Start with racial preferences. For years, there was a kind of gentleman's agreement that affirmative action was permissible so long as it was safe, legal, and rare. Conservatives grumbled about reverse racism, sure, and often raised the specter of unqualified diversity hires in fields like medicine and transportation. But outside of college admissions, the GOP tolerated racial preferences provided they weren’t too overt, turning a blind eye to the sort of thumb-on-the-scale discrimination that characterized corporate hiring in the pre-DEI era. But by 2020, that modus vivendi had collapsed. If the old standard for affirmative action was "don't ask, don't tell," the new standard was more like "shout your abortion." Companies advertised fellowships that explicitly excluded whites and Asians, banks lowered interest rates for companies that hit their diversity targets, and both state and private health systems allocated life-saving medical care based on the color of their patients’ skin. It was in this climate of in-your-face racialism that Trump’s anti-DEI agenda was hatched. Every Republican president since Nixon had practiced affirmative action in federal contracting and tolerated it in the private sector so long as it wasn't too overt. Those days are over. As a matter of policy, the GOP is now more hostile to racial preferences now than at any point since 1968. Democrats, meanwhile, are still pursuing the sort of race-based policies that radicalized the right against affirmative action. The two parties are no longer debating how much affirmative action is permissible, in other words. Peak Woke transformed the debate into an all-or-nothing proposition, pitting radical racialism against maximal colorblindness.