How A Coffee Maker Can Stop Trump

The plight of DEI being removed is now obvious in all quarters of business and academia to name just two areas that are getting the most press. It has been said that a good many people still don’t know what woke means. Woke means awakened to injustice. Some people feel that it is the opposite of meritocracy. Many businesses and educational institutions have removed DEI programs as Trump mandated.

DEI has been replaced with “accessibility and engagement.” Newly minted DOJ head, Pam Bondi, doesn’t want “any more illegal DEI or accessibility discrimination.” The removal of DEI is a great case study for an ethics class and is the kind of issue I would use in class. We would look at what ethical language helps us to understand, not tolerate, the current attack on democracy. In a short period of time since the election of the orange god, people are crying out, “What have I done with my vote?” Protests now abound across our nation.

We must look at the bottom line of classism and accessibility, with the question, “Show me the money?” We are where we are because of the increasing gap between the rich and the poor. Most of the studies reflect that given a choice between ethical action and money, human beings will choose money because it creates security.

The Republicans and Trump cry out that we need a meritocracy. They forget that the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence can be summarized by one word, equality. Equality was at the heart of John Locke’s natural laws that influenced our philosophy of government. My favorite quote is that “those with merit have hit a homerun when for the most part they were born on third base.” (Coach Bud Wilkinson) They had a head start. The key is not where did you end up as I did at Yale and Duke, but where did you start? It makes me very angry when people say to me, “If you can make it to those places, anyone should be able to.” That’s why the underdog has so much resonance in our culture. But it is also a demeaning statement to make to another person. It belittles them.Trump and Musk started on third base, as did Stefanik, and others in Congress.

This phenomenon is seen most clearly in racism and pointed out in her seminal book, Caste by Isabel Wilkerson. It breaks my heart when black students from EA come back to see me after attending a top-rated school where they must deal with that sideways look from white students who think that black students got there because of their race and not because they worked hard in one of the most rigorous independent schools in the nation. Isabel Wilkerson’s point is that groups must feel better than others. Hence the title, Caste, descriptive of the hierarchal social levels of India.

Let’s cover the issues like we are in an ethics class to address how groups work. The Utilitarian System which has as its first step the identification of one’s primary group has us consider the greatest good for the greatest number in our group. We see this when Democrats or Republicans feel that their group is the best for the American people. Our primary group for the survival of our democracy should be our Nation. Unfortunately, right now, MAGA seems to be running the political show. There is another aspect to the Utilitarian System which is Consequentialism. It calls us to connect decisions to consequences. This is something that Maga and Trump don’t do. For example, they recently fired people who knew how to deal with our nuclear system. They needed to find them to bring them back to get their expertise in handling a problem, but the fired workers’ addresses were no longer listed due to Trump’s most recent purge.

Hedonism would call our nation to moderation in all things as is true of the Jewish Ethic as well. Certainly, Trump’s methods are not moderate but extreme.

But the best ethical move at this point comes from Todd Carmichael, the founder of La Colombe Coffee. I asked him to come to our school and speak to our community on his decision-making model. He is not only a businessman but an adventurer who has crossed the Sahara pulling a sled behind him with what he needed to survive. He also crossed Antarctica pulling a sled behind him. Prior to that trip his wife had been treated for cancer, and his decision-making model was that if ever his wife, Lauren Hart, contacted him by cellphone on that trip to report that her cancer was back, he would stop reaching for his goal and return home even if he was just yards from being the first man to walk across Antarctica alone. His decision-making model which he also applied to his business was a decision to stop his frozen walk. What would he need to do to change direction or stop (in this case to return home) to his wife? That was his driving question. Obvious he had decisions like that one in building his business.

To translate his ethical decision-making model to our current chaos and crisis in our nation, the question would be, “What would Trump or Maga have to do for us as a nation to put an end to a one-way ticket to a dictatorship.” No one is talking about that at all. There is no line in the sand. The Carmichael Method is what is needed! Besides, I am a coffee aficionado! He brought me a box of all the varieties of his coffee, so I am a bit biased. His coffee is served at the Ritz and Four Seasons.

This decision-making model is in place in the mining industry. The miners take a canary into the mines with them to work. A dead canary is their sign to know when they need to get out of the mine and get to the surface. The canary is their red line to leave. Otherwise, they would be as dead as that yellow bird. So goes the future of our nation!

What would we as a nation need to do to no longer go along with Musk and Trump? It may take a constitutional crisis or worse.