If you doubt that the politics of identity have triumphed over the debate over ideas, read today’s New York Times story about how “Carly Fiorina Both Repels and Enthralls Liberal Feminists.”
Identity politics is the marketing of and resulting support of candidates based upon their historically underprivileged status. Never mind what I believe or claim I’ll do if I win. Vote for me, gay males, because I am one of you! Vote for me, black women, because it’s time for a black woman!
Also: vote for me, black men, because I’m black (and also a woman).
Or: vote for me, white liberals, because I’ll heal the rifts of sexism and/or racism.
Barack Obama is the patron saint of modern identity politics. Though not black in a typical American sense, which indicates slave ancestry, Obama swept to victory twice, and enjoyed remarkable deference from the media, because he was black enough to serve as a symbol of racial reconciliation. Identity politics is how he convinced most Democrats to vote for him and do so enthusiastically — this despite a conservative voting record and politics that would have been at home in any of several Republican administrations. Obama’s ideas — expanding NSA surveillance of American civilians, drone assassinations of thousands of innocent people, reducing Libya and Syria to failed states — are anathema to those who voted for him, but he was (sort of) black, so they did anyway.
This campaign season, it’s the women’s turn.
Hillary Clinton’s conservative politics and ideas and performance are overlooked by the vast majority of her liberal supporters because she’s a woman, and there needs to be a woman president, and if she falls short of victory, who is the next woman capable of pulling it off?
As the Times notes, feminists — most of whom are, by definition, politically liberal or progressive — are confused by the disconnect between Carly Fiorina’s projection of strong, competent womanness, and her retrograde right-wing politics. “Can you love a campaign but hate a candidate’s politics?” the paper quotes self-described feminist writer Robin Marty, writing for Consmopolitan‘s website. I dunno, Robin — can you be a feminist and still write for a rag that makes millions by reselling the same tired list of cheap orgasm tricks? Can I admire Adolf Hitler’s design sense while mourning the fact that no one managed to assassinate him?
In the crucible of the 1970s, identity politics had its place. Where would feminism have been without the identifier of Ms. Magazine? Trans people, the latest to step out of the shadows of historical marginalization and oppression, have gotten where they are today via an identity politics that, first things first, made it OK to be proud of who and what you are.
But that was then and this is now. Now identity politics is all identity, no politics, all image, no substance.
Erin Gloria Ryan of Jezebel’s quotes illustrate the bankruptcy of identity politics. “Carly Fiorina is an ice-cold shade queen debate princess and I’m in love with and terrified of her,” she tweeted. Would a resident of Waziristan write: “Barack Obama is an ice-cold drone killer and I’m in love with his suits but not so much into being droned?” No. He would not. Because a resident of Waziristan is connected to his class interests. Because he is scared of, and disgusted by, Obama’s drones, he cannot appreciate the way the president cuts a fine figure in a suit.
It’s of course ridiculous when you think about it, but it really does come down to aesthetics for Ryan: Fiorina, she says, is “contrary to the conservative female narrative, the way she looks, the way she presents herself, the no-nonsense businesswoman thing.” For this generation of image feminists, Fiorina is seductive because cuts a fine figure in a high-end corporate outfit and refuses to absorb Donald Trump’s cheap shots at her looks. Too bad she wants to tell pregnant teenagers tough beans, they have to have the baby — and that she brazenly lied about a purported Planned Parenthood “harvest the brain” video.
Marty compares “liberal” feminist interest in Fiorina to eating at McDonald’s: “You know, inherently, it’s not something you should be eating. But when there’s nothing else around, it’s what you go and take.”
That’s so wrong in so many ways.
In the 2016 presidential race, there is another woman running. I think Hillary’s politics are repugnant. There is no way I’d vote for her. But if you roll lesser-evil style, she’s obviously better from a progressive viewpoint than Carly — like going to Wendy’s instead of Mickey D’s.
But lesser evilism, that bastard cousin of identity politics, is the first express stop on the road to ideological ruin. Bernie Sanders — old and white and male — is 50 times the feminist that Hillary Clinton will ever be. I know because I’ve read his platform, which would do a lot more than Hillary, and a zillion times more than Carly Fiorina, to help women.
And that’s leaving out the world where feminism should inhabit: the perfect ideal of total gender equality. We’re not going to get to equality under this variety of capitalism, or any other kind of capitalism. How can an identity politics that distracts real live feminists with the likes of a corporate monster like Carly Fiorina start to destroy and replace the entire system?
(Ted Rall, syndicated writer and the cartoonist for ANewDomain.net, is the author of the new book “Snowden,” the biography of the NSA whistleblower. Want to support independent journalism? You can subscribe to Ted Rall at Beacon.)
COPYRIGHT 2015 TED RALL, DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
24 Comments.
“Now identity politics is all identity, no politics, all image, no substance.”
So fame and celebrity.
Chasing equality of outcomes is a fool’s errand.
You seem to admire Marx’s politics despite the millions killed in his name.
And yes, there will be equality under socialism. Socialists tortured, imprisoned and murdered quite impartially, haven’t they? Socialists also confiscate property and deny medical treatment fairly evenhandedly too.
Once again, I’m flummoxed by your frustration that no one but you wants to live under socialism. It is a failed doctrine. More to the point, the core purpose of identity politics is to humanize those who are deemed inhuman and socialism is a doctrine of dehumanizing the individual in favor of the collective. IP has gone off the path and gotten short-sighted but still it’s close to an individualist philosophy.
Besides, Ted, even if the revolution happened, you’d more likely be digging ditches in a North Dakota gulag than have your dream job of People’s Commissar for Funny Pages.
Yo, Flaming Ball Sac – millions have been killed in the name of the democratic republic that is the USA. “We” have tortured, imprisoned, and murdered quite impartially as well.
If you apply the same criteria to the USA as you do to your straw men ‘Marxists’ we have to conclude that democracy is likewise a failed doctrine.
“Socialists … deny medical treatment fairly evenhandedly too.”
New Zealand has socialized medicine and a higher life expectancy than the US. As does Sweden, Norway, France, Spain, the UK and … oh, hell – do your own homework. Here a couple of links to start your education:
http://www.geoba.se/population.php?pc=world&type=15
http://truecostblog.com/2009/08/09/countries-with-universal-healthcare-by-date/
Socialized medicine kills.
Indeed, once the revolution were over, he would be disappeared to a gulag–or grave. Thinkers are trouble for dictators.
As far as I can tell, the primary purposes of identity politics are excuses to seize political power and private wealth, as well as to divide people so they are less able to resist socialism.
Here, count the millions killed in US capitalism’s name:
tinyurl.com/q655p63
Note this does not include “our own people” killed by the inane myth that the summation of individual greed is societal well-being.
So you would prefer socialist greed?
Free markets don’t kill.
Jack, you get your education from YouTube videos? Explains a lot.
Because nobody ever learned anything on YT.
Predictable.
Hey, when it comes to mass killing in some charismatic philosophers name, Christ takes the booby prize. Meanwhile, the democratic principle IS a socialist concept.
DanD
I was thinking along the same lines, from the moron below: ” socialism is a doctrine of dehumanizing the individual in favor of the collective.”
But isn’t it the same with democracy? The collective wins out over the individual who disagrees with the majority.
Ah, so blindly championing a doctrine which brought the Soviet Union, North Korea and the current Elysian paradise of Venezuela into being is smart, eh?
The odd thing is is that you’re sort of right – provided you believe (as you do) that government must manage everyone’s day-to-day affairs and that people required government permission on every decision. Then, yes, majority rule would be a form of tyranny. However, the way the USA was supposed to work was that there were a relatively small number of laws, all bounded by a few absolute guiding principles, and that people were otherwise at liberty to do as they chose within that framework. Under such a system, where the principles dictated that life, property and liberty were not ever to be voted on and only removed on an individual basis under specific circumstances capitalism is an inevitable result.
Socialism, on the other hand, is inevitably authoritarian. It requires expropriation, it requires crushing any dissent or conversation – it involves absolute submission by the many to the few.
Make all the excuses about mystification you want but Americans have seen what socialism is and they don’t want it. Especially since the best arguments socialists make boil down to “yeah, you’re pretty much shafted either way, but for the *right* reasons”.
uhhh, Moron?
When did I ever say, “that government must manage everyone’s day-to-day affairs and that people required government permission on every decision”?
Can you provide concrete examples?
As I replied to one of your earlier silly-assed posts – it’s THE RIGHT who wants to control people. You want a government which controls who you can marry, what superstitions to believe in, what you can smoke, who can be president and what women are allowed to do with their own bodies. … duh?
> Americans have seen what socialism is and they don’t want it.
I always get a kick out of you guys. You say over & over again that you don’t trust the government, yet you believe every bit of nonsense they tell you. No, Americans – and especially righards – have no fuckin’ clue what socialism is or is not.
I asked you this before, I assume that you were too ignorant to answer. If socialism is a dictatorship, then by the same token so is capitalism. What’s the token?
Exactly why democracy is disgusting mob rule. Individual rights are natural and inalienable. Not subject to majority whim.
I’m impressed Jack – that’s the first halfway intelligent thing you’ve posted in months.
And it’s precisely why we have a constitutional republic.
Don’t act like you agree with me. You want the mob to redistribute property by force, violating the inalienable natural property right by the vote. Natural rights are NEGATIVE rights. You do not have a right to someone else’s property.
And there you went and spoiled it again. Still, one out of five is way above average for you.
@Jack, if you have food and I am starving, I will do my best to take it from you. That, too, is natural law.
Paging derlehrer, this is what a troll looks like ^^
So here we have it, socialist-cop, fascist-cop … both are still the politically indentured servants of the capitalist tyrant. We now know it by Reagan’s golden rule, he who has the gold rules.
DanD
So we have elections to determine who will have the privilege, namely the private laws of a sovereign, that enables them to enforce public law on the many by the means of a private monopoly on the use of violence.
How will we ever have a privileged few in law who do not, in the end, attempt to extend and convert their privilege in law over the many into great private wealth and into a seemingly perpetual lawful power.
Well, Ted, it is sometimes claimed that a country gets the politics/government it deserves. I am not at all sure that this is indeed the case, but I have no doubt whatever that the 96 % of the world’s population which does not enjoy the franchise in your country does not deserve the regime which, perforce, plays so great a role in their own destiny….
Part of Ted’s appeal is his ability to write the simplest of points in an entertaining manner. The fact that this is necessary, i.e., the USA is daily bombarded with moronic viewpoints presented in the MSM resulting in responses from thinking persons like Ted, is truly disheartening.