The reader’s email had a preaching tone.
The writer spoke as if I hadn’t heard the Good News, and as if the Almighty had chosen her to proclaim it.
In rubbing out diversity and equity programs, she wrote, our president had taken a historic turn.
Whatever considerations once drove personnel decisions across this land, under our great leader, “merit” would prevail.
I didn’t respond. It would be ungodly to call a stranger imbecilic.
It was tempting, though. At that moment the president was unveiling Cabinet choices who were stunning for their lack of qualifications, except for a blanket endorsement from the Mike Lindell “My Pillow” Institute of Crackpottery.
Matt Gaetz’ as our chief law enforcer? Problem: Gaetz had trouble explaining all the patches he’d acquired for membership in the Jeffrey Epstein Pedo-Creep Club. Down went Gaetz.
Replacement for attorney general: Pam Bondi. Key qualification: loyalist to the king. In office, she has held to her oath: Never, ever, act independently of his whims whatever the law may say.
Homeland Security grandstander Kristi Noem was an embarrassment from the start, and thanks to her “South Park” caricature, will be for eternity.
Then there’s our secretary of defense – on loan from “Fox and Friends” and the nearest tavern. Pete Hegseth proceeded to earn our trust by treating an attack on Yemen like a Tupperware Zoom, inviting his wife into the Signal group and, by accident, a magazine editor.
“Lock him up,” cried MAGA. Actually, no.
Then there’s the man chosen to lead our FBI. Kash Patel came with a list of enemies to pursue to the ends of the law, whether they broke any law or not.
Speaking of merit:
Patel says the agency will lower requirements to fill a sea of vacancies at the “new” FBI.
The smart guys in the administration have driven hundreds out of the nation’s top law enforcement operation.
No great loss, of course. Taxpayers only spent untold sums recruiting and training those individuals.
The new people will have half as much training as their predecessors. No time to waste, since they have so many of the president’s political foes to pursue.
No longer will new agents need college degrees, either. That’s OK. It will open up law-enforcement jobs for the Jan. 6 rioters. And as we all know, colleges are just vipers’ nests of woke indoctrination.
That brings up our secretary of education, Linda McMahon. Oh, my. She brought her expertise from running WWE — that’s pro wrestling — to do what the White House wants from a pedagogical expert: micromanage higher education.
A true conundrum: She’s tasked to shut down her whole department. But the department has so much to do in putting a headlock on one university after the other. What to do? And she’s barely begun to terrorize K-12 education.
What else from this meritorious administration?
Like agency after agency, the National Weather Service is dealing with untold vacancies because of the blowtorch treatment this administration has applied to the federal workforce.
No problem, of course. We’ll find weather people. Everyone has an opinion about that, after all. If hardly qualified, at least each new hire will assure that when the president says a hurricane will hit where it won’t, he or she won’t challenge it.
Foremost in filling vacancies at the Weather Service, according to ABC News, will be “loyalty to the president.” No kidding.
New hires will be asked to explain “how they would advance President Donald Trump’s agenda.” Again, no joke.
Rick Spinrad, who led the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under Joe Biden, said, “These people should be hired for their knowledge in meteorology or hydrology or information technology or physics — not civics.”
The public deserves a qualified forecaster on the job, not “a policy muck who’s taken one meteorology class,” he said.
We can’t leave this matter of “merit” without discussing what’s happening at the Centers for Disease Control, where firing squads appear daily on the headquarters lawn.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has shown he can Google up any theory he needs to dispute established medical science. And he’ll fire you if you call it quackery.
He has so disrupted the CDC that a sign on the wall says, “Last person with expertise please turn off the lights.” Or should.
“Meritocracy.” Preach, lady.
Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.
