Back when Hilary Clinton was running for the White House, the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre said having her elected after Obama would be a bridge too far, two “demographically significant” presidents in a row.
Obviously, LaPierre saw no demographic significance to a white man getting elected — no significance at all. It’s natural. The default setting. And once upon a time, white America could assume that was true. White men ran everything, women kept house and raised the kids, normal people were all heterosexual. It’s when you have women or POC in a position of authority you have to wonder what’s going on — how could that possibly happen? Charlie Kirk said it was perfectly reasonable to see a black airline pilot and wonder if they were qualified; it’s simply a given in his mind that white people must have earned their job on merit. White people getting all the good jobs is again, not a thing that needs questioning — white male achievement is always earned. So if you’re not promoting enough white people, clearly you’re racist.
Not that this is uniform on the right: misogynist Scott Yenor has openly called for discrimination against women in hiring. Bigot US Rep. Chip Roy wants to end all immigration (I imagine he’ll make an exception for white South Africans) and freaks out that some kids don’t speak English at home.
But generally, what they want is not simply to bring back the days of white, male, Christian supremacy, it’s that people will stop complaining about it. Women and POC will accept that the lowest white man is their superior and deserves a bigger piece of the pie. Men won’t have to deal with the nagging voice that says just maybe having a woman cook and clean for them and handle all the child care isn’t a natural or equitable arrangement. It’s not enough to be top of the hierarchy, everyone must agree they deserve it. As Paul Campos puts it, “white supremacy is merely the belief that it’s the natural order of things for white people to be running everything, and that this natural order will continue to exist, absent massive and per se wrongful intervention by a “socialist” government (‘socialism’ in right wing discourse means above all using the powers of the government to try to ameliorate the effects of white supremacy).”
This is a common sentiment on the right, though it’s not unique to them. When they punch down at gays or women, the response they want is “Well, I disagree with what you say but I respect your right to say it”; when instead they’re called out for misogyny, racism or homophobia, that’s shutting down the conversation. No there’s a conversation, it’s just not going they way they expect it. The religious right are particularly prone to announcing how not treating them as moral superiors is equivalent to the persecution of the early Christian martyrs. They want all the glamor of martyrdom without the inconvenience of actual suffering.
The rich get the same stick up their butts. It’s not enough that they have incredible wealth (here’s one discussion on that topic), they want us to revere them. Zohram Mamdani proposes a tax on luxury residences owned by out-of-towners; hissing, spitting billionaires declare they should be praised instead of taxed — “tax the rich” is like a racial slur or an assassination attempt. As Paul Krugman puts it “They wanted to be able to live the privilege of their great wealth. They wanted to be able to just flaunt their wealth, performatively display their dominance, not have to worry about people chiding them for being politically incorrect just because they were abusive towards other people because of their gender or their whatever, their race, anything.”
And John Roberts and other members of SCOTUS’ Sinister Six get indignant if anyone suggests they’re political players, not wise, dispassionate solons. Roberts chose to be the man who destroyed the Voting Rights Act; well now he is, so he should own it. But he doesn’t want to.
The sniveling toddler in the Oval Office is particularly prone to this. His snowflake fee-fees can’t stand any suggestion he’s not the most wonderful president ever (particularly that he’s more wonderful than The Black President) so he freaks out and attacks anyone who says otherwise, then lies he’s successfully handling everything, whether it’s Iran, hantavirus or gas prices.
Even someone who’s not at the level of wealth or power that makes them think they’re above the common human herd can still to cling to being white or male as proof they’re special. For some people, it’s all they’ve got. Which is why we’re watching them work so hard to turn back the clock and undo the gains America made in the 1960s.
As Fred Clark at the Slacktivist blog pointed out a while ago (I don’t have the link), some people will have technical, legal arguments as to why diversity is bad, birthright citizenship is bad. Many of them will give lip service to equality — “Well, of course, I don’t think businesses should discriminate, but they should be free to do so.” Despite their lip service, they’re obviously comfortable with the uglier world that would result.
