First, a few definitions:

Mean – harmful, offensive, abusive, petty, small-minded and/or selfish

Means – medium, method, or instrument to achieve a goal or accomplish a task

Mean – as in meaning, purpose, explanation, or rationale

I climbed the ladder of inference and wrongly assumed everyone was familiar with the phrase “the ends justify the means.” Or, at least, I confused people when I wrote about noble, positive, ethical, and moral means. I did not intend to “endarken obfuscatorily,” so I want to clarify a bit what I am talking about.

In our current cultural reality in these United States of ours, there are some shared concerns, hopes, wishes, and dreams. Our politicians know this, so they promise what they believe will be attractive enough to folks to gain their support and vote. What are some widely shared concerns? Safety and security – physically, emotionally, psychologically, and financially. Good stewardship – the responsible and defensible use of tax dollars, corporate accountability, employment that provides a living wage, and management of our public and private institutions. Law and order – a system of governance, legal system, law enforcement, and community protection for all people. Preservation of personal rights, privileges, freedoms and liberties. Good so far? Any you would take exception to?

Okay, so let’s look at a couple practical illustrations.

Immigration and the apprehension and deportation of violent criminals. If I am reading things right, the vast majority of U.S. citizens are in favor of three things: 1) we do not want to harbor violent criminals from other countries, and 2) we are a proud nation of diverse races and ethnicities built strong on the lives of immigrants and natives, and 3) we believe there should be a fair, sensible, clear and clean path to citizenship for all qualified people who willingly follow the rules. A very simple fact check reveals a few important pieces of information. First, our current processes for immigration are not working effectively, and many of the “fixes” applied have made the process more convoluted, exclusionary, confusing, and outrageously expensive that following the rules is difficult (nearly impossible for many). The number of truly violent, corrupt, and dangerous undocumented immigrants in our country is relatively low; the overwhelming majority of “undocumented” people in this country are here “illegally” for a variety of primarily innocuous, peaceful, accidental, and easily understandable reasons. The frustration of Homeland Security and the FBI is that the criminal element is least impacted by our current approaches to Immigration and Customs Enforcement – violent criminals, drug dealers, human traffickers, and gun runners have money, resources, connections, and legal support to avoid deportation.

Second, the current approach of massive raids, arrests, and deportations is not only irrational, ineffective, costly, and often illegal, it is also masking real problems while at the same time making new problems. The what – closing our country to violent criminals is not disputed (the end we hope to achieve). It is the how that is so distressing. Demonizing and dehumanizing anyone and everyone who is in this country “illegally” is disingenuous, petty, and mean. Extending it to people who are attempting to follow the legal processes, and in some cases are U.S. citizens is more than mean. It is cruel, corrupt, criminal, and unconstitutional. It is defended in terms of “economics,” focusing on the costs of undocumented people with almost no acknowledgement of the financial and social benefits to farming, hospitality, public works, and infrastructure that undocumented residents provide. Apart from the ethics, the morality, and the laws being broken, opponents to “due process” don’t argue the human rights and dignity side of the equation, only “do you have any idea how much it would cost if we were to follow the law?” I could go on and on with this, but the bottom line is that everything I can talk about is very easy to confirm, as long as you turn to primary sources and knowledgeable authorities instead of listening to politicians. At the risk of sounding conspiracy crazy, question EVERYTHING you hear from anyone with a political axe to grind. Politicians are notoriously ill-informed about science, religion, weaponry, higher education, economics, technology, medicine, and common sense. They are essentially experts at spin, bias, self-interest, manipulation, and getting re-elected.

Second example: D.E.I. What does it say about a culture that needs to focus special attention on the diversity of its makeup, the equity in place in the system, and the capacity to include everyone in the system? It means the system is not functioning well, otherwise there would be no need for the specialized attention. But what happens when the focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion shifts from honoring all of us and instead becomes a platform for accusations, recriminations, and blame? This is what happened in the U.S., making it very easy to criticize and demean the good as bad and ugly. Too many people got tired of hearing how awful they were and how much they needed to change. Instead of a shared Promised Land to which we all good strive, too many on the DEI side chose to accuse and attack anyone they thought were Egyptians. (My metaphor may be labored, but it is biblical: every time Moses and God’s children took their eyes off the Promised Land and looked back to Egypt, they got stuck.) Even the provocative and fertile concept of “woke” was easily coopted and perverted because instead of a positive and attractive goal to which we could all aspire, it too often was used to denigrate and humiliate the “unwoke.”

But the end of eliminating DEI efforts across the country? Throwing the baby, the tub, the soap, and the washcloth out with the bathwater. Eliminating prejudice, bias, unnecessary inequalities, bigotry, unfair practices, racism, xenophobia, profiling, and poverty should be priority work of our nation’s leaders at all levels. Making sure there is accountability and fair process, just protocols and practices, and objective standards is an excellent end. But the means? The current means are mean in the worst sense of the word. Instead of encouragement and incentives to improve, anyone standing for moral and ethical decency for all are being threatened, punished, dismissed or eliminated. Money is used as a cudgel to intimidate, abuse, and enforce. Rather than working collaboratively to create a sustainable system beneficial to all, steps are taken to further divide, discourage, despise, and devolve.

Means are every bit as important as ends. In fact, where the means are mean, the ends are almost guaranteed to be harmful, hurtful, inferior, and even evil.