dagblog - Comments for "Toward a better theory of identity politics"

Saturday's FT had a Brexit

Flavius — Mon, 27 Jan 2020 03:03:09 +0000

In reply to over in the UK, topic being

Saturday's FT had a Brexit piece by Louis de Bernieres, richly missable in itself but thought provoking by the news - --to me- that David Owen was/is a "leaver". Having lazily assumed leavers were chiefly composed of devotees of Morris Dancing intermixed with de Bernieres-ers grieving that ""There is an area of Ipswich , where there seems to be nobody but eastern Europeans, hanging about ,smoking in little knotes."

Oh my God!

I could have been wrong of course but I would have always assumed Owen's anti-Brussels position was rather loosely -if at all-connected to cigarette consumption in Ipswitch

In viewing with alarm , or satisfaction,the impact of "identity" it would certainly be right to understand on what its based: Smoking in Ipswtch or"austerity" promulgations by unelected Ipswitch

Correction

by unelected bureaucrats

Basically that sentence is what Brexit is all about Two objectives :1. stop immigration ,just racism imho and 2. break free from the EU regulations.

None of the Democratic

rmrd0000 — Mon, 27 Jan 2020 02:14:37 +0000

In reply to this is excerpt I would chose

None of the Democratic candidates fails to acknowledge the suffering of poor whites. Hillary was honest in saying certain jobs were not coming back and that retracing would be necessary.
One point of Ezra Klein's book seems to be that people will vote against their own interests to make sure that their political party wins. Farmers support Trump despite losing business because of tariffs, etc. Fukuyama has no solution to this problem. Klein has no solution to this problem.

Fukuyama always begins his writing with how Progressives triggered the Conservatives without admitting that the Conservatives pushed back on groups demanding equality who weren't straight white men long before the Civil Rights movement.

Whites exited the Democratic Party because of race. Prior to the Civil Rights Movement, blacks were absent from the discussion. There was no pushback on lynching or Jim Crow. Blacks would be idiots if they did not here Goldwater and Reagan supporting state' right (code for keeping blacks in their places). Nixon practiced the Southern Strategy. Trump caters to the racists attracted by the racism embedded in the GOP.

Their is no reason to trust that Republicans are honest brokers, so blacks are going to remain what you call "tribal", but are only looking out for their own self interest. We are watching Conservatives allow a president who feels above the law become their leader. I'll start taking Fukuyama seriously when he begins his arguments with how Conservatives need to address racism within their ranks. As it stands now, he repeatedly suggests that blacks demanding equal rights was the start of the problem. Whites could work well among themselves and then came the pesky blacks demanding the country live up to its creed.

Fukuyama always makes civil rights the turning point, rather than viewing the white pushback against civil rights as part of a continuum of fearing whites losing status that has been with us since the beginning.

over in the UK, topic being

artappraiser — Sun, 26 Jan 2020 19:38:36 +0000

In reply to Toward a better theory of identity politics

over in the UK, topic being addressed by a documentary on the Beeb:

so true from ⁦@edballs⁩ pic.twitter.com/bVUkYrRIo9
— Jim Pickard (@PickardJE) January 26, 2020

Thanks for all the tweets about #TravelsinEurolandwithEdBalls - you can catch it here on ⁦@BBCiPlayer⁩ - culture wars around Black Pete, bullfighting and immigration raise difficult issues for us all - let me know what you think... https://t.co/dxAW5pKCZp via @bbciplayer
— Ed Balls (@edballs) January 24, 2020

In this case, he was talking

PeraclesPlease — Sun, 26 Jan 2020 17:30:39 +0000

In reply to he's talking about the 1960's

In this case, he was talking about W's era, not now, so I see his point.

he's talking about the 1960's

artappraiser — Sun, 26 Jan 2020 13:15:13 +0000

In reply to Uh, what "liberal Republican"

he's talking about the 1960's there, he continues to the present...

Uh, what "liberal Republican"

PeraclesPlease — Sun, 26 Jan 2020 12:54:33 +0000

In reply to this is excerpt I would chose

Uh, what "liberal Republican"? Not only have Nelson Rockefeller Repubs vanished, Reagan Republicans are largely gone. While Dems have stratified largely to a left and left-center wings (with Blue Dogs largely vanquished), Republicans have homogenized harder and harder right - largely in repudiation of what would help any of them, rich or poor. It's all ideology, cant. Sure, there's validity in there, but finding a handhold to persuade among those gospels is damn tough, like deprogramming a cult follower. Perhaps if you talk about sports, it's fine, but get too close to the political lathe and you lose your fingers.

this is excerpt I would chose

artappraiser — Sun, 26 Jan 2020 10:57:07 +0000

In reply to Fukuyama opines on Klein's

this is excerpt I would chose to represent Fukuyama's Washington Post Jan. 24 essay, Why red and blue America can’t hear each other anymore which is inspired by reading a preview copy of Klein's book. My underlining

[....] There is no question that race played an important part in the 2016 election and that for many Trump voters, cultural identity was a more significant factor than economic self-interest. It is otherwise impossible to explain why so many working-class whites supported Republican efforts to repeal Obamacare, a policy that benefited them above all.

But cultural identity is fed by many factors besides race, and understanding this complexity is very important if the Democrats hope to win back the Oval Office and Congress. Failure to appreciate the legitimate grounds for resentment by populist voters is a general failure of liberals everywhere, from Turkey and Hungary to Britain and the United States, and one of the reasons they keep losing elections.

Klein has done his homework in reviewing the extensive academic literature on the subject and interviewing scores of actors immersed in practical politics. The fact of polarization is not in question and it stems from the momentous political realignment that took place after the 1960s. Klein cites a famous study by the American Political Science Association from the 1950s complaining that the Republican and Democratic parties were too similar and didn’t offer voters real ideological choices. In those days, the two parties were large coalitions of heterogeneous interest groups. The Democratic Party, in particular, brought together an odd alliance of Northern liberals, working-class trade unionists and Southern segregationists. This changed in the 1960s when the Democrats embraced the civil rights movement, which led to a multigenerational shift by the South toward the Republican Party. The two parties became much more ideological and homogeneous by the early 21st century, such that the most liberal Republican lay to the right of the most conservative Democrat.

This part of the story has been well understood for many years; what has puzzled observers is why polarization has more recently intensified into what political scientists label “affective polarization,” a highly emotional attachment to one’s side that defies considerations of rational self-interest. Here Klein, like many others, reaches into the realm of social psychology and notes a basic human propensity to form powerful group attachments: Being red or blue has come to constitute an identity rather than an ideology. [.....]

Fukuyama opines on Klein's

rmrd0000 — Sun, 26 Jan 2020 04:27:52 +0000

In reply to Toward a better theory of identity politics

Fukuyama opines on Klein's book

Klein opens his book by dismissing individuals and leadership as explanations for polarization, in favor of structural or institutional factors. That may be a proper analytical stance, but often structural change can come about only as a result of external crises combined with the proper visionary leadership. Democrats will not win back swing voters by writing off their opponents as simple racists and xenophobes; they need to show empathy for the legitimate concerns of a working class that is in serious trouble. Identity is an inherently flexible concept that can be deliberately shaped in broader or narrower ways. Liberals around the world have lost ground to populists by ignoring the broad moral appeal of national identity, which in a diverse contemporary society needs to be built around liberal and democratic values. Klein dismisses complaints about political correctness and identity politics on the left, but a politics built on the grievances of ever narrower identity groups breeds similar thinking on the right, and it cannot be the basis for a broader democratic, civic identity that is the ultimate answer to polarization.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/01/24/why-red-blue-america-cant-hear-each-other-anymore/?arc404=true

Fukuyama continues to see Liberal "identity politics" as the reason Conservatives became "more" rigid. He seems oblivious to the fact that Conservative pushback never left us. Blacks and so-called Carpetbaggers were terrorized by groups like the Klan. Martin Luther King Jr. was said to be a Communist. Obama was not an American citizen. McConnell said that Obama should be a one term President. We have a president who tells WOC to go back to where they came from. Old Conservative fears, the same as current Conservative fears.

Watching Republicans in Congress today, there is very little hope that they can be trusted to be fair partners in any agreements. People who seek society change that disagree with the Republican platform are going to be labeled practitioners of identity politics. The question that is never asked is what do Conservatives have to do to be seen as less of a threat to those who practice so-called "identity politics"?

Conservatives are going to have to be less rigid. The problem with Conservatives is that they adhere to Buckley's statement that a Conservative stands athwart history yelling, "Stop".

Buckley on the reason for the "National Review"

It stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.

https://www.nationalreview.com/1955/11/our-mission-statement-william-f-buckley-jr/

Identity politics did not create our current political situation, that deed was done by Conservatives. As Fukuyama himself notes, Conservatives are willing to vote against their own interests.

Sounds interesting. It may

rmrd0000 — Fri, 24 Jan 2020 12:56:54 +0000

In reply to Toward a better theory of identity politics

Sounds interesting. It may challenge those accuse others of identity politics and being tribal without realizing that they are the ones clinging to the status quo. The book comes out on Tuesday, more money spent on my Kindle app.