I would love everyone to just examine the specific situations as they arise instead of immediately jumping to Platonic discussions of merit and race and gender.

I would love everyone to just examine the specific situations as they arise instead of immediately jumping to Platonic discussions of merit and race and gender. Otherwise you're falling into a culture war trap that's completely unproductive. The first problem is there's actually no injury here as far as I can tell. This person did not even submit the paperwork, and thus did not get scored, and thus did not get rejected. The entire thing is based around the assumption that he would get rejected. But why would he assume that? Maybe it has less to do with his paperwork and more to do with his public activity. For example, in this case, you have an individual who either tweets or retweets dozens of times daily (DAILY), frequently getting into online arguments. He's active in the conservative online outrage machine, retweeting and interacting with conservative personalities. He has a paid Substack where he opines about the cultural revolution ("Marxist" left unsaid, but obviously present), whether COVID was real, how "the Left" destabilizes society, and other conservative culture war issues. By any stretch of the imagination, this isn't a normal person. This is someone who is loud, addicted to Online Discourse, and who seems like they're looking to make trouble. If someone like this was a colleague, regardless of their political persuasion, I would steer clear of them. This type of person is often not pleasant to be around, and often fails to properly do their job.