kickarr
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May 1, 2026 1:33 PM
kickarr
20150
693
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NonPoliticalChimpanzee
I got a cool jacket from rei
Cats2cats
The merit is in subjugating.
Ivain
Anyone using intelligence in conjunction with the current administration has none of their own.
Illinifan88
Yea except we're not going back to that. We're going back to nepotism and corruption.
ReverseSyzygy
Merit = those with money.
Excellence = "So cool that we have the money."
"Intelligence" = went to Ivy League schools that you can only get into if you have generational wealth.
hsalonen3000
Merit being who your parents are, Excellence is just a buzzword and Intelligence is what private school you paid money to.
Arcadian1
They replaced a 4-Star general with a Fox News host.
zxqv8
They prefer DIE. Disparity, Inequity, Exclusion
Zadokster
Is this W faps?
Margrave9000
You're either racist or uneducated - or you support DEI and its extension.
Meritocracy is just a euphemism for racism.
cousteau
It's really AAA - Asskissing, Asskissing, and more Asskissing.
Gatorjon
From a strictly professional standpoint you WANT diversity on your team. The way any human thinks is a product of their total experiences. If you have people from diverse backgrounds and experience sets, then they will inherently think differently than you and others. That is so incredibly important in business because this diversity leads to diverse ideas and solutions that you would otherwise not have from a team comprised of people that are simply "good" on paper.
SomeDetroitGuy
The only way that the "we're replacing DEI with merit, excellence, and intelligence" argument makes sense is if you're already a misogynistic racist who thinks that straight, white men are always better at everything that someone who is not a straight, white man. If we had a system based entirely on merit, excellence and intelligence than the people in it would naturally look like the population as a whole. If you only have straight, white men then you're not taking the best.
ChiLLeCheeze
It's called the white man's burden for a reason. They have to burden everyone else with their BS.
MrAcurite
Even from a meritocratic lens, the fundamental conceit of DEI is that there are people who *have* merit, but who are overlooked for system reasons, and that you can get them where they deserve to go by double checking your shit. Being anti-DEI means you believe that everyone who's ever had merit has always gotten what they've deserved, and History is full to bursting with counterexamples.
Dracology
honestly you could be a misogynistic racist who thinks that straight white men are always better at everything and STILL be able to tell that people like Trump, Vance, and Kegsbreath are absolutely unqualified morons.
Filanwizard
This admin is not qualified to run a lemonade stand.
Sparkmateriality
It's also DUI.
Caughtintheconcentricelipsesofchaosanditsinnatemadness
Pete Hegseth & Kash Patel, there's a blackout drunk comedy movie there, if only they weren't in government.
Sorrontis
I'll take MEI over everything, but unfortunately, humans aren't rational and we end up with REI every time.
Txernobog
Merit, Excellence and Intelligence? With Patel, Kennedy Jr. McMahon, Bondi or Kegseth?
Caughtintheconcentricelipsesofchaosanditsinnatemadness
Don't forget Kristi (Pup killer) Noem! As well as 45 administration's gaggle of miscreants.
Txernobog
My fault... I shouln't have forgotten the unpunished killing of Cricket and the goat.
biffabiffitosparkito
Actually this is good and about time, no one seems to mind that the only way for DEI to be implemented is through force, obligation and exclusion and it only results in subpar quality of everything.
CraftyGiant
Idiot
biffabiffitosparkito
See, just proven it yet again.
CraftyGiant
all you did was prove you don't know what dei is at ALL.
ChristopherWChase
Nothing about the current political leadership in the USA has any merit, excellence or intelligence. It is literally the apotheosis of white male mediocrity at best. Lloyd Austin had merit, excellence and intelligence. Pete Hegseth is a drunkard who texts top secret war plans to journalists while mining Tarantino movies for Bible quotes. 😂🇺🇸😎
amundost
Fight for equality. More female plumbers, electricians, welders, oil riggers and roofers. More male nurses, teachers and HR
Ondradactyl
By design, they are attempting to redefine Merit, Excellence and, Intelligence, to mean fealty to Trump.
certainlynotaserialkiller
just for clarification, what is "woke" then? i keep hearing a lot of politicans use it but none explain what it means.
SomeDetroitGuy
"Woke" means that you are aware of systemic injustices facing marginalized people. To put it more simply, if you're "woke" then you realize that there are barriers that disabled people, people of color, poor people, women, LGBT people, neurodiverse people, etc., have that make life harder for them.
AyatollahBahloni
Just as the Heritage Foundation and SCOTUS have planned.
Toqom
The KKK, just new names
AyatollahBahloni
DSREX
Heritage Foundation controls SCOTUS, I believe it is inaccurate to give them both credit.
NibblonianNibbler
That's always what maga meant. They never hid it.
Anaphriel
So...pray tell, show me ONE Republican who fits the MEI standard....I'll wait.
CraftyGiant
The only ones who fit that are long dead.
ananfro
MEI works in theory, much like communism does.
SomeDetroitGuy
Small-c communism works very well in small groups and frankly ends up being the default way most small groups of humans naturally work together. Big-c Communism is just socialist trappings on fascism and it doesn't work well at all.
ananfro
Like everything. It works until greed comes into play…. My extended family does the small c communism a bit. We all have garden and we all kinda specialize in different food things. Like i make bread and pickles, cousin makes jams and preserves, someone grows a pile of potatoes. Every so often we get together and trade a whole bunch of stuff. Usually batch cook a ton of pierogies together too
glovelyday
For them the greatest "merits" are white skin and a rich family...
fractalsphere
If you're fighting AGAINST diversity - what are you fighting FOR? Uniformity.
If you're fighting AGAINST equity - what are you fighting FOR? Inequity
If you're fighting AGAINST inclusion - what are you fighting FOR? Exclusion.
Uniformity, inequity and exclusion. Sounds suspiciously close to white supremacy to me!
If you're fighting AGAINST 'ANTIFA' (anti fascism) - what are you fighting FOR? Fascism!
PathologicalLier
Ngl in the first part i was like "actually that sounds great" cause my mental gymnastics was if we define all people as being one and not diverse we are all a unified human race so there doesnt need to be diversity because we are all humans and all the same............... Yeah the second and third didnt fit that at all and now i feel dumb xD
Scout4truth
They hate it when people like you (educated) use reason.
DSREX
The mental gymnastics they use to attempt to deny these facts always amaze me.
Sticklebrickk
A lot of people simply don't care, thinking it should always be this way
DSREX
I wills say that I know I lived a semi-sheltered life, but the darkness in the hearts of men really shocked me.
I guess I was lucky that I was not directly exposed to anyone who hated other people like what we see daily now.
And it makes me feel better as a person that I find that kind of hate alien to my worldview.
thricebakedxyz
One company I worked at had such a workforce problem they created an entity, Inclusion. Our dept's rep for that effort was; a Christian, the most untrustworthy person you'd ever meet, and had enough sway with mgmt to get what he wanted - and he was only 26...
echonite
Honest question. Is wanting a merit based system antithetical to DEI? I know what republicans want isnt actual merit based systems, so please dont misunderstand me. I am just trying to address some cognative dissonance on my end.
SirSmurfalot
The Civil Service system was originally based on the concept of Merit and Expertise designed to develop a professional government workforce that would maintain stability and expertise regardless of who was in office.
At some point Conservatives, started calling that the Deep State, because they were ironically upset they could not change government policy fast enough to suit their whims.
SlappinDingers
I think the problem is more that republicans are linking DEI to this made up idea that people are hired strictly to fill a made up DEI need. They are taking merit away from any non white male hire by saying that person was only hired to fulfill DEI.
neithermenoryou
What LoudBirb wrote is a good summary but what's also important is that the current system simply is not merit based at all but heavily favors white men across all areas, even when those men have far lower qualifications then their peers. Women in particular are often passed over despite higher credentials than their male peers for job offers and promotions. Similarly the outrage about black or female pilots, while they may have been hired initially for DEI they do still have to pass every
neithermenoryou
single test and licensing requirement as their white male peers, and as such claiming they were (or are) less qualified than their white male peers is just complete and utter nonsense. In fact in many cases women and people of color exceed their white counterparts because they have to work twice as hard for the same level of recognition thanks to the institutionalized racism and misogyny.
fiveforty
DEI is a merit based system.
Camelspotting
Again loudbird had a really good answer. To add on to it one of the problems is that it's really hard to measure merit. If you and I go to schools in different states and you get a 3.0 and I get a 4.0 does that mean I'm more intelligent than you? Are the curriculums the same? Were you working a job at the same time? The only thing we do know for sure is that "races" are made up and so intelligence (if such a thing can even be quantified) does not vary significantly. 1/
Camelspotting
2/2 So mathematically the most meritous system would be one with an equal distribution of races/genders/whatever. We just have to find those people and train them in industries they may not have been exposed to since their parents and grandparents were excluded.
Scout4truth
It is certainly possible. Once we even out early childhood experiences and then create more equitable public school systems
LoudBirb
DEI is a merit based system. More specifically, it's course correcting a system that is not merit based.
The problem is that systemic racism exists. If a system of acceptance were purely merit based, then that system would overall accept white people and POC at a rate that's pretty close to their share of the population, yeah?
Yet, very clearly, the system was not doing that. DEI addresses that imbalance and forces the results of a truly merit based system at the overall level.
LoudBirb
And, to be clear, we know the overall results of of white people being accepted at much higher rates was because of racism.
Researchers tested it by doing things like sending the exact same resume out to a randomized sample of hundreds of companies, with the only variance being whether the name on the resume was a white name (i.e. Bradley) or a black name (i.e. Jamal).
Bradley gets a MUCH higher rate of interview offers than Jamal does, whenever those experiments are run.
chaotropicagent
Hiking co-op catching strays
CraftyGiant
Fuck REI.. I used to be a big fan but then they went union busting.
https://www.kqed.org/news/12037284/frustrated-berkeley-rei-workers-accuse-co-op-union-busting-straying-from-values
chaotropicagent
Aw man. This is why we can’t have nice things
CraftyGiant
Here you go, https://www.inc.com/anna-hensel/patagonia-pledges-to-implement-higher-standards-in-factories.html
ThanosDei
Bro i just need some trekking poles and now they got me on a domestic terrorism list.
Prunest
All I wanted was a new pair of boots but ICE was waiting outside for me. With the power of good traction I led them on a chase through the nature/hiking exhibit you climb to get inside. I think they're lost now, i gotta dip before the helicopters get here. It's amazing what you can do if your disdain for fascism is equal to your love for nature.
(Fr tho, the Seattle REI has like this long, tall staircase that weaves through a rocky mini forest with a tall waterfall u can almost touch!)
ThanosDei
Pfft Seattle REI… you haven’t survived anything until you’ve tried to park at the Bellevue REI/Home Goods/Trader Joe’s.