ON A DAY LIKE TODAY, I PASSED THE TIME AWAY, WRITING
Herewith, some thoughts about two controversial memos that have recently made news. A couple of decades ago, I went through a period of writing controversial workplace memos myself, so I can sympathize with the impulse. Luckily, I worked in academe, so while my bosses may have been exasperated, they didn’t try to get rid of me. Towards the end of my career, my sins came back to haunt me. I became an administrator and one of my assignments was to deal with complaints from disgruntled employees. Karma’s a bitch.
The two memos I want to discuss are the “Google diversity memo” and the National Security Council “Cultural Marxism” memo. Both were written by obscure functionaries in large organizations who lost their jobs over what they wrote. You can find the full text of both memos with a quick Google search. And speaking of Google….
James Damore is a now ex-Google engineer who wrote a 10 page memo in which he argued that Google’s diversity policy was misguided. His argument really resonated with folks who were predisposed to agree with it. He even claims to support diversity in the workplace. He just thinks men are different than women, and that those differences play out in terms of interest and aptitude for Google’s work.
Actual scientists have pretty much shredded his argument. As Suzanne Sadedin (link below) put it, “To an evolutionary biologist, the idea that sex differences are purely socially constructed is simply implausible. That said, the argument in the document is, overall, despicable trash.”
Damore gives the game away when he argues that the diversity Google really needs is intellectual diversity, particularly in the form of more employees with conservative political views who happen to agree with him. Naturally, conservative pundits are trying to frame this as a simple free speech issue.
But look. This dude wrote a 10 page memo using junk science to justify discrimination against women. His memo harmed Google by creating (or more likely, amplifying) a hostile work environment for women currently on the payroll, and it also resulted in negative publicity that will almost certainly make it harder for the company to recruit new women employees. No organization needs that.
No organization needs Rich Higgins, either, although until a few days ago, we were paying his salary. Higgins was placed on the National Security Council by Moscow Mike Flynn. Being Flynn’s protégé was, as NSC Director H.R. McMaster understood, an enormous red flag all by itself. But instead of keeping his head down, Higgins wrote a 7 page memo claiming that there is a vast conspiracy, involving pretty much everyone to the left of Sean Hannity, which is out to destroy Donald Trump. Higgins calls this conspiracy Cultural Marxism, and claims that it operates on a “Maoist Insurgency model.” And where is this Maoist insurgency taking place? The “battlespace,” as Higgins calls it, is the media, including social media.
Facebook is one of the combat zones. Watch out for unexploded memes.
I guess that makes me part of the conspiracy, and of course Higgins isn’t wrong when he says that there are a whole lot of people who’d love to see Donald Trump become an ex-president as soon as possible. But he earns his Tinfoil Hat Merit Badge by claiming that all of us malcontents are taking orders from the Muslim Brotherhood.
Yes, everyone from Stephen Colbert to John McCain is working hard to help radical Islam impose sharia law from sea to shining sea. Admit it, isn’t that what we all really want?
Higgins is obviously nuts, but right wing nuts are a dime a dozen. What makes Higgins special is that his memo found its way into the hands of Fredo Trump Jr., who passed it on his Dad. Trump senior famously doesn’t read anything longer than a single page, and this particular memo is a tough slog even for me. (On a good day I can read up to a dozen pages at a single sitting.) So someone must have summarized it for the president. And that’s how Higgins earned his place in the Right Wing Conspiracy Theory Hall of Fame, alongside Joe McCarthy and the John Birch Society.
Damore and Higgins have a First Amendment right to express their views. They do not have a First Amendment right to keep their jobs if they go public with views that help sabotage their employers.
Damore, a bright lad with a wee bit of a history of public anti-feminism, may well have thought he’d worded his memo carefully enough to get away with it. Higgins, whose memo is what psychologists call “batshit insane,” may nonetheless have been surprised to have been fired, given his fans in the White House. I think Damore is toast, but Higgins may yet find himself vindicated.
When McMaster fired Higgins, the Bannonites and their Russian allies pushed back hard, and that battle is still in progress. That makes McMaster sort of a canary in the coalmine. If he survives, it’s an indication that there are still some grownups in the White House who can clean up messes and perhaps even delicately steer Trump away from his worst impulses.
Right now, Trump is playing “wag the dog,” manufacturing international incidents in an attempt to turn attention away from the legal noose that’s tightening around him and his family. As painful as it is to admit, the generals – McMaster, Kelly, and Mattis – are probably our last line of defense against really stupid and dangerous presidential behavior. If they quit or get fired, it’ll be a pretty good sign that Donald Trump is preparing to go full Dr. Strangelove.
Luckily those old “Duck and Cover” public service announcements are on YouTube.