Week two of the “Golden Age” US President Donald Trump announced at his inauguration featured the death of 67 in a collision between an out-of-position military helicopter and a passenger jet on final approach to Washington’s Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
When, 39 years earlier almost to the day, the president for whom that airport was renamed had to respond to another disaster — the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger shortly after launch — he delivered one of the finest speeches of a career in which there were many (even if you did not always agree with him).
He consoled the families of the seven dead astronauts, extolled the daring and wizardry that drove America’s space programme, and tried to bring the nation together, concluding with words that can still make one choke up. “We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them this morning as they prepared for the journey, waved goodbye and slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.”
Trump, informed of the latest tragedy, tapped out a postmidnight message on Truth Social, the pulpit from which he bullies and blusters: “This is a bad situation that looks like it could have been prevented. NOT GOOD!!!”
At a press conference the next day he did offer perfunctory condolences to the bereaved, but quickly got down to the business of scapegoating. “Common sense”, with which he claimed to be inordinately endowed, told him the accident could be attributed to the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies of his immediate predecessors.
He then signed yet another of the performative executive orders he has been churning out to simulate action. It read in part: “This shocking event follows problematic and likely illegal decisions during the Obama and Biden administrations that minimised merit and competence in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).”
Did he have any grounds for this assertion? The answer is no, but unfortunately not a simple no, which is one of the reasons this supremely unfit human being is now president. The FAA runs air US traffic control in the US and employs more than 14,000 controllers. Theirs is a stressful job, so stressful that the mandatory retirement age is 55.
Like pilots, controllers require a particular set of cognitive and other aptitudes and must undergo rigorous training. It takes two to three years to be certified once you’ve made it into the training programme, and to get that far you have to have passed an eight-hour selection exam, designed to weed out trainees unlikely to make the final grade.
To grow the pipeline of candidates from sources other than the military or off the street, the FAA partnered with colleges such as Arizona State University to offer degree level courses. Graduates with faculty recommendations would be invited to take the test, and if they passed would be placed on a register to await call-up for training as vacancies opened.
In 2014 the FAA changed the rules. Aspiring controllers who had paid thousands of dollars for degrees that got them onto the register were bumped off it and told they would not only have to take the exam again but would first have to pass a “biographical” test.
The latter was rigged to ensure a 90% failure rate. In one typical question candidates were asked in which subject they received their lowest grades at high school. Top marks went to those who answered science. I’ve taken the test myself — it requires no special knowledge. I tried to answer the questions in a way that would logically recommend me as controller material. I failed miserably. Which was the intention given who and what I am.
The take-at-home “biographical” test, banned by Congress in 2016 amid lawsuits and Fox News-fanned outrage, was a DEI subterfuge to create a pool of candidates that was more racially representative without using race as a criterion — at least overtly. It turned out that to make sure it worked an FAA official had been feeding the right answers to black applicants beforehand.
This was a dirty trick to play on people — white and black — who had invested in getting themselves onto the register by studying for a degree and passing the challenging selection exam. But did it result in less-qualified candidates making it through? Not if the selection exam itself was not dumbed down, and there is no evidence that it was.
The constant insinuation by Trump, Elon Musk and others that lives are in danger because black and brown beneficiaries of DEI are somehow inferior and less capable is beyond contemptible. But nor can one deny that the understandable backlash against woke discrimination helped elect these monsters as our masters.
• Barber is a freelance journalist based in Washington.
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