T here was a time, not long ago, when a major corporate law firm would look to burnish its “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” credentials in the marketplace. At which point that firm might hire a writer like, say, me. It was a given that Big Law firms needed to become more diverse, at least if they wanted to stay relevant in a work environment that was no longer male, white, straight, and old. Firms everywhere invested real money in the recruitment, training, and promotion of lawyers from widely varied backgrounds, and they paid people like me to brag about it to the world. Every firm needed a DEI page on its website. Some wanted printed brochures. Some wanted advertising. Most wanted the legal community, especially law schools, to know about their diversity efforts. Law schools were by then rating firms by their DEI “scores,” and the firms with the best scores were getting the pick of the litter from the graduating classes. What I liked about the work was...
S o let’s say you’re Vladimir Putin. Scary, I know. But let’s just say you’d been trained by the old KGB to hate the United States with a white-hot passion that you’ve had on simmer since long before you became dictator. It’s a hate you were taught in the Brezhnev years, which were almost as bad as Stalin’s but with mass death ruled out, more or less. You nursed the hate through the convulsions of the early nineties, when your beloved Soviet Union was scrapped and replaced with economic chaos and widespread privation, which the Russian people somehow endured, as usual. Then finally, in 2000, you got your shot. You took over the whole country, and your hate was given room to breathe. Still you took your time. Fourteen years till you “annexed” Crimea and moved on the Donbass. Two more years before you engineered Brexit and the self-destruction of the UK, the same year you stole a U.S. presidential election for a pliable con man you’ve owned for three decades...