We’re all kind of ignoring the “elephant in the room”. While economies need not be zero-sum games, it sure seems like this one has for the last couple of decades or so. This means that as long as we have policies that allow for the lion’s share of new wealth to accrue to the top oneish percent, that anything that helps women or minorities does do so to the disadvantage of white males, and they know it, if only instinctively.
Me, I may be a white male but I have a degree and am a little more adaptable so it doesn’t hit me so much, but a coal miner or a farmer?
Some of what’s called identity politics came about specifically because of people who thought it was enough to be leftist or populist, and then turned around and insulted other people they didn’t care about. Trying to lift up the common man, and then telling women their place was on their backs.
Anyone opposing trans* rights, affirmative action, rights for the children of immigrants, feminism, Black Lives Matter, etc. is going to be seen and seen fairly as part of the problem.
The point needs to be that trans* rights, affirmative action, rights for the children of immigrants, feminism, and Black Lives Matter are not enough. There has to be an economic plan for the middle and lower incomes and for the middle of the country. That hasn’t been there for either Democrats or Republicans. Henry Clay’s American System is dead. Labor unions have collapsed. Democrats aren’t even defending the Great Society or the New Deal. That’s the problem with relying only on “identity politics.”
The scary thing is, I can’t be sure that this electorally suicidal turn (abandoning labor and rejecting both Clay’s protectionism and LBJ’s welfarism) is even a mistake. If it’s a mistake, it’s certainly been doubled down on multiple times by the Clinton-type Democrats.
It looks like the Yale men figured out a way to use feminism and gay rights to divide and weaken the masses. Really, the problem may be ever letting Ivy Leaguers, who believe that they are superior to mere humans and whose loyalty is to the elite “natural aristocracy,” into the party.
Every time an enlightened progressive burps out something about white privilege a Trumper loses its wings.
Or, put simply, a campaign of unity always wins the center in American politics. It was the magic of Obama before his fundamental transformation was put to paper.
If someone is claiming they can’t vote for democrats because of a bad word being used or people being insulted, I have to call bullshit if only because the flow of bad words and insults from the right is a river in flood.
So if you can listen to that, then say you won’t vote for Democrats because one person said “white privilege”, then you were never going to vote for the democrats and you’re just being disingenuous about it.
Well it depends on who is being insulted/bad-worded.
If you insult white people, they will take offense, just like minorities would take offense at insults, but white people outnumber minorities around 2-to-1. So from an electoral standpoint it is more foolhardy to mock whites than minorities.
(I am not in favor of either group getting mocked, for the record. But if you have to mock one or the other, mocking whites will, or could, lose you more votes.)
I think its important, if you are an older white male, to keep that in mind also. From everything I’ve seen, the new breed of young (under 40) professionals is much different than those in their 50’s and 60’s.
It means that Obama’s campaign message of “Hope and Change” was one of positive unity which allowed him to wrangle the center all the way to the White House.
Once in power, he had to transfer this into actual policy - thus the discord that came to define his entire administration.
Here’s a link to the Huffington Post. Maybe you can find something more on your intellectual level there. Apparently original thought is beyond your grasp.
He personally insulted me by insinuating that my thoughts are stolen from an alt-right rag. I even did him the service of explaining myself despite his rudeness.
