In the Name of Inclusion … a Perspective Excluded

by G. Tod Slone (March 2025)

 

Personal experience testing the waters of democracy has been the impetus for most of my writing and cartooning. For a long list of the organizations I’ve tested, examine my site. Such an m.o. does not normally constitute that of most writers, who seem to scorn the very thought of openly criticizing the diverse hands that feed or might feed. Just the same, testing the waters inevitably reveals just how democracy-adverse many, if not most, organizations, including those in the realm of higher education, tend to really be. Democracy is dead when alt-opinions are quashed via ad hominem or simple non-response. Most leaders at the diverse helms tend to disdain criticism with their regard… and thus are not in the least proponents of vigorous debate, cornerstone of a thriving democracy. On Cape Cod in Massachusetts, where I live, DEI thrives … and the waters of democracy are very murky.

“DEI under fire in D.C., but embraced on Cape Cod,” an op-ed published in the Cape Cod Times, grabbed my attention. In the past, I’d been quite critical of its author, Lawrence Brown, a former Cape Cod Academy teacher and vice chairman of the Interfaith Coalition. Today, he is a privileged columnist, who gets his opinions published by Cape Cod Times, which refuses to publish any of my opinions. For that, of course, I’ve also been quite critical of its editors, past and present (see, for example, here, here, here, and here). None of the editors ever chosen to respond to points made in my diverse criticisms.

Hereabouts and elsewhere, DEI has really come to mean unity of opinion and exclusion of those who brazenly break that unwritten rule … by simply daring to question and challenge it. When I opened the link, the title of the article in question changed to “Qualities that make Cape Cod so livable and lovable“—a bit more flaccid, a bit less political, and a lot more chamber-of-commerce friendly. No mention in the article, of course, of the increasingly high property taxes, summer mobs, monstrously huge and ugly housing projects, blasting leaf-blower noise, pigs-on-the-road drivers, and especially the hermetically-closed doors of cultural and media organizations to alt-opinions. Moreover, no mention of the ubiquitous ugly mansions, gated communities, and no-trespassing signs. Proles like me are prohibited from entering vast swaths of land on the Cape.

In the dead of winter, for example, I recently tried to reach historic Point Gammon Lighthouse on Great Island in West Yarmouth. I was running on the sand in the inter-tidal area, when two miles down, a guard was waiting for me.  She was standing next to her vehicle with cellphone in hand and told me to stop, so I did.

 

—Sir, this is private property! You can’t be here.

—Well, I’m birding. According to the law, I can be here. It’s on my cellphone.  Do you want to read it?

—No! You have to leave now or I’m going to call the police.

—Well, I’m going to keep going towards the lighthouse, then I’ll return.

—Then I’m calling the police!

 

Twenty yards or so further, I decided to head back.

 

—OK. I’m leaving! The cops probably won’t give a damn about the law either!

—Well, I’m going to call them anyhow.

 

For the law, see here. And so I continued heading back. If I’d kept heading to the lighthouse, the cops probably would have arrested me and have my car towed. Yes, Cape Cod is so “lovable”! In that regard, read about the migrant influx and high taxes. In Massachusetts, less than 12% of the shoreline is open to the public (i.e., people like me). Well, sure there are some nice things about the Cape. I enjoy swimming in the summer and exploring off season the many cranberry bogs. And some of my neighbors are quite friendly. Lee, for example, gifts me homemade cookies and bread and even lasagna periodically. Rob will often give me some leftovers and I walk with him and his dog Maggie to the beach every day. And we’ll sip tea together in his breezeway. And Bruce will give me some of his leftovers too. And we’ll sip tea together in his house.

Anyhow, I digress … or sort of. The columnist begins his DEI article by noting the different food options for those who like to eat out: “There’s a term for all this wonderful spectrum of traditional cuisines: DIVERSITY. And lucky us; we’ve got a ton of it.” However, diversity is not objectively so wonderful as often portrayed. In fact, when taken to extremes, it tends to eliminate interesting and historical cultural regions. When I travel to France, for example, I don’t go there to see mosques and women in burqas and eat Indian dishes. The columnist cannot resist revealing his political bias and Trump-derangement syndrome affliction, though he carefully avoids mentioning the T-word: “Suddenly, the idea of diversity, the mere appreciation of it, the welcoming of it, seems to have become criminally subversive in Washington.” DEI, however, runs counter to freedom and has metastasized into obligatory, as opposed to mere “welcoming,” which is why there is a very strong movement against it today. Contrary to the columnist’s absurd implication, diverse cuisines have not become criminal, nor is that the intention of the Trump regime.

The columnist then addresses “equity”: “There’s another term that’s suddenly in trouble — at least politically: EQUITY. Equity means ‘fairness’.” Well, “equity” has really been applied to signify equal outcomes … and thus the egregious problem with “equity,” which the columnist simply chooses to ignore, is that it supersedes “merit” and individuality and has even provoked anti-white racism. Instead, the columnist gets into religion: “Go to a house of worship, fall to your knees there, and beg for love and forgiveness from a God who—despite seeing everything—loves us equally.” Well, I don’t think he loves those of us guided staunchly by the rule of reason and facts. Besides, left-wing “equity” ideology certainly does not mean equality, as in equal opportunity … and loving right-wingers, who dare criticize the concept. It is really quite astonishing how the columnist avoids the political reality of DEI. Is that purposeful or simply deep indoctrination?

As for DEI “inclusion,” the columnist presents a few hypothetical examples including, “Imagine going out to a restaurant somewhere on Cape Cod and having somebody turn you away, not because the place was full, but because you were unwelcome.” But he fails (purposefully?) to mention the egregious problem in which left-wing “inclusion” ideology has come to mean cancel-culture “exclusion” of unwanted viewpoints … like the ones presented in this essay. Well, the columnist eventually does mention the political aspect of DEI: “If the left sees diversity, equity, and inclusion as goals, the pursuit of these goals can itself end up being morally snobby and exclusionary. If the right identifies these as goals of the left, it will turn on them as it seems to be turning on them now.”

And so why doesn’t Brown, the columnist, possess the courage to counter “exclusionary” by opening his doors (those of the Cape Cod Times) to points of view he and it do not like? Instead, he continues with blind positivity: “Equity, fairness, is such a deeply rooted value socially, legally, spiritually, morally, that it’s hard to imagine what this place would be like if somehow we rejected it.” Well, he and the Cape Cod Times have obviously rejected it! The Trump administration has steadily been eliminating DEI due to its ideological nature and inherent intellectual corruption. It has been working to eliminate the wasteful government funding propping it up. If anything, the left-wing “goals” have been turning on the left.

The columnist concludes with blind praise of the concept: “Equity, fairness, is such a deeply rooted value socially, legally, spiritually, morally, that it’s hard to imagine what this place would be like if somehow we rejected it. And Cape Cod’s entire economic life is based on inclusion.” And yet as I’ve mentioned, dare test the waters of democracy on the Cape, and ones conclusion might very well be quite different. If the columnist’s statement were true, why then have I, for example, been unable to get one library on the Cape to subscribe to the journal I publish on the Cape? Why can I not get Cape Cod Times to publish anything I write? Why am I prohibited (no-trespassing signs) from walking on so many beaches on the Cape? Why can’t I get my critical artwork in any of the museums on the Cape? Why can’t I get any grants? And on and on.

The columnist lives in a happy-face pipe-dream bubble. I do not. In reality, he and the Cape Cod Times serve the Chamber of Commerce, not democracy. He is part of the exclusion problem on the Cape. “If ‘all politics is local,’ as the wise men like to say, then we might do well to make sense out of what we’re hearing from Washington by translating it into the realities we live with out here every day.” Well, from my personal experiences, those “realities” are certainly not the ones experienced by privileged columnist Lawrence Brown….

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NB: The essay was sent to the columnist and editor of the Cape Cod Times, Anne Brennan. Neither deigned to respond. Democracy?

 

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G. Tod Slone, PhD, lives on Cape Cod, where he was permanently banned in 2012 without warning or due process from Sturgis Library, one of the very oldest in the country. His civil rights were being denied because he was not permitted to attend any cultural or political events held at his neighborhood library. The only stated reason for the banning was “for the safety of the staff and public,” yet he has no criminal record and has never made a threat. His real crime was that he challenged, in writing, the library’s “collection development” mission that stated “libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view.” His point of view was somehow not part of “all points of view.” In November 2022, he requested the library rescind its banning decree, which it finally did.  He is a dissident poet/writer/cartoonist and editor of The American Dissident.

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