DIE is the death of us. . .

Though it is universally diversity, equity, and inclusion, the initials could be arranged differently to more accurately reflect what is happening.   All across America institutions and industry have taken up the mantra of DIE with an almost religious fervor.  From preschools to the Ivy League universities, from the web sites of our largest businesses to governmental entities, the last few years have witnessed the hijacking of the ordinary purposes and goals of these schools and businesses to reflect the higher goal and purpose of a woke agenda.  This has not only divided America but caused confusion about what ought to be our agendas going forward and what are the core purposes and values of these agencies, institutions, and economic entities.

Wokeism is transforming our children by changing what happens in their classrooms and why.  The three goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion have transcended the typical curriculum of reading, writing, and arithmetic and consumed the energy, resources, and funds of these schools without a clear public debate or mandate for this change.  If only consider the positions and evaluation criteria applied to the people and programs of our schools to see how predominant the DIE has been cast over them.  The end result is disastrous for our children.  With every onslaught of the woke agenda, our children are falling further and further behind in their core educational skills and abilities but this has not slowed the relentless pursuit of social engineering through the classroom.  The end result will not be the elevation of our civilization but its decline.

Within these categories, race has become the lens through which everything is seen and judged without even admitting that equal access to education and opportunity have improved substantially.  That is not enough for the advocates of a Woke agenda.  Intent upon the division of the world in to the victims and those who victimize them, the Woke agenda is radical redistribution of power and wealth and not simply equality before the law or in the school system or in the marketplace.  Who you were seems to be a more important concern than who you might be or will be given such equality of access.

Far from galvanizing support for the DIE goals, the racial, economic, and educational tensions are greater than they have been since the integration of the schools sixty years ago.  Our credibility suffers with each advance of the DIE agenda as it further cements its hold upon education and expands its outreach into business.  Where once the investor had a choice to participate in socially conscious investments, now the major retailers and industries have decided there is economic interest in riding the wave of Wokism and seem committed to the use of their influence to advance the same goals and agenda as the schools of America now operate under.  However, no one seems to be asking if our schools are better schools or their graduates are actually better educated because of the Woke hold on the leadership and education of our schools and their faculties. 

What we have learned is that our liberty is so fragile and our people so easily offended or made uncomfortable that ordinary words are being removed from our vocabularies or replaced with words and concepts that have been judged less tainted by the past and less burdened by the baggage of what many have decided was only an oppressive and abusive history.  Grades and standards have been judged unilaterally and hopelessly repressive and racist.  The Woke agenda has become a counterrevolutionary fad even as we find ourselves hard pressed to fill the jobs we need with people whose educational preparation and whose fitness for the jobs they have will advance both our education and our accomplishment.

At some point in time, one hopes that we will awaken to the reality that Wokeism is inherently cannibalistic -- it can consume, tear down, and destroy but it cannot provide, build up, and inspire.  It is not a virtue oriented system but relies upon the sins of a nation and a people as its justification for existence.  Unlike the religious institutions that offer the actual hope of redemption, Wokeism within its DIE framework has no saving work -- only that of marking and destroying people and institutions.  For now, our politics seems powerless to raise the specter of an honest debate and it seems has one party completely allied with its Woke purpose while the other party differs less by essence than by pace.  Our educational institutions are so thoroughly caught up in the DIE agenda that some are wondering if they are salvageable at all.  Certainly it is easier to establish new universities than it is to rescue the ones we have.  Business probably is the least wedded to the agenda and there is at least some hope that if it proves unprofitable, the managers of America's main streets will reject what is Woke in favor of the profit motive.  But what will be left after this fad or trend has done its worst?  As if it could be worse, the end result of a people who have surrendered their identity and their case for a sham will be a greater mess than the mending of our institutions and agencies.

Though I have rearranged the initials to make it DIE, those who first put forth this Woke cause might have arranged them DEI because that it is Latin for God or deity.  Maybe that is exactly what they intended.