents states in no uncertain terms that “should present trends continue” [i.e. continued mass immigration] “the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less.” We have it in plain language. Precisely the same as what the so-called conspiracy theorists or far-right activists (as they have always been derogatorily labelled in the mainstream media) have been pointing for decades. We have in plain language what has been branded as racism, as xenophobia, as Islamophobia. Eventually, Washington itself has arrived at the same conclusion: Europe will cease to be European with all attendant problems. Because the replacement of one population with another, one culture with another, one religion (even of nominal) with another, one race with another translates into a substantial change of epic dimensions. Nigerian or Somali citizens of Germany and Sweden, Afghan or Pakistani inhabitants of France and Great Britain are not going to simply be an exotic version of the indigenous populations. Nigerian or Somali immigrants, Afghan or Pakistani settlers are importing to Europe and grafting on the European trunk Nigeria and Somalia, Afghanistan and Pakistan, period, which the National Security Strategy document openly states, saying that after such a change “it is far from obvious whether certain European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies” [so much so that] “[M]any of these nations are currently doubling down on their present path.”

Washington’s fear of losing reliable political, economic and military partners is couched in diplomatic, soft language, yet the message is as plain as day: in 20 years certain European countries may not have “economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies” due to massive, uncontrolled immigration. It is a bombshell. In the same document, Europe’s transatlantic partner makes its wishes clear: “We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence.” Will these words have been heard by the European political class?

Of course they won’t. Europe’s political class will make an even stronger commitment to all the policies it has pursued for the last decades – be it globalism, ecologism, immigration, regulations relating to climate-change, rainbow sexuality, cutting itself off from cheap Russian gas and oil – because Europe’s political class has turned its political principles into a religion and themselves – into that religion’s most ardent followers. Europe’s political class is following in the footsteps of their grand predecessors: Jacobins and Bolsheviks. They will rather guillotine or court-martial those among themselves who would rather correct Europe’s course than give up on anything that they hold so dear. Such is the collective psyche of any movement – be it religious or political – such are the laws of social behaviour. An ideology is like an avalanche: once it gathers momentum, no one and nothing can stop it. It must run its course until it spends its energy in a vale of tears, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Such was the case with the Jacobins and the Bolsheviks mentioned above: they had to run their political course until they wreaked havoc on their nations and until… there emerged a strong man (Bonaparte, Stalin) who managed to put a stop to the political, cultural, moral and economic insanity.

One may wonder whether the United States will avoid Europe’s fate because American demographics are not very much different from Europe’s. The years of the rule of the democrats meant that the American border was not merely porous or opened: there was no border at all. It is estimated that also in the United States the white population will pretty soon become a minority. If the United States and Europe join hands in this rush towards oblivion, then neither Russia nor China need to do anything about those two bastions of democracy and progress but wait. Twenty or so years is not such a long time.

800 000 troops at Russia’s underbelly

The American peace proposals have been countered by the proposals drafted by the European Union. The European Union has frantically elaborated its own vision of the peace process because the American points are not much to the commissioners’ liking, and because – and that is utterly important – the European Union desperately seeks to become politically relevant. As it is, the war is going to be brought to an end through negotiations conducted by the Russian Federation and the United States – the only protagonists on the world’s political stage. Neither Ukraine nor the EU matters. Ukraine has been objectified, while the European Union – sidelined.

The EU’s attempt to regain political traction reminds one of France’s attempts towards the end of the Second World War to play the war game on a par with the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Soviet Union. And, indeed, France managed to restore at least a semblance of its political relevance. The allies allowed Paris to be present at the ceremony of accepting the German surrender and to have its own occupational zone in Germany. It was – as said above – only due to the political generosity of the victorious powers that France was recognized as one of the winning parties because in reality France had been routed and occupied for a couple of years and – what follows – without the intervention of the Americans (and the British) France would not have liberated itself, on its own. No wonder then that when Marshal Keitel saw the French delegation attending the act of capitulation he could not restrain himself from remarking, ‘They, too, have defeated us?’

Today, it is not France alone but the entirety of the European Union plus Great Britain. In particular Germany, France, and the United Kingdom want to take a seat at the negotiating table and put forward their own proposals. They want to leave their mark on the peace process. And again, it depends on the United States of America and maybe also on the Russian Federation whether the EU will be admitted to the inner circle of world politics.

The counterpoints drafted by Brussels at times converge with those authored by Washington, and at times they diverge. Of the 28 points, Point 6 is quite peculiar. It states: ‘Size of Ukraine military to be capped at 800,000 in peacetime.’

800 000 troops at peacetime! That’s more than the standing armies of France (200 000), Germany (180 000), and the United Kingdom (140 000) combined! That’s more than twice as many troops as Turkey has (350 000). Consider that the Turkish armed forces are the second most numerous in NATO. And consider that Turkey’s standing army of 350 000 is sustained by Turkey’s population of 85 million, while Ukraine’s ‘capped’ military of 800 000 would have to be supported by 30 million, maybe even fewer people! If you add to it the devastation of Ukraine and the million or so of Ukrainian young men who have been killed or maimed, you begin to wonder how such an army could ever be raised in the first place.

The enormity of the size of Ukraine’s armed forces is one thing. The other is: why should Ukraine have such a huge standing army even if its maintenance were feasible? This question will surely be answered by Brussels along the lines of ‘making Ukraine capable of defending itself against the Russian aggressor,’ but is this explanation plausible? After all, at present, the Ukrainian army numbers maybe more than the said 800 000, and – as can be seen – it cannot withstand the Russian steady offensive. Why should it be capable of withstanding a similar offensive in the future?

Or maybe what the European Union covertly seeks is to keep using Ukraine as a permanent battering ram against Russia. in such a scenario the negotiated peace is going to be a mere ceasefire.

The proposal allowing Ukraine to have such a large army also runs counter to one of the two aims of the Special Military Operation, which is (apart from denazification) – demilitarization. How can Brussels expect Moscow to even consider Point 6? How could President Vladimir Putin or anybody in his place agree to having such an army at Russia’s underbelly after four years of war, after all the sacrifice and effort? Do Brussels politicians believe in the acceptability of this proposal? If they do, then their sanity is questionable. If we assume that their sanity remains all right, then we must come to the conclusion that this point alone serves the purpose of torpedoing the whole peace process, for a 800 000-men-strong army on Russia’s doorstep is a non-starter for Moscow.

Stated goals – genuine goals

Among the twenty-eight points of the peace proposal that has been drafted by the Americans is one that – if agreed upon – promises amnesty to all the participants of the conflict in Ukraine. This point reveals a huge lot.

For a long time now we’ve been fed the narrative that it was the Russian soldiers who were cruel and inhumane. Stories were spun and, indeed, pictures shown in the media about the atrocities committed by the Russians on Ukrainians. Do you still remember the notorious Bucha massacre? The intended pun on words – Butchery in Bucha or Butchers from Bucha – and the village carefully and intentionally selected to make the headlines sound alarming?

At the same time we’ve been fed the narrative that Ukrainian soldiers behave themselves gallantly. They are not the ones who commit atrocities, they are not the ones who assault civilians. Such things are only done by those evil Russians.

Let us assume the veracity of such statements. Then, like a bombshell, we can read one of the points of the peace proposals about pardoning the perpetrators of war crimes or other atrocities. If it was the Russians who committed those crimes, then the pardon extends to them and them alone, right? Why does the United States want to spare the Russian ruffians in uniform? Why such magnanimity? Didn’t the collective West – the United States and the European Union – label Russia’s president a killer, didn’t the commissioners want him on trial in the Hague? They wanted to hold accountable no less a figure than Russia’s president: surely they would be much stricter while handling figures of a lesser caliber!

Reading this point of the peace proposal you suddenly learn that atrocities and war crimes are not worth prosecuting. Are the Americans genuinely trying to shield the hated Russian evil-doers? Do the Americans genuinely suggest that justice should not be done? No, certainly not.

As usual, we need to distinguish between stated goals and genuine goals. The stated goal is the amnesty, something enticing for the Russians who are allegedly up to their hilts in blood. The genuine goal is – yes, you guessed it right – to protect the Ukrainian soldiers and the multiple mercenaries fighting on the Ukrainian side who have committed atrocities and downright war crimes. They are to be shielded from justice, they are to be protected, they are to be saved for future conflicts when they will come in handy.

Barely anyone remembers or, indeed, knows about the 2014 Odessa fire, a fire that burnt fifty or so (Russian) men and women alive in the Trade Union House, which was set ablaze by Ukrainian political activists. Still fewer people took notice when Russia’s President Vladimir Putin announced in one of his speeches at the very beginning of the conflict in Ukraine that Moscow knew the identity of the perpetrators of that fire and was about to track them down with the purpose of bringing them to book. Europeans or Americans may not have taken notice of those words; most probably they wouldn’t have heard them, since they only consume the news from the official channels. Yet, the wrongdoers would certainly have heard those words and consequently must have had the fright of their lives. The influential ones, those with connections to the powerful figures in the West, must have used all their influence to extract that kind of guarantee for themselves from their Western overlords.

Oh dear, Mr Trump!

Trump may have stopped the left-wing revolution, but his achievements as a top manager in the top position remain miserable: the US is running a record deficit and DOGE is ceasing to exist.

The first year of Donald Trump’s second term will soon be over. In January, the public watched with interest as the new president made statements about restoring national finances. Elon Musk and his DOGE were supposed to reduce waste, fraud and bureaucracy and optimize the government’s work. New IT systems were to be introduced, useless jobs abolished, and unnecessary expenses reduced. Musk ran across the stage with a chainsaw accompanied by Javier Milea (the Argentine president), and Trump said that DOGE was a revolution and that they would find hundreds of billions in savings and reduce bureaucracy, including the federal administration. In short: America will be great again!

However, reality proved cruel. October marks the start of a new financial year in the US and thus a new budget. The budget deficit reached a record high of $284.3 billion this month, which is $300 million more than during the Covid-19 crisis, a time when the entire economy was shut down and the world was turned upside down. Never before in US history has there been such a high budget deficit at the start of the financial year.

However, it is important to note that an increasing proportion of this is attributable to the rising cost of servicing the debt. At present, it already accounts for 19% of all revenue, and forecasts indicate that expenditure on servicing US debt will exceed all social programmes and transfers within 10 years. Therefore, it can be argued that DOGE attempted to clean one room without realizing that the entire house is dirty and the owner is constantly walking around in dirty shoes. The savings should have amounted to more than $200 billion, while audits showed that this could be four times as much. This means that not only did loud statements come to little, but in the end there was still a record budget deficit. Ultimately, DOGE ceased to exist after 11 months, even though it was supposed to function until mid-2026.

Hopefully Mr Trump manages world affairs better on the military front than he does on the economic front in his own backyard, otherwise…

Trump once danced with Arabs to their sword dance, and today…

In November, Donald Trump announced that he would approve the sale of F-35 Lightning II fighter jets, the most advanced V-generation aircraft equipped with AI sensors and other technological innovations. Even more important is who the buyer of these weapons is. It is, of course, Saudi Arabia, which will purchase more than 20 F-35s, 300 Abrams tanks, MQ-9 Reaper drones, air defence systems and a variety of missiles. Why do the Arabs need so many advanced weapon systems? Well, it’s obviously about superiority over Iran, but also (though this is not said out loud) over Qatar, which is not exactly a friend of the Saudis and is armed to the teeth.

This is a situation similar to that of the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan tried to emphasize the power of the alliance with the Arabs by providing them with the latest military technology. At that time, AWACS systems and F-15 aircraft were sold despite opposition from the United States’ most important ally in the region, Israel. At that time, it was a blow to the Soviet Union, and today Trump’s game is focused on China and Russia. The Americans had to somehow “consolidate” the Saudis in their camp, as they had recently been buying more and more weapons from China and Russia. The purchase of weapons such as the F-35 makes Arabia dependent on American technology and service.

On the other hand, the US had to use the “carrot and stick” approach to keep oil prices low, which is unlikely to please the Arabs and OPEC+ as a whole. This is an important issue for the United States, as cheap black gold keeps inflation low in the country, satisfies consumers, secures the voter base, and weakens the major exporters of this commodity, such as Russia and Iran. This shows that it is enough for the US to be present in this region through arms exports in order to remain a strategic player there.

The psychology of sanctions

Is it the twentieth package of sanctions that the European Union is about to impose on Russia? The European Union seems to never be running out of things – economic, political, cultural – it can sanction. Strange, isn’t it? Either the European Union commissioners knew right from the start that the sanctions would be ineffective or…? Or what? Maybe the European Union loves playing big and pontificating to the whole world about morals. Yet, even the citizens of the European Union do not seem to care which package it is now.

Are the European Union commissioners not aware of the fact that they are losing face every time they impose a new packet of sanctions and they remain ineffective? What they do is laughable. Imagine a policeman telling a ruffian to behave himself or else. Or else the policeman will call him names, or else the policeman will report on him to the higher authorities, or else the policeman will not smile at the ruffian, or else… Laughable.

Obviously by imposing those numerous packages of sanctions the commissioners want to impress it on the Europeans that they still matter and that they are to be reckoned with in the whole world.

Or maybe it is a pseudo-religious cult that is being practised in Brussels? You know, something like voodoo. The commissioners are piercing the doll representing Putin with pins and needles in the hope that those pins and needles will bring about his disease and demise? Consecutive packages of sanctions are such pins and needles. Maybe the twenty-first or the twenty-ninth, or the thirty-fourth package will ultimately bring about another February or October revolution in Russia, topple the government and the hated president, and render Russia helpless and defenceless like she was in 1917 and later or 1991 and later? Who knows? Let the commissioners do their best.

Or maybe it is a travesty of the practice of the Catholic Church when she used to anathemize those who dared to believe in ways different from what the Petrine throne pontificated about? Well, the commissioners are very distant from any religion, but there may be more in their behaviour than meets the eye. Brussels may have become an anti-church replica of the Vatican with all the trappings of the latter turned inside out. For the commissioners imposing ineffective sanctions are sort of anathemizing those they do not like (read: those who do not bow and crape to them). If you are familiar with medieval history of Europe (Europe!) then you will have remembered the popes who would anathemize monarchs and whole kingdoms and principalities. Isn’t it the same now? It is not done in the name of God this time, but in the name of human rights and democracy, but then what’s the difference? In either case – be it the popes or the commissioners – anathema is a psychological and ideological weapon with which to combat the political enemy.

For that matter think of the 28-point peace plan that is being discussed nowadays. The plan is American but some of its contents might as will have been drafted by the European Union commissioners, like the point saying that if Russia bends over backwards she will be magnanimously accepted back to the international (read: Western) community, she will again be regarded with dignity, she will stop being the world’s pariah. Isn’t it the same as we had it in the Middle Ages? If the monarch recanted his errors and kowtowed to the pope, the anathema was lifted and he was again regarded as a regular member of the community of the decent. Yet, such instances of medieval anathema worked only so much. Anathema worked in a couple of instances until it began to be overused and its effectiveness wore off. Especially when it was applied too often… like the packets of sanctions. The commissioners should have learnt it from history.

But then, I have always suspected the commissioners to have been weak in history. Rational are they not, nor do they have much knowledge about anything. Contrarily, they fit the definition of being deeply religious individuals. No, they do not believe in the Christian God or any god for that matter. They believe in their omnipotence, in Mother Earth, in human rights, in rainbow rights, in globalism, and the like. Yet, religion is religion. It needs its god or gods (nature, humans, animals) and its Satan (Putin) and his devils (the leaders of China, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela etc.). It also needs a set of commandments (you shall honour the Pachamama, your Mother Earth, you shall elevate man above all things but not above nature, you shall perform two minutes of hate against the dictators and regimes) and it needs theological language: there are governments and presidents as opposed to dictators and regimes, for instance. The world is black and white, torn between heaven and hell, and we are the good ones while they are the bad ones. Very simple.

Thus the consecutive packages of sanctions serve the religious purpose of anathemizing the bad ones, those who are the problem. They need to do penance and atone for all the wrong they have done. We on the other hand are faultless. We have the right to pass judgement over others. They, obviously, do not have this right because they are the problem.

We may watch another session of anathemizing those that the European Union regards as heretics. The Europeans will light up candles, say a solemn formula and then cast those candles on the floor, believing that they have just triggered the anathema to work. Candles are consecutive packets and the accompanying formulas are the speeches in which the good tell the other good gathered in their echo chamber of the like minded that they are collectively the good ones and as such have the right to reprimand the bad ones who should eventually realize that they really are the bad ones. To this end the good ones will reprimand the bad ones on and on (package after package after another package of sanctions) till the bad ones come to their senses.