They want to make a superior world for inferior white men

“What the proponents of the Great Resegregation seek is a counterrevolution not merely in law, but also in culture. The civil-rights revolution of the 1960s changed hearts and minds as well as laws, and one of those changes was that racially exclusive institutions became morally suspect. Notably, Trump officials are not willing to state their aims explicitly; they feel obligated to pay lip service to ideals of color-blind meritocracy and mislead about their intentions.” — Adam Serwer. I recommend the whole piece which gets at what I was talking about here, that for many people white male achievement is never to be questioned while anyone else is suspect. (hat tip to Slacktivist for the link). In the same vein:

“That, really, has been the crux of everything for several years now. They feel as though they have been denied the social power and cultural influence to which they are entitled, and even though literally nothing has changed beyond a president who didn’t even win the popular vote by a whole percentage point running roughshod over the entire federal government, they are frantically declaring a vibe shift.” And they believe they’ve achieved it which is why DOD press official Kingsley Wilson feels free to tweet raving anti-Semitism.

“The attack on DEI shows why liberals should stop arguing about “strategic” use of language forever. DEI stands for three uncontroversial virtues that most every American accepts, and the right still turned it into a vile slur. It doesn’t matter what you say – they will poison it because YOU said it.” — Adam Conover

“It was five words that sealed the deal. ” And they just let you .” That was key. If he had said that he grabbed women by the pussy and they told him to fuck off and then sued him for sexual harassment, it would have been something different altogether. He might not have won, and not because people sided with the women, but because he would have been perceived as weak. When he said, ” And they just let you, ” it gave these people a glimmer of hope for a power they felt they once had and have since lost. That’s what “putting someone in their place” means. It means that you have the power “and they just let you.”

“The irony, of course, is that Trump and his cabal insist that DEI puts unqualified people in positions and steals from competent white men, when his choice of cabinet picks and staffing shows nothing but the highest levels of grossly incompetent white men. White men who were angry that before the return of Trump, their whiteness was no longer cover for their mediocrity and that in a world with DEI, they were forced more often to actually be competent and well-qualified to get work. ” — Shay Stewart-Booley

From one of the links above, I think this is also worth quoting: “they think they are replicating what the Left did with regard to what they understand as “woke.” They think we just made up new rules for everyone to follow in order to trip them up and get them in trouble for no reason — sort of like how old money people made up weird new etiquette rules (like a raised pinky while drinking tea) in order to trip up the nouveau riche during the Gilded Age. They think we took things that weren’t real problems (specifically anti-Black racism) and made a big thing out of them in order to make them feel like bad people. They think we invented trans people just to personally annoy them.”

To which this quote from Audre Lorde seems relevant: “This hatred and our anger are very different. Hatred is the fury of those who do not share our goals, and its object is death and destruction. Anger is a grief of distortions between peers, and its object is change.”