dagblog - Comments for "The Perils of Universalism "

It's about sucking up to the

PeraclesPlease — Thu, 20 Sep 2018 09:15:21 +0000

In reply to It's not about the Russians,

It's about sucking up to the base & shunning "the other".

Ted's trying to make them forget he's really a Canuck with a Cuban father who overstayed his student visa so asked for "political asylum" - if only Mexicans could be so ballsy, but they weren't on the front lines of Communism nor our brothel of the Caribbean. Let me guess, Ted's an outsider, a Christian man, pro-2nd amendment, & would create jobs if only he knew how. Oh, & eats critters fricasseed on a spit - big down Texas way.

Here is a snippet of a

rmrd0000 — Thu, 20 Sep 2018 00:59:52 +0000

In reply to The Perils of Universalism

Here is a snippet of a paragraph preceding an interview with Appiah in the Daily Intelligencer

The election of Donald Trump, meanwhile, has emboldened the segment of Americans most fixated on the idea that the nation is fundamentally white and Christian and must remain that way. On the left, things are a bit more complicated: While it’s progressives who have done the most work to knock down old identity categories, at the moment the left is also hosting a raucous internecine discussion over the purpose and limitations of “identity politics” — a term defined in a thousand ways by a thousand participants. These debates have touched just about every political and policy issue there is.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/08/interview-philosopher-kwame-anthony-appiah-identity-politics-wars.html

So in the setting of white supremacists on the Right demanding power, Appiah sees the biggest problem as identity politics on the Left. The Right is fixated on making white supremacy the way the government operates, but identity politics Liberals are the problem. This is sheer idiocy. It lets white supremacists off the hook.

Fukuyama argued that the

rmrd0000 — Wed, 19 Sep 2018 21:05:40 +0000

In reply to The Republicans drove the

Fukuyama argued that the world would default to Liberalism after the fall of Communism. He was wrong then. Noe he’s back with the Universalism crap. He is wrong now. Appiah admits tgat Universalism could open the door to the white supremacists. If you watch the rant of Joanne Williams on the video of the panel discussion, you will be terrified. She openly attacks transgender people. Her version of Universalism has a very narrow window.

You are correct the current version of Universalism is actually very exclusionary.

Edit to add:

The Universalist s have the perfect scam. All you need to do is simply agree with them and things are fine. Speak up for your right’s and you are pretending to be a “victim”. Continue to demand your rights and you are a “narcissist “. The Universalist is perfect, they need change no personal behavior. Protest and you are a flawed individual.

All Lives Matter is the perfect Universalism slogan. They never do anything but complain about people complaining.

The Republicans drove the

NCD — Wed, 19 Sep 2018 19:41:53 +0000

In reply to The Perils of Universalism

The Republicans drove the final stake through the fragile American heart of "universalism" when they divided the nation into Democrats and Real Americans about 30 years ago.

Universalism requires respect shown and compromise reached with the opposition to resolve critical and pressing national issues....not inflame, distort, manipulate, or forever perpetuate them for partisan purposes and personal gain.

Universalism allows for

rmrd0000 — Wed, 19 Sep 2018 18:53:25 +0000

In reply to The Perils of Universalism

Universalism allows for racism. We are always left with the question of who defines the norm? The norm has generally been defined by White males. The current Universalists want to continue that norm

From Étienne Balibar on the Violence of the Universall

The common source of these two opposites, namely universalism and racism, is the idea of the human species that was fashioned by bourgeois modernity, of which Kant is a representative par excellence. How could Kant be both the theorist of unconditional respect for the human person, and the theorist of cultural inequality among races? That is where the deepest contradiction — the enigma, even — lies. Yet this has to do, first of all, with the way in which we define progress. It does not simply consist of setting a horizon for humanity in general, but also of setting up certain characteristics of gender, nationality or education as norms of humanity itself.

While it has its different variants, this is a discourse common to both the French and American revolutionary movements of the eighteenth century and the social emancipation movements of the nineteenth century. They provided the basis for our lives today. But what is fundamental, in my view, is that such a universalism also allows for resistance. In the eighteenth century France’s Olympe de Gouges and Britain’s Mary Wollstonecraft founded political feminism by proclaiming that identifying the universal with a masculine norm contradicted its postulate of equal freedom and access to rights for all.

So we can challenge universalism in the name of its own principles, as a whole section of anti-colonialist discourse did. Look at Toussaint Louverture and Frantz Fanon, W.E.B. Du Bois and Aimé Césaire. That is the other side of the tension that works away at every universalism: it can justify discrimination, but it also makes possible revolt and insurrection

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3100-translation-and-conflict-the-viole...

It's not about the Russians,

artappraiser — Wed, 19 Sep 2018 18:12:16 +0000

In reply to There is no equivalence

It's not about the Russians, or health care, or the economy.
It's about Texas BBQ!
Cruz is yet another wing nut who obsesses on cultural identity politics (here "real Texans" and their BBQ) instead of issues.
Looks like "Beto gonna give 'im a lickin."https://t.co/MqDvEayLpK
— Richard W. Painter (@RWPUSA) September 19, 2018

There is no equivalence

rmrd0000 — Wed, 19 Sep 2018 15:26:49 +0000

In reply to The Perils of Universalism

There is no equivalence between black identity politics and white identity politics. Even David Brooks realizes this fact.

But three things are clear: First, identity politics on the right is at least as corrosive as identity politics on the left, probably more so. If you reduce the complex array of identities that make up a human being into one crude ethno-political category, you’re going to do violence to yourself and everything around you.

Second, it is wrong to try to make a parallel between Black Lives Matter and White Lives Matter. To pretend that these tendencies are somehow comparable is to ignore American history and current realities.

Third, white identity politics as it plays out in the political arena is completely noxious. Donald Trump is the maestro here. He established his political identity through birtherism, he won the Republican nomination on the Muslim ban, he campaigned on the Mexican wall, he governed by being neutral on Charlottesville and pardoning the racialist Joe Arpaio.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/29/opinion/trump-identity-politics.html