The Congress that emerged from the 2018 midterm elections is by most measures the most diverse in terms of identity politics of any Congress in American history. There are over 100 women. One out of five members is a member of a racial or ethnic minority. But what difference does it really make to ordinary Americans?
I’ve Always Wanted to Be Oppressed By Someone Who Looks Like Me
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Brilliant, Ted – this must be one of your best ! On the other hand, given the fact that the US Congress, which according to your country’s constitution, alone has the power to declare war, hasn’t done so since 5 June 1942, when war was declared on Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania, perhaps the second quote above needs rephrasing along the lines of «The stupid unconstitutional war you will be sent to die in will be aided and abetted by members of your race !»…
Henri
Ted, you better hope the liberals don’t find out where you live.
Ha!
Liberals don’t even know where they live.
Re-reading Homage To Catalonia has been a hoot.
> The Congress that emerged from the 2018 midterm elections is by most measures the most diverse in terms of identity politics of any Congress in American history.
Hey, that’s progress in and of itself. It’s evidence of a sea change, let’s see how it plays out.
OTOH, we have seen Uncle Tom* blacks in congress and the police. We’ve seen congresscritters bash gays in between meetings in public restrooms, and we’ve seen pedophiles passing laws against pedophilia.
But then, the openly LGBTQXYZ people who have been elected have no reason to hide. They’re already out of the closet.
So, again, let’s see how it plays out.
*”Uncle Tom” – anyone who’s actually read the book knows that the titular character wasn’t an “Uncle Tom” in the modern sense. Quite the opposite – he was killed for standing up to The Man.
“So, again, let’s see how it plays out.”
Those who were paying attention have already seen how voting for a Black president whose billionaire bailouts left so many impoverished and disillusioned that a vote for Trump looked a better alternative to them.
Study: Many Obama Voters Switched To Trump Because Of Race
“What can I say? Sometimes, it takes me eight years to realize somebody’s black.”
https://www.theonion.com/study-many-obama-voters-switched-to-trump-because-of-r-1830620054
> Many Obama Voters Switched To Trump
… because The Onion is a reliable news source?
> how voting for a Black president
… because all Blacks are alike?
If you didn’t notice, sleepy head, many states that went for Obama later went for Trump.
Don’t be a lazy bones. Try looking it up on the internet.
It’s not my job to bring you up to date on current affairs.
.
> It’s not my job to bring you up to date on current affairs.
Obviously, since you keep trying to update me about current affairs on your planet. If do decide to update me about affairs on planet Earth, you might try more reliable sources than The Onion. (I’m not saying they don’t exist – I’m merely mocking your most recent choice.)
In any case, implying that all Black Presidents would act the same way is racist.
“how voting for a Black president
… because all Blacks are alike?”
and
“In any case, implying that all Black Presidents would act the same way is racist.”
Then you should stop implying that, unless that’s what you really think, and you want everyone to know you are a racist and a disgusting person to boot.
Did you forget your meds again, Glenn? ‘cuz you’re making even less sense than usual.
Do you remember making this statement?
“Those who were paying attention have already seen how voting for a Black president …”
It was only a few hours ago. Your name is on the post – did the Russians hack your account? Or are you willing to take responsibility for your own words?
Having fun with your Conservative Hocus-pocus pirouette?
Conservative Democrats pose as an opposition to racist Republicans and yet they work race from an identity politics angle to get the votes of the desperately disadvantaged, only to abandon support of them after the votes are counted.
Black people, worse than most people, lost a great portion of their wealth due to the crimes of Wall Street, and yet no one was prosecuted for those crimes, not even with a Democrat president in office who campaigned as being sympathetic to their concerns.
Of course, you, as a white man have no memory of that because it was no skin off your nose. Or maybe you merely find it convenient to have a memory lapse.
Conservative Democrats play the racist game differently, but repeatedly, and shamelessly whatever their color or gender.
Your support of this hateful form of politics is how I recognize you as a conservative Democrat, the same as Hilary and Shumer.
Glenn –
At this point I have no fucking clue what you’re talking about. I suspect you don’t either.
Once again – in the off chance that you should comment on something I’ve actually said – I’ll be happy to entertain you.
But I have no obligation to respond to nonsense you’ve pulled out of your ass.
It’s a well proven technique of empire to install foreign born nationals, 1) who have been educated and indoctrinated by the empire’s imperial institutes, to the highest offices of the governments to be subject that empire; 2) and who are easy for the people who are targeted for subjection to empire to identify with because they speak like, and LOOK LIKE THE PEOPLE who are targeted for subjection to empire.
It’s only a small step to domestically use empire management techniques that work so well in enabling the domination of citizens of foreign governments (by use of friendly, easily indentified-with-faces) that are ideologically useful to the exercise imperial power in the Homeland.
(Note the use of the empire-words such as “Homeland”, “Home Office” etc. now in use by the USA, the British Empire, and historically by Nazi Germany)
While the wealthy ruling class is engaging class warfare, the people subject to their rule have been seduced into diverting their energy to the struggles of identity politics and, having largely abandoned class war issues, and so are losing in the class war that they offer comparably little resistance to, and get little support for.
What does it benefit members of divergent identity groups if they achieve “equality” among the lower classes, while these classes fall further under the greater subjugations of poverty and the stripping of their rights as citizens?
So why vote for or expect much from Democrats or Republicans who owe their allegiance to money much bigger that most could even imagine?
Many Democrats ran on holding Trump accountable, even holding out the possibility of impeachment.
Well, the 2018 election votes have barely been counted and already the votes for nomination of Nancy Pelosi for Speaker of the House have been counted, giving 218 Democrat votes for the proven ANTI-IMPEACHMENT Democrat to be the next Speaker of the House, and this even has Trump saying he will support her campaign for Speaker by personally rallying Republican votes for her in the new Congress.
Will Democrats in sufficient numbers to be impactful call this Trump-Pelosi commonality a “Collusion” to evade impeachment? Very doubtful.
Some Crazy Fools will never learn anything that might sully their belief in the ultimate goodness of Democrats and, still being optimistic, want to see how this plays out.
Identity politics has become the means by which the intolerable proceeds to a fait accompli, because the “greater intolerable” is to think that the hope that things will change merely by inclusion of identifiable minorities in the seats of power, was misplaced.
It is absurd to think that the party that chewed the candidacy of the experienced and popular Bernie Sanders to bits will allow its new and inexperienced members to change the party’s course.
Yeah, I’m disappointed too. But the good news is that the Speaker doesn’t really have any extra powers. If the house votes to impeach, then impeachment it is.
So … if you don’t want to watch it play out, do you have an alternative? Quit watching? Armed revolution? Any other options whatsoever? It’s easy to throw stones, much harder to propose workable alternatives.
“So … if you don’t want to watch it play out, do you have an alternative? Quit watching? Armed revolution? Any other options whatsoever? It’s easy to throw stones, much harder to propose workable alternatives.”
Angry consumers want to be sold a cure so they can get back to screaming like a drunken mob about Russians, Gays, immigrants, etc. … the list goes on.
People are so accustomed to being pitched solutions that they can’t imagine a reason for a problem being diagnosed and presented without being followed by a sales pitch.
This is like saying Why diagnose cancer if you aren’t selling a cure?
Well, how could a cure for cancer be found if you don’t diagnose it and understand it well before a possible cure is proposed, much less discovered.
But I’ve given this analogy before, and so few have been open enough to think this through, so don’t blame me for doing what you should have done by now if you hadn’t just given up and done the crazy thing of repeating the same action over and over again, and expecting a different result.
>> do you have an alternative?
So, “no” then. It certainly took you lot of words to say so.
> so don’t blame me for …
…. sitting on your ass and complaining that other people aren’t doing enough to make your life better? So who should I blame? Oh, that’s right other people.
Yeah, good luck with that.
I hate identity politics.
Margaret Thatcher was a woman. I don’t hate her because she was a woman; I hate her because her politics were cruel, short-sighted and served her masters at the expense of the masses.
I don’t think Condoleezza Rice should be in a set of prison overalls at the Hague because she’s a black woman. I think it because she was a willing part of the invasion of Iraq (see Ted’s recent column on resigning on principle).
Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton (she’s besties with War Criminal Henry Kissinger)? Look. I understand that no one has found a video tape of HRC turning to Bill Clinton and saying, “Bill, you know, if anyone ever finds out that we use the Clinton Foundation as a money-laundering pay-to-play influence-peddling shop, we’ll be in big, big trouble.” If the entirety of the democratic party’s identity wasn’t bonded to the Clintons and their three decades of accumulating control, we’d be seeing the tell-all stories by now, but no one in the media (those mental goliaths) wants to admit that they got rooked by a scheme so transparent that a 15-year-old kid running a register at McDonald’s could see through it. (Keep in mind, the New York Times got tricked by a recent college graduate who fabricated stories wholecloth, and even when they were alerted to suspicious activity, they STILL couldn’t put the dots together. Keep that in mind when the next Times in-house shame-fest begins; it should be soon, they haven’t had one in a coupla years.)
If the dems try for a win with identity politics and identity candidates in 2020, we might as well all start learning how to speak fluent Trump right now. Sanders has the rep and the cred. But he can’t win if he has to fight Nancy Pelosi’s cadaver and its policies of “bipartisanship” infecting the party from now until then. Too many of the Berniecrats will just walk away — “Done!” — and what the dems will have left won’t be able to garner enough votes nationally. Doing “well” among black Southern women in the Rust Belt or high school educated white men in the Idaho panhandle isn’t enough anymore. The population is too diversified for identity politics like that to work nationally. It’s a return to economic identity (the 99% vs. the 1%) or we’re in for a very tough six more years of Donald.