If Donald Trump has one natural talent it’s for trolling. I take trolling to be a kind of performative speech act akin to an insult, a use of language that succeeds by provoking a response in its very utterance. A good troll manages just enough truth to demand a response while exploiting context to create an outrageously misleading impression. When done well, this provokes so much exasperation, rage, and disgust that the troll’s victims are reduced to ineffectual sputtering that seems to confirm his outlandish insinuations. Once embroiled, the victim can reverse things only with an expenditure of time and energy that exceeds the troll’s by orders of magnitude. 

Trump’s recent executive order on diversity training may be one of the last things of significance he manages as president. Without explicitly saying so, the order targets Critical Race Theory and more radical sorts of Feminist Philosophy, and everyone knows it was a political stunt driven entirely by his desperate desire to be re-elected. Predicated on anecdotal reports from a highly biased source, the order was issued without even the pretense of an independent investigation of the targeted training’s prevalence, its full content, or its actual outcomes. Taken as response to the ideas it targets, the order is as convincing as guidelines on the use of fetal tissue based on The Center for Medical Progress’ Youtube channel.

That said, it is hard not to marvel at the order as a bit of trolling…Keep reading.