I’m confused. Claudine Gay, in her resignation letter, which is absolutely not an apology, tells us she’s shocked--shocked!--anyone could question her commitment to opposing hate. This commitment is a common attribute of the contemporary Self-Imagined Elite (SIE), particularly those in academia, business, the arts, government… Actually, they’re committed to fighting hate everywhere they hold sway, which is pretty much everywhere.

They’re not just committed to fighting hate. They’re also fighting white supremacy, institutional racism, anti-anti-racism, America, domestic terrorism, insurrectionists, a lack of diversity, inclusion and equity, anti-LGBTQWERTY++--2 sentiment, Radical Traditional Catholics, soccer moms, and of course, Donald Trump. The commitment and fight obviously never end, but the odd thing is there never seems to be any progress.

Maybe that’s because they’re fighting human nature, which is kind of silly. No one has ever had any success in fighting that on anything other than a personal scale.

Image: Munch The Scream. Wikimedia Commons.org. Public Domain.

That’s why I’m confused. Claudine Gay, for example, was the first black, female, immigrant President of Harvard, appointed at warp speed—faster than anyone in Harvard history—because she had that steadfast commitment to confront hate. She was also black, female and an immigrant, but that’s icing on the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) cake. She was the single most academically qualified person on planet Earth, but that’s planet Earth in an alternate reality. In our reality the depth of her plagiarism is still being uncovered, but at last glance was up to 50 or so documented instances. The sheer scale of her plagiarism is all the more impressive because she hasn’t published a single book, and not nearly enough peer-reviewed academic papers or articles to make a good paper airplane.

It has become clear the demand for hate crimes far exceeds the supply. Far, far exceeds the supply, particularly on college campuses. Threatening nooses turned out to be shoelaces someone found on a dorm floor and thoughtfully pinned to a bulletin board in the hope their owner would find them. Another, bigger noose on another campus turned out to be the steel cable loop of a crane on a construction site. On yet another campus a menacing Klan hood turned out to be a coed using a blanket to keep warm. And who can forget the horror suffered by NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace who discovered a noose hanging in the garage he was assigned at a race? It took 15 crack FBI agents to discover that was a garage door pulldown that had been hanging there forever. Hateful, racist threats and graffiti always seem to turn out to have been nonexistent, or written by—gasp!—black or LGBTQWERTY++--2 students desperate to “raise awareness” or “start a dialogue.”

How can it be, with all of these stalwart, highly-qualified social justice warriors absolutely committed to confronting, combatting, and other “C” words, hate, racism and all the other stuff on campus and the other institutions they control, they never succeed in the battle? Is it because they just can’t find any of that awful stuff? If they’re spending untold millions of dollars and untold millions of manhours in their noble fight, why are their universities, other institutions and elements of culture such over-filling, never-ending, cesspools of hate and racism? Why must people like Claudine Gay so selflessly, tirelessly, labor to no apparent end?

Maybe, just maybe, it’s job security? What happens if people unqualified for a real job win?  Finally, once-and-for-all eradicate hate and all the rest? Why would there be any need of huge DEI bureaucracies and all the functionaries manning--oops! I mean personing--them? There wouldn’t, and thinking up something as good as hate and/or racism to confront and combat is too much work. So hate is anything and anyone that declines to validate and lavishly praise their ideas and policies, or worse, dares to speak against them. There’s diversity, inclusion and free speech, and then there’s the opposite: hate and stuff.

Worry not DEI fans. The demand, the confrontation, will never abate and Harvard and the rest will forever remain dark, irrevocable, stains on humanity. The supply, on the other hand…

Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor and retired police officer and high school and college English teacher.  His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.