repoman
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This is a little bit of a set up of this video from 19:20 to 23:00
"My progressive politics almost excuse my parochial interests"
"My progressive politics almost excuse my parochial interests"
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Is identity politics taking the wind out of the sails for class politics?
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RVonse
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+1 Agree
When it comes down to income inequality the democratic party looks exactly the same as the republicans. The only politician who even remotely cares about the middle class is Trump the billionaire. Trump at least will tell the middle class they are like him except for being rich.
And then the feminists are still wondering why he got elected.
Bernie Sanders as an exception. But he really only served to create extreme contrast for Hillary Clinton and her bags of cash.
bilby
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Trump the billionaire cares about Trump the billionaire. He couldn't give two shits for anyone else, living or dead - including his own family.
Trump will tell the middle class whatever he thinks will make them support him - and in that respect is indistinguishable from the vast majority of other politicians.
Apparently it was quite common in the 1930s and early 40s for ordinary Germans caught up in the horror of Nazi rule to say "If only the Fuhrer knew what was being done in his name, he would soon put a stop to it". Your belief that Trump cares for the middle class reminded me very strongly of that.
repoman
Contributor
Don2 (Don1 Revised)
Contributor
I think it's hard not to talk about identity politics when there are so many racists and Nazis around these days.
Here's an example:
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/...cle_c4f38ca2-ac62-5bed-a2bd-17e43f0f1065.html
Time is limited in these types of conferences and elections and when someone takes center stage by being a racist artard, you don't get a chance to talk about their policies. So this racist woman wants to talk about how the school board spends too much money. The news cycle and its profit motive is not going to give her a chance to talk about those things now that she put her confederate foot in her mouth. Politics is reduced to sound bytes but when you've got so many racists, this is just a logical consequence of that.
Here's an example:
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/...cle_c4f38ca2-ac62-5bed-a2bd-17e43f0f1065.html
Time is limited in these types of conferences and elections and when someone takes center stage by being a racist artard, you don't get a chance to talk about their policies. So this racist woman wants to talk about how the school board spends too much money. The news cycle and its profit motive is not going to give her a chance to talk about those things now that she put her confederate foot in her mouth. Politics is reduced to sound bytes but when you've got so many racists, this is just a logical consequence of that.
Do you think we have more racists now than we did in the past? If so, why?
The most perverse outcome of electing Obama is that all disagreement with the left is now "racism".
I can remember back when people thought it was going to be a healing event.
Dude, that's racist.
Well, healing for the in-group. Whether the out-groups are healed or not isn't all that relevant because they're really just a bunch of racists, so who cares about them?
I still shake my head at that whole "post-racial" thing. There was absolutely no chance that this would happen, and I was among many people who openly said so.
In any case, there's a difference between disagreements on how the marginal tax rate should be structured, and blathering about how Obama was "the Affirmative Action president" or "the food stamp president".
The most perverse is that not being racist is now considered racist. You can't be colour blind. You have to actively favour the minority group. And even if you do that, you're still racist.
https://babe.net/2017/12/01/sorry-w...-to-be-racist-is-low-key-kind-of-racist-23405
https://babe.net/2017/12/01/sorry-w...-to-be-racist-is-low-key-kind-of-racist-23405
Don2 (Don1 Revised)
Contributor
The most perverse thing is being a Nazi. Nazis are coming out of the woodwork. Like I wrote previously, it's difficult to talk about other things when this happens. For example, instead of focusing on the resource issue that results, immediately we get counters about racism. That just further propagates the whole identity politics thing decried in the op.
Elixir
Made in America
^^^THAT!
"THEY CALLED ME A RACIST!" has become the rallying cry for racists of all stripes. Works really well for the actual racists. They can effectively distract/deflect from virtually any actual point related to societal ills, by proclaiming themselves victims while tacitly denying that they are racists.
Yes, you better look under your bed. Lots of Nazis there. Plotting against you.
Don2 (Don1 Revised)
Contributor
Did you even look at the link I provided as an example before. Lady outs herself as a racist and a modern day Confederate on social media and then runs for office. Why would you expect coverage to be able to focus on her policy choices after that?
Plotting. They're plotting. Always plotting. Under your bed.
Don2 (Don1 Revised)
Contributor
I asked you a question:
Don2 said:
You chose not to answer the question but instead to use ad Homs through implication, i.e. that I am a paranoiac. Perhaps, you could actually answer the question. This is the second time I have posted it.
Jason Harvestdancer
Contributor
I think that it isn't taking the wind out of the sails and here is why.
Although the US economy has been in very bad shape since 2007, with growth but not enough to call it an actual recovery, it is still true that the average person in the US is still comfortable. Wage inequality is indeed increasing, but not to the point where class warriors could make the point they want to make. There is too much wealth in the middle class, and too many people identify as middle class, for people to be up in arms about class warfare. It has been this way for a few decades now.
Lacking the traditional classes of class warfare, and the real risk that people might see the actual class warfare of private class versus government class, class warriors needed a new outlet. They needed a new way to focus their own version of class warfare. Sure it meant throwing some of their customary fellow travelers overboard, such as Greenpeace, but if the whole ship sinks it doesn't do those fellow travelers any good anyway. They found it in intersectional identity politics.
They recast their villain as privilege instead of wealth, and suddenly the whole class warfare movement had new life breathed into it. Instead of aristocracy you have patriarchy. The wind was leaving the sails of class warfare anyway, they found a new wind that blows in a slightly different direction, but there is at least a wind at all.
Although the US economy has been in very bad shape since 2007, with growth but not enough to call it an actual recovery, it is still true that the average person in the US is still comfortable. Wage inequality is indeed increasing, but not to the point where class warriors could make the point they want to make. There is too much wealth in the middle class, and too many people identify as middle class, for people to be up in arms about class warfare. It has been this way for a few decades now.
Lacking the traditional classes of class warfare, and the real risk that people might see the actual class warfare of private class versus government class, class warriors needed a new outlet. They needed a new way to focus their own version of class warfare. Sure it meant throwing some of their customary fellow travelers overboard, such as Greenpeace, but if the whole ship sinks it doesn't do those fellow travelers any good anyway. They found it in intersectional identity politics.
They recast their villain as privilege instead of wealth, and suddenly the whole class warfare movement had new life breathed into it. Instead of aristocracy you have patriarchy. The wind was leaving the sails of class warfare anyway, they found a new wind that blows in a slightly different direction, but there is at least a wind at all.
The irony is that the huge push for identity politics for minorities has led to Richard Spencer and others speaking in all the same lingo and bringing white identity politics (racism, white supremacist, white separatist or nationalist, nazi, whatever else you want to call it) more mainstream. Its a cycle. White identity politics sparked the civil rights era, which later morphed into minority identity politics which has sparked more white identity politics. I am amazed that people can't see how similar it all is.
The only escape here folks is to stop with the identity politics and focus on policies, issues, and ideas that are not founded on inherent inborn racial differences.
The only escape here folks is to stop with the identity politics and focus on policies, issues, and ideas that are not founded on inherent inborn racial differences.