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Comment by scroot | Hacker News Reader

This comes on the heels of the AHA and other parties in the suit against the government posting the video depositions of some of the DOGE people to youtube [1], which are fascinating to watch.

Justin Fox not being able to say what DEI is really tells you everything you need to know about how grants were cancelled.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/@historiansorg

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He says it just fine. It's about "females" and "elevating the voices of marginalised groups" that he thinks is clearly "discriminatory". Don't think for a second that these people are dumb, they knowingly support this, just refuse to incriminate themselves further in front of people who can hold them accountable. It's no accident that he tries to sound like Musk.

Exactly. By repeatedly saying "the definition is exactly what the EO said," he’s essentially deflecting responsibility and shifting the accountability upstream.

It’s both “exactly what the EO says” and “I can’t remember what the EO said”. He’s blatantly lying

A little later, he explicitely says that documentary about WWII jewish female slaves is "inherently discriminatory" because it "amplifies marginalized voices".

Imo, he knew exactly what he means. Imo, he was told by a layer that is better to look like idiot then say what it means to him.

I think it's both. The Right excels at grooming and propaganda and has effectively trained its flock that DEI is Affirmative Action v2, and that its goal is to take away jobs from white people who are the ones that deserve them, because white.

What I hate about it is that I listen to that and hear not so much actual brazen idiocy, as yet another example of flaws in an obviously defective process being exploited to deflect accountability. The meta for depositions at this point is such that the ideal witness is a lot like someone who has just experienced severe head trauma. They can sound insane, idiotic, clueless, lazy, forgetful, obtuse, anything in the world except liable.

Its almost like the worst people among us have discovered that in high-trust societies if you have no morals you can engage in any behavior you wish.

And they are succeeding.

Challenge it and they escalate.

What’s the solution?

Well, the solution to the paradox of tolerance is to utterly void the social contract with those violating it as they have already seen fit to void it themselves. So the response is to immediately see their escalation and escalate beyond all reasonable measures. The wrath of a good man is not to be tempted and the fury of a patient man is to be avoided at all costs. Both wrath and fury are the appropriate response to one side of a social contract breaking said contract.

These folks will push until the dam breaks. When it does, all will be washed away by wrath and fury.

The way I think about it is that no system can survive unchecked bad-faith internal actors.

The problem is that wrath and fury of ordinary men will be countered by fascists with more power. And it can go to the very top. The entire system is designed to keep the chain of command, it doesn't give a shit about what you think your "social contract" is. Go figure how many criminals Trump has pardoned.

But America isn't a high-trust society. Roughly half of Americans proudly assert that their government must be small, gridlocked, and incompetent, and that's by design, because if the government becomes too efficient it will infringe upon Americans' freedom.

So instead Americans keep electing people who say "The government can't do anything right! Elect me and I'll prove it to you!"

Not exactly a mark of a high-trust society, whatever that means.

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