You Will Never Be Free of Identity Politics

blacks are just as viciously racist as whites. another fact free crap essay from mandos.

The Difference is that some people have less to enact violence with. Also, there is the problem of dominant versus subdominant cultures – whyte people have had a dominant culture for a long time.

Identity politics begets identity politics. No one is going to unilaterally “disarm” just because you think it’s the right thing to do. You want more identity politics? You’ll get them alright, but they won’t be the kind you’ll like.

Shall I take all the infrastructure and wealth that my ancestors created over the last 300 years with me? Leave it in a state of nature like how we found it?

Land doesn’t belong to anyone. You get it if you can take it and hold it.

Executive Summary: Mandos saw a fictional horror movie which reminded him that even minor criticisms of Oprah, one of the most wealthy & powerful people in the world, are invalid because of her skin color. Also that white people, who any time they even consider touching identity politics are branded Nazi Klansmen, should unilaterally disarm and wave the white flag of surrender in the culture wars. And anybody who disagrees with Mandos shouldn’t bother to read this, much less comment, presumably.
I will say that it’s refreshing to see today’s neo-Marxism – oh right, “critical theory” – described in such blunt and stark terms.

Working class and black identity have plenty of overlap. It is to the benefit of the powerful to ensure working class, as an identity, is thought of as white too. As though there are no working class that are not white.

Best counter I’ve got to the lazy, but represented left, is they need to ask hard questions about why so many Hispanics, most of them working class, voted Trump. What does that mean, #TheResistance?

God I dream of a purge on the left of moderate lefties some days.

Well said Mandos; agree completely.
As to some of the other commenters; your racism is showing, but absolutely no surprises there.
Carry on hate boys…

I guess I am really ignorant: I don’t see why anyone could argue with this. I didn’t find it thought provoking; seems rather obvious to me that achieving a better and more fair economy is not going to change individual bigots, while getting rid of bigotry will not ensure an economy that is fair and meets the needs of all.

+1 to jib halyard. Honestly, that is really all that needs to be said, but in the interests of real life illustration that may have more to do w/most people’s reality than Oprah’s Swiss shopping excursion …

First, tho, I enjoyed Get Out, tho not nearly as much as Mandos. It was hilarious in places and suspenseful/scary in places, regardless of what the underlying themes were or weren’t or whether you agree w/them or not, so please don’t take my criticism of the post and a whole subset of thought that is popular on the left (however unpopular Mandos may be here, he does a VERY good job of articulating the dominant “liberal” status quo mindset on a lot of issues in the best way possible, so it’s probably a good idea to pay attention to him if only to know one’s enemy, and to be fair afaik he departs from the neoliberal status quo when it comes to matters of war and war profiteering) as being directed at the movie.

Now on to the post and my reaction to it– certainly, racism exists and is bad and we should get rid of it and no one is saying ignore it (okay, almost no one). No argument there. But I’m inclined to see Mandos’ particular line of thought as being part of a newfound tendency on the left to not just combat racism, but to practically fetishize race and insist that the entire world be obsessed with it, so that accusations of insufficient obsession can be used to discredit whatever individual or movement threatens to upset the status quo apple cart. This kind weaponizing of identity politics, instead of diminishing racism (which had been steadily happening until fairly recently) tends to exacerbate it (happening now)(and yes, the economic problems are also exacerbating it, but not by themselves).

For example, this post comes the day following my discovery of the Portland Taco Truck fiasco and subsequent online conversation w/a friend from Australia who found the whole thing a baffling mix of hilarious and horrifying. I missed the hilarity part, tho I suppose it would be if only it was only a movie.

I’m just going to quote from our conversation:

ME:

http://www.portlandmercury.com/blogtown/2017/05/22/19028161/this-week-in-appropriation-kooks-burritos-and-willamette-week

Aaaaand this kind of crap is why . . .

(1) I would be tempted to switch from left wing to right, except, sadly, the left’s descent into madness on multiple issues has not been accompanied by a corresponding shift into sanity by the right on the multiple issues where they’ve long been deranged . . .

(2) Why the rise of the alt-right is happening (okay, it’s only part of why; the other part of why is that the corporate powers seem to be promoting it, probably to improve their chances of keeping the masses at each other’s throat over made-up garbage and the mobs attacking each other and away from the palace doorsteps where they should be just a little a longer). I mean, a fairly mainstream publication begins an article with

This week in white nonsense, two white women—Kali Wilgus and Liz “LC” Connely—decided it would be cute to open a food truck after a fateful excursion to Mexico.

WTF????

This kind of language seems to have become a thing these days. A downright obsessive thing. I do not see it leading anywhere good, any more than other sorts of racism have ever led to anywhere good. It probably will (continue to) lead to (even more of) a rise in the number of people celebrating their specifically “white” identity in reaction, which has a rather problematic historical context. I mean, 20 years ago the alt-right stuff was an ever-shrinking fringe that got no attention, and this sort of article/real-life happening didn’t exist either. Not a coincidence.

HER:

You ganked this from an inflammatory piece written in a hilariously segregated culture which has disintegrated into … tragicomedic grabs?

I mean, I have nothing against food trucks but… you can’t really tell where it’s going from that headline, did they get food poisoning and contaminate the food? crash the truck? was it a write-off?

ME:

Quoted from the article (quoting less here than in actual conversation, because I think pulling out seven paragraphs in a block might exceed fair use, but they are all… similar to what’s here):

These two white women went to Mexico, ate tacos, and then decided they would just take what the locals clearly didn’t want to give them. If that wasn’t bad enough, they decided to pack up all their stolen intellectual property and repackage it in one of the few places where such a business could plausibly work: Portland, Oregon. . .

Following the WW’s article, one commenter said: “Now that you all boldly and pretty fucking unapologetically stole the basis of these women’s livelihoods, you can make their exact same product so other white ppl don’t have to be inconvenienced of dealing with a pesky brown middle woman getting in their way. Great job.”)

IOW, by opening a taco truck in PORTLAND OREGON these two EVILWHITEWOMEN destroyed the livelihood of all the people selling tacos in the part of Mexico known as Baja, because when they as white women opened their food truck it caused all the tourists in Mexico over a thousand miles away to bypass the local Mexican eateries and get their authentic Mexican tourist experience from a food truck run by non-Mexicans in Oregon.

Or, possibly, the sheer existence of such a horrific crime as American EVILWHITEWOMEN cooking and selling food labelled “Mexican” based on their attempts to create something that tastes like the food they had in Mexico caused psychic ripples throughout the ether of the entire world, resulting in emotional, mental and physical as well as financial damage to all non-Caucasians.

Aaaand . . . I wrote that second paragraph as a joke, same as the first one, but in the case of the second I think it’s actually the root of what many SJW types really do believe, firmly and deep down, as immutable truth. (see previous conversations about yoga, sushi and dreadlocks) Which is frightening. Especially since it results in things like these poor women shutting down their business and the Latino people of Mexican descent who rented them the food truck being out that money (great job, concerned citizens!)

This kind of article and thinking is getting to be more and more the NORM among the Western left, btw. If it’s not in Australia yet, count yourself lucky.

HER:

lol “take what the locals clearly didn’t want to give them”

hang on… they went there, and ate tacos… the locals prevented them doing that, too?

Intellectual property?? lmfao

So I take it, there are ‘whites’ and ‘people of colour’.

That is a very black and white view to take.

tsk society.

END QUOTED CONVERSATION

She’s right–divvying everyone up into “whites” and “people of color” and framing them in perpetual opposition is not helpful to anything or anyone, except people who profit off the conflict.

Tough crowd. Who would have thought that there would be push back admitting that descendants of slaves might have a slightly different experience or thoughts about solidarity. To acknowledge that there is a different history there and it will need to be addressed in all but the most utopian futures doesn’t mean it needs to be the sole focus or be to the exclusion of other races.

Everyone has some experience of being dominated and devalued. It is the common legacy of everyone who grew up as a child, but it is limited to childhood for very few.

Some of the burden, as you call it, of minority identity is exaggerating the uniqueness of the experience of being dominated associated with that identity. And, conversely, in identity politics, the aspiration to reverse that domination by becoming part of an oppressive establishment in order to experience power and privilege exempt from the experience of being dominated acquires an exaggerated importance unrelated to the desire for justice.

The spirit of justice says with Abraham Lincoln, as I would not want to be a slave, just so I would not want to be a master. I am not certain that the spirit of justice infuses identity politics quite as much as the desire to join the establishment and share in the privilege of dominating others.

White != whyte

@Amerikaner

Why is it wrong for whites to be dominant in our own countries?

Who said this was “your country?” Native Americans would rightly differ.

Answer Amerikaners question Mandos. I am white. I never enslaved any one. My ancestors never enslaved anyone. Yet I am responsible for the sins my fathers did not commit?

You are like Ian and like to play pick and choose according to your whims and to suit your arguments but you don’t like it when others do the same.

Stirling you do not make sense.

Gah. I kept hearing from moderate lefties during the election, Demographics is destiny. And I’d tell them, don’t be stupid, the definition of white will just expand to include enough, and no more.

The inevitability of the phrase is comforting, I’d bet, but it’s a false hope.

I haven’t blamed anyone. I’ve simply put forward the entirely correct and provable assertion that Identity Politics is plutonium. That even those who try to use it for positive purposes end up doing very serious harm. And those who aren’t burdened with such notions of nobility have used it to accomplish very real evil.

Identity Politics is the ring of power and those who believe themselves worthy to wield it to accomplish good are, in effect, Boromir.

Mandos (shorn of the typical obfuscating word jugglery):

“You whites must accede to all demands made of you by non whites for as long as they wish. And don’t you dare whimper or demure or complain or even ask for an explanation you impudent white dogs!

Don’t you know who runs things now! Don’t you know who determines moral valency? Arbitrates the rules of social exchange? Why it’s me, a second generation Asian immigrant who has learned the grammar of political correctness (white dispossession) so well that I feel confident enough to lecture the natives on the terms of their surrender.

If they chirp back at me the way I like then I may deign to give them some cover against the accusation of “racism”… or not. Remember you are never safe, whitey.”

@Tom:

Racism absolutely is a real problem in America today, even if you don’t agree with the modern left’s approach to combating it.

White identity politics never gave any real benefit to the majority of whites, what makes you think minority identity politics will have anything other than similar results?

Just look at the rise in the number of blacks in prison that has accompanied the rise of black identity politics. Identity politics for any group is just something that the gatekeeper class supports as a hollow substitute for left-wing economic policies that would actually improve their lives.

Mandos: In any case, your problem is that you view yourself, essentially, as part of a white Borg-entity capable of en masse, “surrendering”.

But blacks and other non whites are capable of en masse being “empowered” or otherwise having their interests as a group addressed?

You don’t demean their sense of group belonging by referencing the Borgs (cancerous and unthinking). No, it is only for us whites that you do this. You are so deep in this that you can’t see the blatant double standard. Or you do and think it is justified.

You are so deeply emotionally attached to this anti white world view that I don’t think there is much I can say to talk you down.

Sometimes tribalism is necessary. Sometimes it’s used/discarded by the born manipulator (who couldn’t care less about it, except as a tool). For most, it’s hard to know when one is being played, or doing the right thing. Therefore, all the mud.

Mandos: No, you walked out on the argument by implying that my criticism of identity politics was rooted in my own privileged circumstance. And now that you have been shown that my background provided anything but privilege you say it is irrelevant.

Now that’s convenient.

The fact is that identity politics ALWAYS provides a just cause. Don’t believe me? Just ask anyone who buys into it no matter the particular strain of IP that they are referencing. My God, haven’t you figured that out yet? That’s it’s talisman, it’s seductive appeal, it’s mojo. It’s why it works so well to divide and conquer. It ALWAYS seems righteous and just to those who partake.

Hispanics, to an extent, are in the model minority category too. Especially in the southwest of the US. And Florida. Can’t forget about all the anti Castro Cubans.

I’m starting to wonder how feasible organizing the IT sector is now. Asians have all kinds of existing divisions to exploit. Among the H1-B folks I’ve had the pleasure to work with, I’ve seen one might be able to peel off the southern Indians from the more ‘white’ northern Indians for instance.

PS – I’m nominally white. I say nominally because I have too many non-white features. It’s wonderful/horrible resting in a liminal space.

The left’s stated objective is a society in which every individual has full access to participation in the society. Do we get there by working to insure that all segments of the economy and the society reflect the overall makeup of the country, so that as 13% of the population is black, so 13% of the billionaires should be black and 13% of the prison inmates and so on? Or do we get there by universal programs so that everyone has health care, education, decent housing, and the rest of the social platform that provides the basis for full participation? Identity politics is the expression of the first pathway. Both sides eventually want the same thing — most people who feel a special relationship with Oprah and Obama also want universal health care, and most people who want universal health care oppose a lingering racial hierarchy of whites first. But there’s a lot of hostility based on which side is emphasized.

The objection to identity politics seems to come from two sources: first, flat out racism; second, the perception that racial equality is being used to preserve economic and social oppression. I tend towards the second. After all, racial hierarchy was pretty much created in the west during the European age of expansion to justify appropriation of foreign lands and revival of slavery. Remove the economic inequality and the underpinning of racism disappears. This doesn’t mean ignoring racial justice; I favor serious reparations. But although I think I understand the reaction to Oprah’s experience, I think the call for serious solidarity in that situation is not productive for most people. I think I understand the solidarity with Obama that many if not most blacks share, I do think it enabled the devastation to black assets that he and his administration presided over when they prioritized “foaming the runway” for big banks over assistance to homeowners and smaller banks.

And that, I think, is why there’s negative reaction to identity politics.

Ah, the hornets nest! Race and economic class.
How about considering Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. https://www.google.com/search?q=maslow%27s+hierarchy&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiLv52Ojo7UAhUBRSYKHRfbBZcQ_AUICigB&biw=1280&bih=611

Tolerance and respect for others comes after the Esteem and Self Actualization level. They do not come before safety and economic security. They arise from safety and economic security.

We live is a culture where the oligarchic overlords use all the tools at their disposal to promote extreme anxiety and insecurity to prevent arival at the higher levels of esteem and self actualization.

yes, native/first americans are killed by police w/ impunity at a rate almost equaling blacks, as far as per capita ratios.

black po-po also kill unarmed black ‘suspects’, but as we know: when a cop zips on the uniform, he IS a representative of the security establishment™, which in its modern state includes ‘protection of broken windows’ etc. (NYC, LA, billy bratten, et.al.), even if he/she is a comprador sell-out. “must subdue the rabble and all dissidents of the Imperium”, of course. and of course, many Chiefs are appointed by D mayors, yada, yada. see also herr trump’s apparent pick to be a deputy of DHS.

http://alturl.com/snbpo

what’s been going on globally for the past few decades is a fight against ‘neo-colonization’ in so many nations. thug hindu narenda modi is praised by the western hegemon for attacking and murdering those ‘radicals’ in kashmir for chafing under his rule, begging for the long-promised chance to vote which nation’s rule they’d rather be under: pakistan’s or india’s? or in africa, even south africa’s ANC, south america, ‘rule by capital is preferred, and western NGOs are eager to help. for a similar reason, some Occupies wanted to be known as ‘neo-colonize’ whichever locale in the SW; they knew that neo-colonization of policy, killings by police, were just that.

re: oprah, the muti-billionaire media tycoon: i’ d needed to refresh my memory as to her big fucking ‘racist’ flap over not being admitted to the hermes goodie-shop in paris in 2005 after closing, but the one hit i’d found online was by a black or mebbe mulatto, saying close to: pffft. the store had a right to treat her just as it would have any person of any color, no matter her vaunted and known ‘status’. the folks inside the store were preparing for showing.

there seems to be at least one person of color on this thread, bless his heart; are there any others? but i do wonder if any of you can imagine being our son (mixed black and azteca) who’s experienced ‘micro-expressions’ during his early lifetime in colorado? for instance, when some wally-world checker had forgotten to disable the ‘paid for’ electronic thingie on his purchase, the sirens erupted while going out the door. security forces arrived, yes, but five or six deep, on accounta, he’d already been branded as ‘the suspect class’. or gettin’ stopped in SW colorado while attending a local college, taken to jail, shackled for endless hours, not being allowed water, coat, or a bathroom break, just cuz some po-po wanted to have some fun, fuck them. yes, he and other people of color report being followed by store security, and how many of them have been murdered by po-po for simply looking at a rifle or bee-bee gun? plenty, that’s how many, and no, i won’t dig to provide you w/ links. but ‘busted for driving black’ ain’t just an urban legend (RIP, sandra bland, say her name), but it does cause chris rock’s ‘How not to get your ass kicked by the police!’ video monologue seem quite quaint by now.

ya ever wonder why ‘induns’ occupied alcatraz for 17 months staring in ‘69, or AIM occupied the church at wounded knee in 1973? same reasons, different year, and oh, so many comprador sell-outs to fight.

oh, and mandos, w/ all due respect, i got nothin’ from your get out trailer, but you might want to check out one on the youtube list labeled ‘GET OUT (Horror Movie) – TRAILER, 2:49.
sorry for any typos, there are likely many.

@ hellacia: i call bullshit on that, especially when there are non-duopoly candidates to support with $, non=LOTE voting choices available, or casting a ballot, withholding Xes for prez, senate, house, but i’m glad to know that there’s another person of color on this thread. great baldwin quote though, reminding us of the ‘I am a man’ movement in memphis.
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/103019910199294772/

Oh dear, really? I will never be free of identity politics.

Congrats Mandos, you’ve just discovered intersectionality! I’m glad you’ve caught up to everyone who’s talked about social privilege in the past two decades.

Also good lord, reading these comments is like riding a rollercoaster.

>Stirling you do not make sense.

Says God.

>This was sort of like reading the comments in the New Orleans Advocate article about taking down the Confederate monuments.

They at least fought, and died for, for something – some evil and vicious to be sure.

Cutting away the clutter, I see politicians like Sanders that want things to be more fair and equal for everyone, and that I can get behind. And I see politicians like Clinton who don’t care how unfair or unequal things are as long as they are not explicitly unfair or unequal along the lines of identity politics, and that I can’t get behind.

Wellll, who exactly benefits most from “identity politics” as presently practiced in these Yunited States?

The professional class of ceiling-busters striving mightily to prove their ability, worth and loyalty to the not-quite-so-white-anymore power structure, while working even harder to pull up the ladders from their forgotten brethren in the race/gender niche, neighborhood or family they left behind?

The fantastically tiny class of billionaire plutocrats and their sycophantic retainers, that rule us all, who have promoted diversity “success stories” decade after decade as they systematically dismantle worker, health, housing, retirement and healthcare rights at home and lay waste to the rest of the nonwhite planet in their insane quest for world domination?

The academic scribblers and bureaucrats whose livelihood depends on training a generation of youth in the life skills of total compliance, subservience to authority, microaggression surveillance and social alienation when they have the historic task before them of democratizing economic power or face species destruction?

The liberal politicians who pimp diversity from election defeat to election defeat, getting richer all the time and hysterically waving at Russians, Rednecks and knuckle-dragging Republicans whose reactionary policies they will vote into law–or symbolically vote against for pwogwessive points–when their vote doesn’t count?

…how one is treated in life is nevertheless conditioned on the sufferance of the majority/dominant community unless one erases one’s entire particularity (and even then) is not a trivial feeling.

What has been opened up by this post — again — is the Pandora’s Box of white rightist hooey, the supposed oppression of whining white people (“Wypipo”) who see another’s advance or well-being (of someone not quite white enough) as somehow diminishing or oppressing their own.

As if there isn’t enough good to go around in the world, and if white folks don’t grab all they can as fast as they can from everybody else, they won’t have any.

That’s Identity Politics on steroids, and that’s the kind of Identity Politics that the long-suffering Others have been enduring for hundreds and hundreds of years. Even when white people are on top — as they mostly still are — they are whining to the heavens about all those Others out there who would take their stuff and rape their women if the white people didn’t do it to the Others first.

And by golly they’re going to complain about anybody else’s assertion of “identity” — be it racial, class, cultural or whatever — and call that a wrong thing (being done to them, of course) while simultaneously promoting their own specialness.

It’s been wonderfully clarifying under Trump and the other white rightists parading around on the political stages of the Northern Tier.

Of course neoLibCons use Identity Politics as one of the many wedges keeping the Rabble divided and at one another’s throats rather than hanging the High and the Mighty from the lampposts. It works superbly. Don’t fool yourself into thinking it is not one of those wedges. So long as one’s assertion of identity can be seen as a threat to someone else’s very existence (the position of the whining white people vis a vis everyone else, nearly the reverse of reality) so long will those wedges drive people apart and keep them from coalescing in unity against their real oppressors and the real threats they are under.

And yet there’s been a remarkable level of cross-identity unity shown by the amorphous resistance to the rise of the white right. It isn’t quite enough to overcome it yet. But it’s there.

Oprah, in this context, really doesn’t matter much at all.

Cripes and jcapan nailed it. Walter Benn Michaels wrote a book about ID’s diversity racket. If class issues continue to be pushed aside, humanity is toast. Also, need I remind you that Mother Nature doesn’t care about identity and will snuff us all out if we don’t act soon.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2011/01/let-them-eat-diversity/

Oprah, in this context, really doesn’t matter much at all.

I disagree. Oprah encapsulates, like Obama, all that is wrong with Identity Politics. I can’t believe anyone with any intelligence can defend the indefensible and that includes Identity Politics. It, like so much else these days, is indefensible if you truly wish to liberate The People. The Means always becomes The End, so The Means & The End are one and the same, therefore, choose The Means wisely.

What has been opened up by this post — again — is the Pandora’s Box of… the vain imaginings of the religious argument du jour. so much hot air expended for so little real achievement. oh, the comfort of co misery for us who can’t seem to focus our energies on [measureable] activities of life.

Jcapan: “by all means let’s give it a few more generations…”

You know this cuts to something that continues to amaze me. Exactly how long do the purveyors of failed policy get a pass? I mean we’re creeping up on an entire productive lifespan here and still these people refuse to learn.

And the excuses. My God the excuses. Well we should research to see why identity politics helped to impoverish the middle class of an entire hemisphere. We should explore options to see if free trade can be employed without strip mining the productive industry of first world nations….

WTF?

Only in the pretend sciences does such abject and complete failure get coddled and tolerated. For decades. Doesn’t the political reaction we see around us indicate that perhaps, just maybe, the time has come to send these children and their childish theories to the kids table while the adults try to unfuck this mess they’ve made?

While there’s still time and resources to do so?

The IP snowflakes seem desperate with IP their only remaining claim to any high ground and it is crumbling. They seem to believe they can attract recruits by running a protection racket for criminals whether they are illegal aliens or inner city repeat offenders. They offer no real help to minorities once their votes are counted and they aren’t needed or wanted.

This is the only hook they have remaining and Mandos is using it as a threat while someone seems to have placed a nativist ringer in the comments to produce the drama needed for faux protection and safe spaces under Clintonite rule.

@Peter

Your “inner city repeat offenders” now are increasingly inner ring suburban repeat offenders, fleeing gentrification, like in Ferguson where they are subject to a police shakedown racket of epic proportions that cycles them through years of fines, incarceration, suspended driving privileges all to the profit of private probation services and their county co-conspirators.

You are echoing Madame Clinton’s “predators” comments. Careful where you tread.

And: “They seem to believe they can attract recruits by running a protection racket for criminals whether they are illegal aliens or inner city repeat offenders.”

Last I checked, illegal aliens or inner city repeat offenders, dope dealers, what have you, aren’t rushing to the polls to vote for Clinton’s or anybody else. They have better things to do. So what kind of protection racket received or service in return provided is hard to imagine. So you imagine.

In most states, they are ineligible to vote anyway. In all states, they don’t give a shit.

Your other points stand up better.

This is a very well-stated description of the “constant headwind” any minority or outsider group faces. It is common to lower class or otherwise disadvantaged whites as well, anyone with a significant disability, religious minorities, etc. The difficulty today is to recognize everyone has some kind of legitimate grievance without playing into the hands of hate and hysteria. Reactionary impulses in the white, western world have to do at bottom with the recognition of what it means to be a global minority whose power and wealth is slipping, whose ability to dominate (or merely ignore) the rest is much diminished if not gone. Even within western contexts, whiteness doesn’t get you very far if you’re coming from a poor, looked-down-on region or country. One day it could be a marker for a pariah class. This fear seems to inspire more people to do evil to others before they do it to them. Humans will be fated to an endless cycle of differently pigmented hammers and nails if they can’t face each other in a spirit of moral reciprocity and responsibility.

I agree with @Dan ‘s statement:

Even within western contexts, whiteness doesn’t get you very far if you’re coming from a poor, looked-down-on region or country. One day it could be a marker for a pariah class. This fear seems to inspire more people to do evil to others before they do it to them. Humans will be fated to an endless cycle of differently pigmented hammers and nails if they can’t face each other in a spirit of moral reciprocity and responsibility.

Those white american voters with all the “economic anxiety” the media goes on about don’t like being niggers. It seems logical to them to support political leaders who tell them “Look, your lives are shit but those niggers over there are the reason why, and you’re nothing like them so your higher social status should be enough for you ’cause that’s all you’re going to get from the system.” Ask Donald Trump how well this message works.

I’m using the word “nigger” as all inclusive of the many kinds of people who are blamed for crime and other bad shit: Muslims, uppity women of all colors, blacks, Mexicans, other short brown people from Central America, LGBTQ people who are impolite enough to demand equal rights, etc., etc. This list changes depending on which country one is discussing, but works for the US of A well enough.

No identity politics has the political power of “white identity politics”. So I wonder what the people arguing against “identity politics” would do about this?

Ground Control To Major Tom.

They, and truthfully I don’t even think there is a collective they aside from the theoretical abstraction, don’t want your help. The best help you can give is no help at all, or in the least fight for universal equitable Justice an Opportunity for ALL.

FYI, I’m not whining. Have at your Identity Politics if you think it’s useful. I will agree it’s useful. Useful to The Oligarchy/Plutocracy in keeping The Rabble divided and at each other’s throats, and useful to The Plebs who promote it so they can have what they believe to be lessors than themselves to look down upon and help rather than pummel. Little Puppies to care for in perpetuity. Whether you’re helping or pummeling, you have still set yourself apart by ensuring the group you’re helping or pummeling in perpetuity has set themselves apart.

I’ve a bad feeling BLM was getting all the attention it was getting before the election for co-option type reasons. Wish I had better evidence to support it. Just my sense and understanding of past, similar situations.

It’s true I’m not seeing nearly as much about it now, despite the brutality that continues.

Demilitarizing the police, that alone seems worth everyone’s efforts. I suspect too many are cowed to get the needed support at large though.

It’s a small thing, but de-criminalizing weed should be helping. Now if only those ‘criminal’ elements could be made legitimized, some of the harm on communities could be reversed. But that’s not happening. The business is largely going to better connected people.

atcooper

Yes

@ realitychecker

@ cripes

“Perhaps it is the people who love the ‘offenders,’ etc., whose votes are being sought via the “protection racket” Peter referenced ?”

Oh, right, I forgot how many votes can be had from the “people who love the offenders” which is why the repubs AND the Dems have spent fifty+ years demonizing “superpredators” and corralling the Tough On Crime Vote.

I don’t even know what you’re talking about.

This is the only hook they have remaining and Mandos is using it as a threat while someone seems to have placed a nativist ringer in the comments to produce the drama needed for faux protection and safe spaces under Clintonite rule.

Yes, you got me. I’m involved in a secret coordinated conspiracy to plant white supremacist dupes in comment sections to “create drama” on behalf of my alien hive queen mistress. Ian who lets me post is in on it, of course — drawing in people like you with his writing as a honey trap, so that I can then consume your time arguing that white supremacism is marginal and fake.

No identity politics has the political power of “white identity politics”. So I wonder what the people arguing against “identity politics” would do about this?

Bingo. They’re asking for one-sided disarmament for the sake of The Cause.

Conservatives make me laugh because it’s better than crying. Many believe they know history, but they really don’t. They feign to and they cherry pick historical anecdotes that rationalize their greedy rapacious exploitation of everything under the sun and beyond it when they can finally reach it and claim it as their own.

There is no one more American, and nothing more American, than the early Puritans. Puritan Folkways helped shape a lot of America prior to its complete & irreversible Industrialization and now Financialization. Some Puritan Culture still exists to this day, but it’s hard to spot and increasingly rare.

William Bradford, an original Founder of the Massachusetts Bay Colony who came over on the Mayflower, had this to say. The Original Americans were collectivist & communal by nature, more akin to Communists than to Greed Is Good Capitalists. But you’ll never see Wall Street extolling this form of Americanism — the Original Americanism.

Who can argue that this isn’t the very nature of ALL the problems we lament & discuss here. It is at The Root of it all. Every argument and every proposed solution must deal with this common denominator. That’s RADICAL.

Prosperity Weakens Community, or I’m Sorry We’re Growing

“Also the people of the Plantation began to grow in their outward estates, by reason of the flowing of many people into the country, especially into the Bay of the Massachusetts. By which means corn and cattle rose to a great price, by which many were much enriched and commodities grew plentiful. And yet in other regards this benefit turned to their hurt, and this accession of strength to their weakness. For now as their stocks increased and the increase vendible, there was no longer any holding them together, but now they must of necessity go to their great lots. They could not otherwise keep their cattle, and having oxen grown they must have land for plowing and tillage. And no man now thought he could live except he had cattle and a great deal of ground to keep them, all striving to increase their stocks. By which means they were scattered all over the Bay quickly and the town in which they lived compactly till now was left very thin and in a short time almost desolate. And if this had been all, it had been less, though too much; but the church must also be divided, and those that had lived so long together in Christian and comfortable fellowship must now part and suffer many divisions. First, those that lived on their lots on the other side of the Bay, called Duxbury,49 they could not long bring their wives and children to the public worship and church meetings here, but with such burthen as, growing to some competent number, they sued to be dismissed and become a body of themselves. And so they were dismissed about this time though very unwillingly.”

~ William Bradford

@Cripes

I never mentioned ‘the’ Clintons who did all the things you listed and still retained Black voter support so long ago. The Clintonites or snowflakes count on short memories and emotional responses along with ‘you have no choice’ to try to reverse their loser status.

I suppose if you can separate the pusher’s simple transaction from the drug business, that leaves death and destruction from Colombia though Honduras to Mexico, you can try to shield the pusher from the fact he is paying for this violence. 700 murdered in Chicago last year but the hairsplitting view of pushers as non-violent businessmen persists. Governments share responsibility for the violence because of their inability to develop wiser policies but that doesn’t relieve the pusher from his responsibilities when he peacefully sells crack or heroin to children.

On reflection this seems to be a form of liberal virtue signaling mixed with relativism where this strange warped need to downgrade the responsibility for crimes is attempted by mixing drug dealers with check forgers and mixing criminal illegal aliens with non-criminal immigrants.

The problem is the US leadership class deliberately makes criminal all behavior that contradicts them. So their children, the citizenry, learn from that behavior, and selectively disregard the law the same ways. Its not a complicated, nor partisan effect.

@Mandos

Minority identities are not going to trust the guns-and-butter left until they know what their status is going to be in the (more minimalist?) hierarchies of tomorrow. And that requires evidence that individual can succeed, today on mainstream terms, so that they won’t have to fight that battle again having given ground now by diverting their energies to revolutionizing the system or whatever.

Not trusting is understandable. But when the identity politics wing delegitimates the goals of the guns-and-butter left, they create an answering mistrust. Anyone who objected to Obama’s policies was called racist. Many people who fought very hard against Bush’s wars, his illegal surveillance, his refusal to prosecute crimes of the elite suddenly found themselves told that the only reason they similarly fought against Obama’s expansion of those wars, of the illegal surveillance, of the pass given to banks’ fraud was racism. A white man wouldn’t have gotten criticism like that! I’m sorry, but that’s just clearly a rewrite of our eight years’ struggle against the policies when a white man was in charge. Meanwhile, there is an opportunistic argument that we saw with Clinton’s candidacy — if you don’t vote for Clinton, you’re a racist and a sexist, you BernieBro! And this again, despite what a look at the records of Clinton and Sanders would show.

So do minorities have to succeed in the hierarchy of today in order to trust the enemies of that hierarchy? As I’ve implied earlier, I think the racial hierarchies were created for economic reasons, and that therefore addressing those economic reasons is a condition, maybe even precondition, for fully eliminating the hierarchies. It’s rather like saying to a doctor — I’ll consider your recommendations on diet only after you’ve proved your effectiveness by getting me healthy with pharmaceuticals alone.

How does one get others to see past all the diversionary smoke, (IMO designed by the powers that be, spewed by their tools) to see the issues for what they really are?

see? too damned long-winded again, and i’m stuck in moderation (stuck in mobile with the memphis blues again…)

“Minority identities are not going to trust the guns-and-butter left until they know what their status is going to be in the (more minimalist?) hierarchies of tomorrow. And that requires evidence that individual can succeed, today on mainstream terms, so that they won’t have to fight that battle again having given ground now by diverting their energies to revolutionizing the system or whatever.”

You make perfect sense. Why elect authentic populists like Edwards or Sanders when there are browns or women or gays who’ve yet to succeed at … fellating the party’s corporate sponsors or bombing the living fuck out seven of the poorest nations on the planet, full of, what were they again, privileged whites? Funny how little concern you show for those “minority identities.” Not to mention the ongoing lurch towards fascism or biosphere collapse, hastened by neoliberals and the many useful idiots who’ve allowed them to maintain power despite their ongoing failures.

From a pragmatic standpoint, I’ll grant you this. My side, the new dealers, should come to terms with ID politics. When the Democratic party inevitably puts forward a horrible establishment figure in 2020—“Ladies and Gentlemen, Cory Booker!”–we should match them ID for ID. Kamala Harris or Keith Ellison. In other words, a populist woman against a corporate friendly woman, a populist brown against a sell-out brown and so on. Warren would have negated virtually every line of attack made against Sanders and forced voters into examining their records and policy differences. All the so called Bernie Bros would have backed her en masse.

I’d add that it’s not nor has it ever been that minorities are resistant to populist, liberal messaging, it’s that they’ve been manipulated into thinking a candidate’s ID is more important his/her policy ideas (which is exactly what the billionaires Obama chums around with intended). People forget that he wasn’t the first black presidential candidate to dominate among southern blacks. Twenty years earlier Sanders political doppelganger, Jesse Jackson, won over 90% of their votes (and this white guy’s too). Economic populism can unite all of us is we have the right messenger.

I was reading this post at Naked Capitalism today and was thinking of what mandos had written here.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/05/roger-rachel-friendship-made-heaven.html

It is really worth reading with regard to the true nature of identity politics and the phenomena of moral madness that identity politics has come to complement in American politics.

Consider the real evil Roger Ailes did to American politics and then consider if the carefully parsed “sexual harassment” accusation used to get rid of him in his dotage is really how we want to do justice, or could possibly be a way to do justice.

Then, consider the spectacle of Rachel Maddow. I have friends who swear by Rachel Maddow. She fills a real need in their lives, but oh my, what she does to their brains!

I keep coming back to the fact that Ian originally published the OP, Essential Insanity in January 2008, when I was still so hopeful that the country was coming to its senses, coming to a consensus that might reverse the worst excesses of the GWB years and get serious about global warming and peak oil. I was so far behind Ian — I suppose that’s why I read him with so much attention.

@jcapan

Thanks, Buddy. Or Buddette? Well said.

Lucid, eloquent face palm.

I can’t take seriously the absurd claim that minorities must succeed in the current corrupt system before they can pursue a just society. WTF?

They already have, Obama proved it. That’s a big fu*king problem, not a solution.

And yeah, they’ll be peddling this crap in a few short years with Cory Booker, or some other execrable POS, pretending that’s progress.

It’s like these guys have never read Thomas Frank, Adolph Reed or Walter Benn Michaels.
Or anything but the New York Times for the last forty years.

Embarrassing.

@ cripes

If you are not satisfied with Peter’s explanations, then what is your problem with mine?

(FYI, nobody is more down on the drug war bs than I am, primarily because of the way it’s been used to destroy the Fourth Amendment.)

Social justice is great, and worth fighting for, but it does not include a requirement to excuse all bad behavior by the groups being oppressed. Each must be responsible for one’s own actions and choices, or no society can function in a rational fashion. It is disturbing to see how many on the left are of the opinion that no criticism is ever appropriate for their pet groups.

@RC

And just who, exactly, is excusing all bad behavior by oppressed groups? If you believe it’s happening you have no idea what’s really going on, you’re simply captured by white rightist propaganda like so many others.

As has been repeatedly pointed out in this thread, the problem with “identity politics” is the continuing pervasiveness of the dominant, white, default US national identity which largely dismisses the relevance of any non-white identity.

The whining over the very existence of Other identities and the violence that accompanies so much of that whining and fear of the Other has been a feature of white identity politics forever.

Some people (some white people included) are trying to get past it, but not the way you think.

@ Che Pasa

“And just who, exactly, is excusing all bad behavior by oppressed groups?”

OK, there is no “all” when discussing groups of humans that was a rhetorical excess, but the fact is that “almost all” would stand up to any serious challenge.

Having said that, it’s hard to believe you are serious to pretend that you can’t think of anyone who refuses to take any internal problem of ‘oppressed’ identity groups seriously.

Show me where the left in general has been vocal and energetic about criticizing the behavior and choices of its pet groups.

Puh-leese.

@che pas
your last snippet: utter nonsense. as bad as going to church on sunday and listing to the crap spewed forth. always somebody spouting the victim/ entitlement line. old hat and thread bare. get over it and get on with it. whatever it is you do to bring income and pay your way in this here helluva lwop prison sentence called life on earth. now the stupid bandwagon of “blame whitie.” just last week, 10 black kids choose the back yard of our apartment building to hang out in instead of the public park across the street. i guess they were bored. climbed on top of the car port roof and were doing end-to-end sprints. and then ran over and trampled our little garden areas. who the fuk instills neighborly values in the next gen? certainly not their schools?! anyway, my poor failed unsuccessful whitie ass that must live in the affordable housing rundown neighborhoods of flyover america areas is sick of the young blm rats who don’t know what it is to minimize their presence. there, i said it . fuk the state religion. fuk all religion. how many cigarette butts did you pick up today?

WTF was that?

What the drug war was BEFORE it got REAL BAD…

At the time, I was writing a book about the politics of drug prohibition. I started to ask Ehrlichman a series of earnest, wonky questions that he impatiently waved away. “You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

I’m sorry Wendy, what are you saying here?

Because obviously, this has been the focus of the Drug War On Poor People as implemeted since at least Nixon’s administration and has been a resounding failure.

Why don’t you just say “superpredators” and “dark hordes?” We know you wanna.

Sixty years of locking up millions of darksome po” folks hasn’t put a dent in drug use, has it? Maybe point your blame cannon and police at the Pharma companies flooding white communities with oxygenation? And fentanyl?

Mental health indeed. Coward.

“Coward”. Quite accurate.

@ cripes: i meant that the comment was worth memorializing by needlepoint and hung on the wall, named for what it was, as this motto has been needlepointed countless times.

https://img1.etsystatic.com/000/0/6713065/il_570xN.312573589.jpg

which ‘pet people’ get no scrutiny from ‘the left’, plenty of ‘librul’ media join in that, as well as the right wingers, and Dem triangulators of the political class. the author has now escalated, working backward from his conclusions (read: correct beliefs, reality, naming ‘What about illegitimacy, no-fatherism, knock-out games, jump-in beat-downs, gangs, violent crime, widespread anti-intellectualism, etc., etc., etc. ?…

without noting that everyone knows that there are bad actors in every ‘identity’ demographic. but, no: they are our ‘pets’. sheer humbuggery of the whyte-right kind.

‘prick a librul; find the fascist underneath.’

j. edgar hoover (after creating COINTELPRO in 1956) famously said “…the Black Panther Party, without question, represents the greatest threat to internal security of the country”; he pledged that 1969 would be the last year of the Party’s existence.

now that, imo, was partially due to the fact that they were armed in defense of their oakland neighborhoods, but more importantly that they were creating intentional alternative community w/ all poor people in the fields of hunger (breakfast programs), free health care, etc. no, we can’t have that, can we? we must allow the state to decide who lives, who dies from want, mustn’t we? those who do not understand that…are indeed subversives of the most dangerous sort, aren’t they? as their programs spread to other metro areas like wildfire, it was clear they had to be assassinated or imprisoned, and most indeed were.

and COINTELPRO is still alive today, please know that.

Ooooh, ad hominem misogyny, too.
You’re so easy.

Channeling Newt Gingrich braying about ‘personal responsibility” for the powerless.
But no accountability for the crimes of the powerful. Revolutionary!

Here’s some personal responsibility failures:

“The banks’ laundering transactions were so brazen that the NSA probably could have spotted them from space. Breuer admitted that drug dealers would sometimes come to HSBC’s Mexican branches and “deposit hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, in a single day, into a single account, using boxes designed to fit the precise dimensions of the teller windows.”

The “punishment” was negligible, and never prison, despite the massive crimes.

On the other hand, nearly the entire (black) population of the town of Tenaha, Texas was locked up for concocted drug snitch operations that were fraudulent. Money and property seized. Years of prison time.

The Libruls that you worry never criticise ghetto teenagers, are at the forefront of the Drug War on Poor People.

You. Are. An. Idiot.

Hey, Wendy, Thanks for reminding me about COINTELPRO; the entire genesis of the drug war and the rise of mass incarceration was to suppress rebellion and organizing.

But this “personal responsibility,” “fake news,” “mudwomen,” “pussy juice” clown who stays up all night worrying about dusky “pushers” is “a better lefty than any of you.”

And he’s been talking about revolution for ten years!!

Oh man, best laugh I’ve had in a loooong time.

Here’s an ethics test for Wendy lol.

@ cripes

You admit you are ignorant of my past writings, yet you feel free to think you know who I am for and who I am against. Based on this thread.

There are some here who could enlighten you, including Wendy.

Pussy. Oooh, how powerful that word is for you. Got any others that cause you to lose your mind? I’ll be sure to use them. (Cock is OK, right?)

It’s distressing that my side, which is ALL REGULAR PEOPLE, “no liars and no lawbreakers,” has to include so many as shallow and stupid as you.

@ cripes: yes, and fight ‘the commie menace’ (read: all who fight state power). but it’s still very alive, most note-worthily against AIM, esp. at wounded knee ’73 and on the ogallala rez just before that occupation, used to frame leonard peltier (still in prison after 40 long years) and others; infiltrating Occupy, and most recently the protestors fighting the dakota access pipeline near standing rock, ND. there are others i’ve forgotten, of course. it’s not nice to fight to fight the state! (busted by burglars who stole docs from the fibbie office in PA in 1971 never caught, a few of them came forward recently, plus wrote some books.)

@ cripes: lol. but really, i’ve spent waaaay to much time here, at the expense of my home website, cafe-babylon.net we are small, but we are mighty! and ‘we don’t rent pigs’ (h/t larry mcmurtry, lonesome dove) stop by any time.

OK, Wendy, you wanna play this game? Tell the geniuses here exactly how you have been arguing, for the decade I know you, that the indigenous women of the world are the answer because they are going to magically change the consciousness of the world and make everything okey-dokey and manless near the levers of power, all without a hint of violence.

God, that’s even more absurd than anything you and the Winged Monkeys have typed above.

Believing in magic is not a substitute for an effective strategy. But it does appeal to those who will never do anything more direct than flap their keyboards. Because they are just too damn pure to live on this planet in these times.

Believing in magic is not a substitute for an effective strategy.

Hey Everybody!! It looks like this is it.

After all the namecalling, after all the “fuck you!”s, after all the ‘progressives are unworthy’ and the ‘left has failed realitychecker’ (at least a dozen attacks on separate individuals since I’ve been here, like, 4 months)… The time has come, and this is it.

The far older, wiser, smarter far more everything realitychecker is going to begin a discussion of “an effective strategy”.

Here’s how it goes:

Step 1: realitychecker whines that there’s never a conversation about revolution.

Step 2: Willy (or anybody else for that matter) says, alright rc, let’s hear what you’ve got.

Step 3: realitychecker shuts the thing down claiming that nobody is worthy of such a discussion.

I’d think the question should be:

How do you get a people who’ve been stressed for so long that the hope is gone and they’re losing it behaviorally (many urban blacks, now rust belt whites), to help SJW’s fight a people who’ve been winning for so long they think they can do anything they want (representatives caught sneaking unpopular kleptocrat legislation into omnibus bills)?

(Don’t ask realitychecker or you’ll risk getting called a pathetic fuck you winged monkey, or some shit.)

An even better example:

Thanks to Clinton’s personal responsibility terrorism and Reconciliation Act of 1996, entire families including 84 year old grandmothers living in public housing were thrown in the street because a grandson was found with a joint four miles away.

But any homeowner receiving 421a tax abatements and paying no taxes or getting mortgage tax deductions every year on their income tax is never drug tested and will continue to collect their government welfare even if they were arrested with a pound of cocaine in their condo.

That’s what the Orwellian term “personal responsibility”means

And thanks for the invite Wendy, walking the dog right now.

Relevant re: WHY people like me question the sincerity of the “yay identity politics!” crowd–the same types who say “we must pay more attention to identity politics!” frequently have a strong overlap with the types who say “That is why Bernie lost and the left always loses, they are all white men who don’t understand or care about minorities”, notwithstanding that Sanders was more popular w/young women than men–he DESTROYED Clinton in that demographic–and notwithstanding that Bernie won a majority of the younger black and hispanic demographic, and also won the Asian demographic.

And now, who are all those racist, sexist privileged white male (even when they are poor non-white females) Bernie supporters lining up behind for 2000? I would bet you a whole hella lot of money that around 80-90% would tell you either Tulsi Gabbard (not white or male) or Nina Turner (amazingly, again, not white or male) is their best hope for 2020. So what happens? Suddenly Tulsi is smeared as a racist bigot and Nina gets called all sorts of names, tho I haven’t seen racist YET. And their supporters, rather than being great warriors for progress by supporting two people who aren’t white males, are suddenly naive dupes, in the eyes of our great yaystatusquo! identity politics concern trolls. So please forgive me if I think most of the people doing the smearing don’t give a shit about the identity politics they claim to espouse and just want to make sure no one gets near real power who isn’t willing to maintain the whole pay-to-play status quo.

Some people believe that government exists to promote the general welfare, including, especially, the poor, disabled elderly, children, which includes all of us in one stage or another. Others believe government exists to police and punish the poor to keep their place and protect the property and power of those who already possess it.

In pursuit of this shameful and anti-social objective, they must convince themselves, and the dispossessed above all, that the former are deserving and the latter must do more than they already are doing to make the well off, better off.

In this upside down Orwellian universe, language always is perverted to mean its opposite: protesting exploitation is “whining” by “entitled” parasites, caring for human needs is “unproductive” but waging war is noble and erecting financial tollbooths to extract the national wealth into the hands of a few is innovative or some shit.

The language nearly always reveals the ideology lurking beneath.

With Librul Identity Politics, contortions are required to depict Sanders and Gabbard, etc, as rascist misogynists and Martin Luther Clinton their savior. Ditto Obama. Some people just gotta believe and aren’t too particular in what or whom.

Wow, would the real MLK be sickened by all this.

But I am actually more encouraged than I have been in years by the groundswell of discontent and refusal to accept the neoliberal playbook.

Even the election of Trump, cruelly, is evidence of that.

.

@willy–very good graph!

@ MojaveWolf

“Also related to reality checker: how did we get to the (abominable war on people and civil liberties that is called the) war on drugs and why are he and some other people arguing about something where they both seem to agree? I’m curious, but don’t have quite enough curiosity to wade back to the beginning of that.”

You got me. Nobody is more against the Drug War than me, but one of the participants here accused me of being in favor of it.

Unbridled craziness.

Micah Fletcher — the survivor of the three men who intervened in the attack on the Muslim girls in Portland — has something to say to you:

https://www.facebook.com/micah.fletcher.315/videos/214791125706047/

redistribution of wealth

Strange with these cultists about how redistribution upwards is always beneficial, but redistribution downwards is always disastrous.

Isn’t the evidence sufficient that there’s a sweet spot between the two? Isn’t the evidence sufficient that character disordered power will gravitate towards whatever concentration of power exists, be it plutocratic, or the malignant narcissistic government, or both (kleptocratic) as we’re experiencing today?

@ Willy

None of the other ‘children’ have asked to have the discussion, you brain-damaged moron.

Please go kill yourself.

I don’t know if anyone is reading this thread anymore, but if you are:

Please take note of the absurdity playing out here with these idiots.

One says I am a government provocateur who only wants folks to talk about revolution so they can be arrested.

The other says I DON’T want to discuss revolution because I am a “coward.”

Now, why would anyone with real knowledge and credentials ever engage either of these morons on a serious topic?

I would like to have a discussion with people whose thinking I can respect, hoping that maybe I might learn something in the discussion. There is nothing to learn from the idiots making all the noise here.

I am so the wrong person to be playing any sort of peacemaker. Really. I am. That said . . .

c’mon guys. If you’ve been reading this blog a while, there is NO WAY you can believe RC is in favor of the War on Drugs or a police state. I think you confused him w/someone else in the comment threads there.

And he HAS tried to jump-start the revolution thread. Several times. No one else wants to have it. If you want to have it, don’t blame him. *I* don’t want to have it. After this comment I am never going to say another word about it and anyone who wants to think I’m paranoid or a coward can think it away as much as they wish. I’ve previously made what I think are some decent arguments why voting and protests and other such are still the way to go. Not wanting to rehash them. And there are lots of other arguments and complexities, but suffice to say, I still have hopes voting can work. But, throwing in something new one time and one time only . . . .

Watch the antifa vs. anti-antifa “free speech” dueling protests. Watch ANY of them. I haven’t seen but two. Now, seriously, think for a minute–THESE are the first and most numerous people (I’m including both sides here) who are going to answer your call for revolution. Do you want ANY of these people running ANYTHING? Do you think they would be much (or any) of an improvement over who we have now? Enough of an improvement given what it would take for a successful revolution? (My take: the Trump supporters would be almost exactly what we have now; the antifa people would not be harder to predict because I can’t even imagine them agreeing on a single world-affecting decision w/out starting to hit each other or shouting for twenty days, so we’d probably have an antifa faction war, but if they avoided that I suspect they’d come out to about where Obama was by the time they got tired of shouting and realized they knew nothing about anything and asked someone else who’d been patiently sticking around toadying up to the new rulers for advice)

Something to think about.

And mostly, violent revolution = lots of dead people. Possibly most or all of them you and your friends. And if you start some small fry version, and lose, you will be painted as Jim Jones meets David Koresh meets Timothy McVeigh (and the more compelling what you actually said/intended was, the more you will be painted as CrazyMacCrazypants, and anything associated w/you will suffer. Hell, they try to do that now to peaceful movements they don’t like.). And any call for lots of revolutionaries on a large scale will be surveilled and infiltrated, you can take that as a given. Any attempt at a small scale revolution, well, that’s just pointless, unless your small close-knit group includes the real life version of the Avengers (and please, if anyone out there thinks you are the real life version of the Avengers, nonononononono). Taking it a step further, the people best equipped to try to make a serious attempt at something like this, the kind of people who would have the best shot at pulling something off? Are going to realize all the drawbacks and try to influence things in some other way that would be less risky and have an equal or greater chance of success.

Which brings me to my last main point–you have to get the people on your side for a revolution to work. If you can get enough people on your side, the political/voting way makes a lot more sense than the violent shoot’em up way. I’ve been in fights and watched lots of fights and being the better person/being right/what have you does NOT mean you are going to win. It has basically nothing to do with whether you are going to win (tho thinking you are/not liking the other side usually makes people fight better/harder)(also, seriously, I used to be good at fighting and pretty much always tried to talk my way out of it if you’re talking about a street fight; so did nearly every other person I am aware of; and it doesn’t matter whether it’s scaring the other person away or giving them reason to think they might lose but without actually making them lose face or whatever, it’s all talking your way out of a situation that’s just better avoided even if you’re the sort who enjoys fights once you’re in them)(short version–diplomacy first!).

Though we do kinda need to get back to hand counted paper ballots w/observers every step of the way before people quit believing in voting for real cause then, well, if that ever happens in large enough numbers … then we have a situation. But paper ballots a waaaaay better idea. (and yes, I get all the electoral obstacles; like you I just witnessed them firsthand; still the preferred way to go as long as long as it’s possible, and I still think the much more likely to work way)

Speaking of identity politics, I just read an article headline and subhead that caused me to realize I had engaged in tone policing. And tone policing is just another way to protect privilege.

Bad me.

(this post brought to you by the aftermath of my horror in seeing probably my best online friend for the last 10 years or so post a non-mocking reference to a site called “microaggressions.com”, which got me looking for other sites to mock, and resulted in a sojourn to a place called “everyday feminism”. Whilst trying to figure out how likely I was to piss off my friend when mocking the site I just found via her, and how to do this where she could see it but we could STAY friends, I saw the tone policing headline at everyday feminism, and realized my contemptible guilt. I apologize to my Pangolin buddy for unwittingly contributing to your oppression. FWIW I too am a fan of colorful language, and even wrote a blog post defending the exact concept about . . . 8 or 9 years ago, at a guess.)

(fwiw the “microaggression” wasn’t any sort of aggression at all, even if you accept the concept)

(also fwiw my microaggressions and my privilege had a duel a few years ago which ended w/each side killing the other, thus assuring that all my aggressions are macro and I no longer have any privilege to check)

If anyone is wondering what exactly I don’t like about modern identity politics, let’s start w/the fact that it has produced headlines like the following at “Everyday Feminism” (fwiw, I consider myself a feminist, but this is such a self-parody I wonder if it is intentional and I missed the sarcasm; I sadly don’t think so and this supposition was confirmed upon asking someone who has known of the site for years):

“What I learned about my white privilege from watching “Get Out” (published a few days after Mandos’ post–he was first! This movie was hot a while back, did some kind of memo get passed around?)

“9 Phrases Allies Can Say When Getting Called Out Instead of Getting Defensive” — If you think I need stock phrases to fall back on when you wanna call me out, I probably don’t wanna be your ally, no matter what side you are on.

“Healing from Toxic Whiteness” — An actual course? Where interested parties can “get the tools to free yourself from toxic whiteness to begin developing an anti-racist white identity. ” Not even gonna start . . .

“We’re All Just Different–How White People Are Co-opting Intersectionality” — Intersectionality is a valid and worthwhile concept, and in theory could be very helpful to most discussions. In practice, as far as I can tell it means “My (or my favored) oppression is more important than yours and if you disagree you must grovel while I smack you around for about twenty minutes until I can figure out how you can atone for your failure to acknowledge your privilege.”

“5 Hidden Consequences of Men Mansplaining in Sports” — Ok, there might be a good article there. I doubt it, given the site, but I could see the possibility of one. I just wanted to point to this headline and ask if editing is considered oppressive or colonialist or something? Or can non-men mansplain?

“50 liberating relationship rules for feminists to live by” — if you need or like the idea of having 50 relationship rules, please avoid me and let me know to avoid you. Kthanxbye!

“White ‘Allies’ and the Terrible Tradition of Consuming Black Grief” — I don’t even want to know what this is talking about, but okay, one thing we’ve established–this site is probably more obsessed with race and white people than anywhere else on entire internet, short of white supremacist sites. I didn’t even include all the stupid headlines w/”white” in them. And again, regarding the whole “ally” thing–if you actually LIKE this website, even if we are on the same side of an issue, or even if we are on the same side of most issues, I ain’t calling you my ally and I ain’t yours. We are, in those instances, people working toward a common goal while staying as far away from each other as logistically possible.

And last but hardly least, the most stupidest headline of all . . .

“Yes, ‘Stupid’ Is an Ableist Slur – Let’s Unpack Your Defensiveness About That” — I’m not defensive about this at all, I just think this sort of language policing and language obsessing is really, really stupid.

@ MojaveWolf

Bless your heart, amigo, I appreciate your efforts above. Yours is always a reasonable voice, and that is why we don’t have friction, even though we do not always agree on your most leftist sentiments. I never have any reason to question your good faith in making the points you make.

Contrast that with this confession just above from this idiot Willy: “Whatever… now it’s become too much fun to poke at him to see what he does and I can’t stop. Somebody help me.”

This is what a true COWARD is–poking at someone from behind a keyboard. What do you think would happen if this dipshit was to devote a career to poking me TO MY FACE.

Still, it is correct to say I am angry. If you are a serious person, you get tired of having chihuahuas biting your ankles all the time, and you might start kicking them. And I am even angry at the entire left that loved Obama while he acted like Bush, and Hillary when she offered more of the same. I do not want to be with those who have no ethics.

You are also correct about where my sentiments lie. I am all and only about regular people getting a fair shake in a society that honors the rule of law and the consent of the governed.

I will confess I have come to have contempt for many on the left, my supposed allies since the Reagan years. I just can’t respect stupid, and as you point out, we have morons on the left just as we love to point out that we have morons on the right. Must I treat each moron as though he was truly seeking to learn something from me? I think not–disrespect gets disrespect, because reciprocity is the most important human dynamic of all, IMO.

Re revolution discussions: This is a conversation we should have starting with the meaning of the consent of the governed, and the realities of representative government that does not represent. But most here think revolution means pitched battles in the street, and that cannot be the way to go about it.

I no longer see any purpose in even discussing the topic with folks who show they have no idea what guerrilla tactics entail. Or people who only want to fight for their freedom if the fight can be child-proofed. There is some risk that an overzealous fed might construe such conversation as incitement, so I would need to have some respect for the intelligence and judgment of conversation participants, that should be obvious.

All in all, I am leaning more toward just adopting an attitude of blanket misanthropy, because those who should be on my side are more interested in devoting themselves to the type of thought prisons you described so well in your comments above.

But I recognize you as one of the good ones, and there would never be a circumstance where we could not work together amicably toward socially beneficial goals.

Again, I thank you for your efforts above. It almost makes up for the disgraceful absence of similar validation from wendyedavis.

No reason why you shouldn’t continue having anal sex with your mother either, for that matter, if that is your position.

Enjoy, asshole. Everybody here knows what you are, except you.

But Ian may well decide that an admitted, purposeful troll like you say you intend to continue being needs to be removed. You are like a spoonful of diarrhea in a glass of spring water.

@ Peter

What you said about the Fourth Amendment is understatement; additionally, most of the constitutional law they taught me in the 1980’s is no longer the law. Thanks, Rehnquist.

Regulating what people put into their bodies for recreation is paternalism, IMO.

@RC

You’re right that some people in power view drug users as failed humans needing guidance and punishment and they also seem to be authoritarian. My first comments were about the dealers and business of drugs not the users but the recreational users are the driving economic force in the illegal drug trade. Recreational users may not create great problems for society locally but the junkies, crack-heads and tweakers certainly do.

The only way to even begin to isolate drug use, trade and the crime that comes with it from society is for Uncle Sam to become the Pusher Man which will never happen.

Relevant to the original post, if anyone is interested, there’s a terrific interview with Bret Weinstein, the Evergreen University professor at the center of a recent (and still current) storm.

The link opens to the 24 minute mark where Prof Weinstein is talking about how Asians and white women are now being considered oppressors rather than part of the oppressed in the college sjw movement (I found this off a twitter link, and computer savvy is not one of my strong points, so you’re stuck w/where I found it), but I listened to it all the way to the 1 hr 35 minute mark before deciding to go ahead and link it in this thread:

Link is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq4Y87idawk&feature=youtu.be&t=24m12s

I can’t remember exactly what I’ve said already in this thread and what I haven’t, but just to make clear, I do think identity politics has frequently been a necessary component to social change and to achieving real equity and justice (my mocking of sjw’s aside, I do believe in working towards social justice, I just think they are doing it wrong), but belief identity politics in the modern world has gone horribly wrong, and this is a great discussion of how.

Most followers of this blog will appreciate the whole discussion, I think, regardless of where you fit among the immediate argument or even whether you agree w/Weinstein and/or Rogan.

To give you an idea of where Rogan is coming from, I originally discovered him because he’s one of my favorite UFC announcers, and like him I’m into MMA. He has also tweeted things like “if you are a male feminist I hope you choke to death on your vegan pizza while listening to Lady Gaga”, which had me responding via tweet that I’m a vegetarian male feminist who really appreciates his commentary on things and there are many different types of feminist and it would be a mistake to think we are a monolithic block. Dude is a really smart guy and an original think who isn’t afraid to say what he thinks and doesn’t fit into a single neat category.

Weinstein is a professor at Evergreen University, which should tell you all you need to know about his political leanings. Dude is lefty McLeft. Also a very, very smart guy with some great thoughts. Would fit in well here.

Strongly recommended.

Finally, I agree with Uncle RC!!

(and at 200 comments, confetti and balloons fall)

So how do we get regular folks to identify as their own group? (besides fucking my mother asshole diarrhea and all that)

Because you’re so vague, there’s little to work with, very little food for thought. Two around here I generally agree with, Ian and Hugh, have no such problem. They are easy to understand, their conclusions make good horse sense, and are backed by the facts.

I am not a lawyer, nor an experienced politcal junkie, as are many around here. Yet most “regular folks” are also far too busy to be either. If you can get through to me, you may be able to get through to them.

What specifically, is “the problem”?

TBH, you suck at catering “to the top end of the intellectually adept”.

Your core message has been that we should explore revolution, which you then admit nobody wants to do. Yet you return every day. So I come along and coax you into doing it anyways, since you never know who’s lurking. And all you did was to refer us to a Jess Money novel. When I mention a credible organization, right up your alley, from which it’d be possible to recruit some of these “intellectually adept”, you couldn’t care less.

I’m not “obsessed” with you just because you’re an anomaly in this place. I’m unconvinced about what you claim are your true motivations for being here. I’ve met your kind before.

I’d respond actori incumbit onus probatio, or nemo auditur propriam turpitudinem allegans, or some shit, but maybe it’s better to wait and see what happens instead.

And you never get tired of proving absolutely nothing.

Except for your pathetic misanthropy.

Still, I rather enjoy being your only friend.

Yeah, but they called it civil rights, not identity politics–and the leading light of that movement, tragically dead at what 39?–was well along a path towards an anti-imperialist, anti-war, poor peoples movement when he was struck down.

As usual, the borg assimilates, befouls and turns every social movement into an MTV commercial and tool of oppression…

I doubt what passes for identity politics now would impress MLK.

And the rest of all that my-beautiful-horn-tooting above and you-and-your-mother-coprophilia-yadda-yadda, well, I’d say it’s beneath you.

But it isn’t.

It really is you.