Amid surging numbers of illegal aliens attempting to enter the United States via land and sea and reports of plummeting morale among Border Patrol personnel, the beleaguered federal agency has decided the time is now right to focus on… a diversity push. As Afghanistan began its disintegration into deadly chaos, the Defense Department took time last month to boast about the appointment of the first transgender assistant secretary of defense for readiness.
Americans are getting a close-up look at how putting identity politics into actual practice works. It is hardly a comforting sight.
Racial Optics and a Seaborne Invasion
Border Patrol agents Martin Suro, Charles Cooper, and Sylvia Rodriguez
(Photo by Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images)
“The [U.S.] Border Patrol is looking for a temporary hire to boost diversity in its upper ranks following allegations that Hispanic and female employees were being discriminated against for promotions,” the Washington Examiner reported on Aug. 24.
“This initiative serves to address gaps in [Border Patrol] diversity, hiring, and promotional practices. In addition, the initiative will advance the efforts in recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce, enhancing resiliency, and recognizing professional and personal talent in the USBP ranks,” the listing stated, according to the Examiner.
One day earlier, on Aug. 23, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection published on its website an alarming description of the escalating sea invasion of this country by illegal alien smugglers.
“Maritime smuggling events in Orange, Los Angeles, and Ventura counties increased significantly this summer reaching record levels,” the report read. “Just in the month of July, members of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Regional Coordination Mechanism (ReCoM), in coordination with local law enforcement agencies, have responded to 12 smuggling events in the area.”
“These smuggling attempts along the coastline of Palos Verdes, Long Beach, San Pedro, Malibu, Newport Beach, and the first-ever panga landing in Santa Catalina Island, resulted in the apprehension of 90 undocumented individuals. While most were adult males of diverse nationalities, females and teenagers were also among those apprehended,” CBP detailed.
The swell of humanity at the porous southern border since Joe Biden entered the White House has been well documented. Now, it turns out our shoreline is also being overrun. Yet, what are Border Patrol higher-ups mulling, at the moment? “Just the optics of senior leadership ranks don’t pass the smell test,” a senior official wrote in a recent email, the Examiner related.
Bean-Counting Identities as US Soldiers Die
And then there is the ongoing national humiliation in Afghanistan. U.S. soldiers are now dying due to the Biden administration’s complete botching of the pullout. Top officials had no idea the Taliban was capable of taking the country so fast and responded to the rout by reportedly seeking protection for Americans in Kabul from the insurgents themselves.
An actual military and foreign policy catastrophe is unfolding, but rest easy, citizens. The quest for racial and gender “parity” is rolling along just fine inside the Pentagon. From an NBC News report on July 23:
“The Senate confirmed two LGBTQ women to top military positions on Thursday in historic firsts.
Gina Ortiz Jones will serve as undersecretary of the Air Force — the first out lesbian to serve as undersecretary of a military branch. Shawn Skelly will serve as assistant secretary of defense for readiness, becoming the first transgender person to hold the post and the highest-ranking out trans defense official in U.S. history.”
These personnel decisions are hardly outliers. “Biden’s Pentagon nominees: More diverse and more of them,” reads the Aug. 12 headline at Defense News. From the article:
“While Trump administration Pentagon nominees were overwhelmingly white and male, the Biden administration says 54% of its national security nominees ― to the Pentagon, State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development ― are women, 40% are people of color, and at least 7% identify as LGBTQ. At the Pentagon alone, 55% of political appointees are women, about 46% are people of color and more than 10% identify as LGBTQ.”
This bizarre obsessing over racial, gender and sexual identity percentages is a signature feature of this administration and its allies. Progressive globalist Swamp think tank The Brookings Institution reveled in the inanity in an Aug. 13 report hailing Biden’s “bold commitment to diversity”:
“Shifting the focus to the gender and race/ethnicity of those confirmed, the Biden administration has demonstrated a strong and steady commitment to appointing women and nonwhites to the highest positions in government. In the second 100-day period, more women than men were confirmed, with women representing 62% of confirmed individuals.
Looking at the rate of women in Senate-confirmed positions over the course of the first 300 days shows once again the Biden administration’s commitment to placing women in key positions. In fact, the Biden administration has already appointed more women to Senate-confirmed positions in the executive branch than President Trump had after a full 300 days in office.”
The people who had no clue earlier this summer that the Taliban could reach Kabul in a few weeks are all over every fraction of the historic ratios of females and nonwhites in federal government staffing. The two things most assuredly do go together.
Think back, painful as the memory may be, to those interminable Democratic presidential primary debates in 2019 and early 2020. The emphasis was overwhelmingly on nonsense like this instead of any kind of commitment to good governance. It all should come as no surprise. They told us what they were going to do, and now they are doing it. It had all the hallmarks of disaster then. And today, the tragic farce is playing out before the horrified visages of the American people.
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Read more from Joe Schaeffer.
