Meritocracy - The China State Dinner Guest List, Not A Black Face In The Crowd

There they were surrounding the Presidents of the United States and China - Musk, Bezos, Brin, Huang, Ellison, Page, and Zuckerberg, America's genius cluster, neo-industrialists like Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, and J.P. Morgan of a hundred years ago, the men whose intelligence, creativity, ambition, will and insight have confirmed the country's premier position in high-tech, media, and business. 

China is the second biggest economy in the world, America's most formidable adversary, a country of remarkable achievement, in only a few decades rising from the poverty of the Maoist years to one of the world's wealthiest, most ambitious and best militarily prepared. 

Xi has made China's intentions clear. With its Machiavellian world view, its Confucian ethic, its imperial history, and a Communist system which insists on cultural integrity, patriotism and national pride, a deliberate, single-minded drive for international superiority, and a program to elevate millions out of poverty to wealth, it will preside over all nations. 

It owns much of the United States' debt, is on a path to control the natural resources necessary for modern, high-tech technology, to command the attention of Third World nations as it continues to make mutually favorable deals for mineral wealth and energy.  There are none of America's conditionalities applied to African nations, insisting on judicial and electoral reform as conditions of foreign aid.  The Chinese have negotiated an agreement with Angola - guarantee oil at a fixed, below-market rate, and we will rebuild your failing infrastructure.  

Morality and exceptionalism have no place in the Chinese geopolitical worldview  Every country is bound to further its national interest first, foremost, and exclusively.  It is up to recipient countries to reform if they see fit. As such, and guided by such a simple ethos, the Chinese have managed to assume political and economic hegemony over Africa and much of the rest of the developing world while the United States has dithered, mired in self-referential moralism. 

At the core of Chinese dominance is a socio-philosophical culture which values hard work, discipline, single-minded attention to excellence, and an indefatigable practicality.  One has to look no farther than the Chinese diaspora in America to see this ethos at work.  Chinese students are the majority at specialized high schools like New York City's Stuyvesant which takes students based on a highly competitive exam.  They predominate to such a degree at America's top tier schools that a Supreme Court case had to be fought to ensure that programs of diversity did not discriminate against them. 

So it is no surprise that Donald Trump brought out the big guns of modern industry at his state dinner.  America has been and will always be a world leader in economic influence.  China may be a worthy competitor, but these men sitting around the formal dinner table are not to be taken lightly.  They will engineer America's supremacy in AI, robotics, and the introduction of ultra-high technology throughout the economy. 

'Racist', said Bob Muzelle when the read the guest list in the Washington Post. 'Not a black face among them', but no comment could be more irrelevant.  Presidents Xi and Putin of Russia have had a good laugh at the circus of diversity, equity, inclusivity, and identity politics dividing America, focusing on irrelevant, historically ignorant, and febrile fantasies.  The more the United States is consumed by such idiocy and turns its vision away from the far more important if not existential geopolitical issues of the day, the better it is for the Machiavellian, determined regimes of the world. 

There was no politically driven, enforced mandate of diversity promoting the men of the genius cluster.  They rose to the top of the industrial pyramid and to untold wealth thanks to brains, ambition, will, and ingenuity.  There is no room for the less qualified in their intellectual aerie; no room for hopeful but intellectually laggard hopefuls. 

All formal White House events under the Biden administration were examples of diversity run rampant.  Guests were chosen to show off a 'rainbow coalition', an assortment of races and ethnicities with little regard for excellence, ability, or promise.  It was enough to show the world and assembled dignitaries that America was a cultural haven, a humane, considerate, compassionate place. 

There were no black faces around the formal dinner tables at the Trump dinner because the black community still lags far behind in educational performance, professional success, scientific achievement, intellectual brilliance, and uncommon character. This all may be in the cards, but not now.  

The head table at one of Biden's last state diners was a circus act, a side show, a collection of every possible variety of race, gender, and ethnicity - and not just tame, Armani-suited, examples of business demeanor, but the most exaggerated versions of each.  Not just gay men who looked like every other American man, but the swishiest, most outlandishly cabaret-ready ones.  Such diversity was far more powerful, telling, and indicative of geopolitical superiority than any collection of Silicon Valley and Wall Street so-called geniuses. 

To Bob Muzelle and his progressive colleagues, the guest list at the Chinese state dinner was a travesty, an expression of America's deeply-rooted sense of elitism, aristocracy, cultural separatism, and raw Darwinian competition. They howled when they saw the limousines pull up to the White House gate - billionaires and their white trophy wives - tall, elegantly dressed, stunningly beautiful consorts to the world's most powerful. 

And yet, all Bob could do when he made up his own diverse guest list was to come up with old, hackneyed retreads - Al Sharpton, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Cornel West, and Henry Louis Gates - men known more for their social media sites and public showiness than any real substance.  Of course there were hundreds of black athletes who dominate American professional sports, but all these men can do is throw or kick a ball, and would add nothing to the high octane fuel of state dinners. 

Progressives like Muzelle were stuck within the  confines of 'diversity' a political agenda which stopped at the surface and had no interest in the real high qualities of a nation.  He was hobbled by an irrelevant algorithm.  Given his political party's insistence on the superficial, insisting that race, gender, and ethnicity alone gave agency, respect, and title, he was forced to come up dry. 

Of course there were plenty of Asian Americans at the Trump dinner.  What would Silicon Valley be without them? But they don't count and don't belong in the racial pantheon of the liberal Left.  They are not victims, and that is what filters them out of the equation.  Diversity is not static, but a first step to raising the disadvantaged out of social poverty. No Asians, by and large successful, intellectually driven, professionally outstanding, and wealthy, fall into that category. 

'Your time is up', said a Yale classmate of Bob as kindly as he could, 'and about time', he added to himself; but to Bob the fight was now enjoined at the highest level.  Donald Trump was a maleficent, dangerous, opportunistic interloper who must be defeated, replaced, decommissioned and sent packing before he did any more damage. 

Yet, in his quieter moments, Bob, now a man of advanced years reflected on his life and saw only his shabby office, his split-level in the low-end suburbs, his penurious income, the failing public schools his children had attended, his exclusion from all the perks and advantages a Yale education should have afforded him.  The classmate who called him out for his penitential politics was about to head off to Nantucket for the summer in time to sail in the Yale-Harvard Alumni regatta.  He was to be joined there by other members of Bob's class of 19__, patrician, wealthy, influential men and their families of beautiful wives and children. 

He quickly shook off the awful vision and returned to the social activism which had sustained him for so many years; but there was that guest list, in indelible ink before his eyes.  America's best and brightest shown off to the world while his ragtag, motley diverse assemblage of racial, gender, and ethnic caricatures was nowhere to be seen.