Slaying the Sacred Cows: Identity Politics, Outrage Porn, and Lifestyle Branding

Here's a quick question: What was the progressive community outraged about last week? How about last month?
I'm not talking about real issues, like inequality or the Forever War we are engaged in.
I'm talking about the never-ending serious of petty outrages that the online community loves and can't do without. You know what I'm talking about.
The redneck small businessman or politician from Arkansas, or Florida, or Kansas who said something stupid, or racist, or misogynist, or whatever. Some petty outrage that has no effect on your life in the slightest, but everyone on DKos enjoys piling on in one-upmanship to show who is more outraged.

There's even a term for it in the Urban Dictionary: Outrage Porn.

Memes, news articles, TV segments, email forwards, or other forms of media that are designed to invoke outrage. This is especially true for political-related topics. Viewers of outrage porn often become addicted and spend many hours per day trying to seek new outrage highs.

Liberal: "The Daily Kos had some good outrage porn today. Apparently some conservative said something stupid."

Conservative: "I just read an email forward that said Obama is going to turn all of the white people into slaves and make us all Muslin!"

Note, the DKos example listed above is actually part of the Urban Definition. I didn't go looking for it.

It's funny that DKos is so well-known for Outrage Porn that it is part of the dictionary definition. How's that reflection in the mirror?

There are two problems with Outrage Porn:

1) It takes up the time and energy to be outraged about real things.

There are many things to be outraged about in this world. What portion of the real outrage needed to motivate people to solve some of our biggest issues is subsumed in the pseudo-outrage drudged up everyday by our biggest outrage porn producers? If we blow off steam by forwarding a story about a stupid racist comment, have we compromised our ability to mobilize assistance for the 2 million displaced Syrians or a struggling democracy movement in Iran? A little? A lot? I don’t know, except that it takes a toll.

2) It's totally artificial. You are being manipulated. It's as artificial and manufactured as the outrage at Obama on Fox News. It even feels like the 24-hour news cycle.
What's more, it has all the same feel and style of Madison Avenue marketing. I'm sure that if you dig hard enough, you will find that many of the people who sell you your weekly outrages used to work in marketing selling you your underwear.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't like having my emotions manipulated. Especially when the people doing the manipulating have goals that might be harmful to mine.

“I believe that in ways large and small, peaceful and sometimes violent, that the biggest threat to the future of our children and grandchildren is the poison of identity politics that preaches that our differences are far more important than our common humanity."
- Bill Clinton, link

I've lately come to realize that the Identity Politics that have come to dominate the political landscape of late, looks suspiciously like the Lifestyle Marketing that dominates the consumer culture.

What got me thinking about this was the excellent documentary series The Century of the Self by Adam Curtis.
While the series is largely about marketing, public relations and how psychoanalysis fit into that, he also addresses how politicians have used the same tools.

Consider for a moment car commercials. I remember growing up that car commercials at least mentioned what was in the car.
Now its difficult to determine what product exactly they are selling.
The reason is because they aren't selling a product. They are selling a lifestyle. Simply put, you are what you drive.

Adam Curtis identified the moment that this idea of marketing lifestyles to voters was adopted by politicians - Clinton's 1996 campaign. Like you being the car you drive, you are now the skin color, or gender, or sexual orientation, or other lifestyle defining attribute that you vote.
Naomi Klein noticed this trend years before I did.

Once we'd embarked on a search for new wells of cutting-edge imagery, our insistence on extreme sexual and racial identities made for great brand-content and niche-marketing strategies. If diversity was what we wanted, the brands seemed to be saying, then diversity was exactly what we would get. And with that, the marketers and media makers swooped down, air-brushes in hand, to touch up the colors and images in our culture...
The shift in attitude was not the result of a mass political conversion but of some hard economic calculations. According to Rocking the Ages, a book produced in 1997 by leading U.S. consumer researchers Yankelovich Partners, “Diversity” was the “defining idea” for Gen-Xers, as opposed to “Individuality” for boomers and “Duty” for their parents.

It's easy to dismiss this thinking, but the simple fact of the matter is that it works and we need to understand it.
We also need to understand how much further we've gone down this road.

First of all, we must define Identity Politics.

1. political activity or movements based on or catering to the cultural, ethnic, gender, racial, religious, or social interests that characterize a group identity.

There is a potentially positive role for identity politics. For instance, the civil rights movement of the 1950's and 1960's.
It was important for the African-American racial group to define themselves and form a movement to stop their discrimination.

This carried on with latinos, native americans, and women's rights groups in the 1970's. Then finally with the gay and lesbian community in the 1980's.
All these movements did positive things and expanded civil rights for everyone.

"Identity politics enabled many formerly silenced and displaced groups to emerge from the margins of power and dominant culture to reassert and reclaim suppressed identities and experiences; but in doing so, they often substituted one master narrative for another, invoked a politics of separatism, and suppressed differences within their own 'liberatory' narratives."
- Henry Giroux

However, there is a natural limitation to what these groups can do, and even more importantly, there is a natural side effect from these movements: i.e. they are divisive by their very existence and definition.
What's more, they all exist on the liberal side of the political spectrum where there is more toleration for excesses.

And that's where the problem is, because the concept of the New Deal democratic tradition is based on a society of inclusiveness and working together for a common goal. Indentity Politics is incompatible with this idea.
Historian Arthur Schlesinger writes that "movements for civil rights should aim toward full acceptance and integration of marginalized groups into the mainstream culture, rather than...perpetuating that marginalization through affirmations of difference."
Todd Gitlin explained it this way.

MR. GITLIN: Okay. The other thing that I think a person of the left affirms is that values of solidarity, of social responsibility, of commitment to the common good are of great importance, and that among the most grievous forces that work against the realization of those values are the drastic inequalities in human society. So somebody on the left is committed to the undermining and opposition to those inequalities.

MR. WATTENBERG: And you think the left now has taken their eye off the ball. Is that more or less the idea?

MR. GITLIN: I think that many people, perhaps most on the left, or at least most who are visible, have gone down a path in which theyare obsessed with what differs between them and one -- one crowd and another. They are more obsessed with what divides them than what they have in common with the rest of humanity.

I think the obsession with differences is a very self-destructive movement overall. The most obvious example of this self-destructiveness is the tendency of these identity groups to "eat their own".

"I'm not a big fan of identity politics and sort of picking one thing and defining yourself with it."
- Andrej Pejic

One of the best examples of identity groups eating their own is Peter Tatchell.
Peter Tatchell is a human rights campaigner, a member of the gay rights group OutRage! and the left wing of the Green party. He was active in Stop Murder Music against music lyrics allegedly inciting violence against LGBT people, and was leading member of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF).
Tatchell has been fighting for LGBT rights for 40 years. He's been beaten unconscious and been given death threats for his efforts, so you would think he's earned some street cred' from the liberal community.

However, all it took was for Tatchell to sign his name to an open letter which "called on universities and other organizations to stand up to attempts at intimidation and affirm their support for the basic principles of democratic political exchange" after some feminist and trans-activists were “No Platformed” for speaking unpopular political positions, for all of Tatchell's accomplishments to be forgotten.

Then, in an irony so profound it could make your temples throb, trans activists and their ‘allies’ — people who follow them on Twitter — went berserk, describing the letter as an intolerable assault on their feelings and going after all who signed it. In short, they showed their anger about a letter that branded them illiberal by behaving illiberally. Two people in particular got it in the neck: Mary Beard, who said she felt so ‘battered’ by the liberty-allergic trolls that she went to bed; and Tatchell, who has been bombarded by 5,000 tweets, many of them insulting, some threatening.
How do we explain this tirade of abuse against someone I would describe as the grandfather of gay rights if I wasn’t worried that the use of such a gender-specific title might earn me a tsunami of online abuse? Why are people so incredibly thin-skinned? I think it’s down to the politics of identity. I think the more we’ve made the personal political, the more we define our social and political outlook with reference to what’s in our underpants or what colour our skin is, the more we experience every criticism of our beliefs as an attack on our very personhood, our souls, our right to exist.

The excesses of Identity Politics are not limited to any one group. For instance, the excesses of modern, third-wave feminism has created a mini-backlash of Women Against Feminism.
Lena Dunham, creator and star of the HBO series Girls and proud feminist publicly disagreed with the Women Against Feminism.
So it is with great irony that Dunham wound up on the feminist hit list just a few months later.

It began with The National Review's Kevin Williamson arguing that passages in Lena Dunham's memoir, when a 7-year-old Dunham checks out her little sister’s vagina and masturbates near her in the same bed, amount to child abuse. That Williamson would target Dunham is not surprising—attacking feminists in particular and women in general is his main beat. But the critique gained ground when many feminists agreed with him. On private listservs and public social media, they eviscerated Dunham and attacked anyone, including other feminists, who dared defend Dunham’s actions as normal—or, at least, not criminal—childhood behavior. This culminated with one feminist writing a public letter to Planned Parenthood asking them to drop Dunham as a spokesperson due to her “pattern of coercion that happened over the course of years, and the near-pornographic and remorseless way Dunham describes these incidents as an adult.” There is a hashtag, of course: #DropDunham.

The overreach and oversensitivity of feminists sometimes drifts into the realm of the absurd.

For instance, consider this comment by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg when asked why he likes to wear plain gray t-shirts. “I’d feel I’m not doing my job if I spent any of my energy on things that are silly or frivolous about my life.”
Sounds pretty innocuous, right? Not to some feminists.

“Is it just me or does the mindset of the Silicon Valley Power-Schlub imply that caring about clothing or how you look invalidates your ability to work?”
“Of course, male CEOs are far too focused on changing the world or building the next Big App to care about something as 'silly' or 'frivolous' as dressing professionally—they’ll just leave that to Marissa Mayer.”

Mic's Ellie Krupnick, meanwhile, claimed Zuckerberg’s comment “reinforces a sexist double standard.”
Really? It couldn't be that Zuckerberg was only talking about fashion and nothing else? And even if he was talking about something more than just the concept of fashion, that it was a jab at male CEO's and not female ones, which would have made a lot more sense?

What gives these feminists the ability of ESP to see inside the minds of other people are determine their "true motives"? It's fair to compare this pursuit of purity of thought is an echo of another age, when the target was heretics and the objective was to purge our society of sin.
The narcissism and Identity Politics go hand-in-hand. Statements that appear on face value to be about something entirely different, are actually all about you and something that offends you.
What's more, the hurt feelings of any one person becomes more important that any form of political debate by the greater society. Not only that, the offense doesn't even have to be real because the hurt feelings are real and that is the only thing that matters.

“People who think with their epidermis or their genitalia or their clan are the problem to begin with. One does not banish this specter by invoking it. If I would not vote against someone on the grounds of 'race' or 'gender' alone, then by the exact same token I would not cast a vote in his or her favor for the identical reason. Yet see how this obvious question makes fairly intelligent people say the most alarmingly stupid things.”
― Christopher Hitchens

It's not like this is the only example of feminists letting their outrage drown out the bigger picture.

After years of effort, the European Space Agency's lander Philaelanded on a comet 300 million miles away. At first, people were excited. Then some women noticed that one of the space scientists, Matt Taylor, was wearing a shirt, made for him by a female "close pal," featuring comic-book depictions of semi-naked women. And suddenly, the triumph of the comet landing was drowned out by shouts of feminist outrage about ... what people were wearing. It was one small shirt for a man, one giant leap backward for womankind.
The Atlantic's Rose Eveleth tweeted, "No no women are toooootally welcome in our community, just ask the dude in this shirt." Astrophysicist Katie Mack commented: "I don't care what scientists wear. But a shirt featuring women in lingerie isn't appropriate for a broadcast if you care about women in STEM." And from there, the online feminist lynch mob took off until Taylor was forced to deliver a tearful apology on camera.

Not everyone agreed. One female space professional wrote: "Don't these women and their male cohorts understand that *they* are doing the damage to what/whom they claim to defend!?"
Or as Chloe Price put it: "imagine the shitstorm if the scientist had been a woman and everyone focused solely on her clothes and not her achievements."
It seems that an unprecedented achievement in space exploration takes a backseat to some people's perceived slights.

This oversensitivity has gone to such levels that it is harming the people that want to support it. Consider this blog essay where someone who is genuinely progressive minded is emotionally torn by what can be described as abuses against "good people pushed out and marginalized in left-wing circles because they didn’t use the proper set of social and class signals to satisfy the world of intersectional politics."

Imagine for a moment that the current President was white.

Now imagine that the poverty rate for whites between 2009 and 2013 had gone from 25.8% to 27.2% according to the Census Bureau, while the percentage of blacks in poverty remained flat. Imagine that the wealth gap between blacks and whites has hit a 24-year high, and the homeownership rate for whites had dropped from 46.1% to 42.1%.
Now combine these numbers with an epidemic of police brutality in white neighborhoods, but a reluctance on the part of the federal government to step in and bring civil rights lawsuits after the black officers got off without spending time in jail.

Now imagine that this president had a 90% approval ratings among white voters. Does that makes sense? Would white voters be acting in a way that promoted their own self-interests? Has their loyalty been rewarded in any tangible way?

Now change the word "white" to "black" and you have reality today.

“If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him”
- Cardinal Richelieu

The examples of Identity Politics, and its tool Political Correctness, are nearly endless, especially on college campuses.

Take the University of Iowa, for example. This past fall, a visiting associate professor from Turkey displayed a provocative anti-racist piece of art in the center of campus with the intention of creating a discussion about racial issues in the United States. Anyone taking a minute to honestly look at the art or, certainly, to talk to the artist, would have understood that the art was intended to criticize racism. But in the face of student outrage, the university ignored and dismissed the artist's intention. This willful misunderstanding was again on on display at Purdue University following the creation of a music video by engineering students that parodied white rapper Macklemore's "Thrift Shop." The students, who use the video to geek out about engineering, were accused of racism, despite the fact the video is so tame it borders on adorable. Even the ironic Internet meme #thanksobama was not safe for one cartoonist at the University of Alabama after he drew a cartoon jokingly blaming Obama for Alabama's loss in their rival football game against Auburn University.
But rarely has the instruction to willfully misunderstand been made more clear than it was by one administrator at Bucknell University, who proclaimed "that the context really doesn't matter" in an ongoing case where students were expelled for allegedly using racial slurs on a radio show. Bucknell, a private university in Pennsylvania, has refused to reveal any additional information about the students and what they said. But if they were, for example, using racial slurs in order to mock racism and racists, like the late and great comedian Lenny Bruce used to do, then context is absolutely pivotal. The idea that "context doesn't matter" is not something a scholarly institution should be teaching anyone. Context always matters.

Speaking of Lenny Bruce, this is where Identity Politics, Political Correctness, intersectional politics, or whatever term you want to use for what is happening on the progressive side of politics today has gone totally off the rails:
It's lost its sense of humor.

This to me is a line in the sand. Any political movement that can't laugh at itself is not a political movement worth being associated with.
So what proof is there that Identity Politics progressives have lost their sense of humor? Ask almost any professional comedian out there.
Bill Maher and Dennis Miller
John Cleese
Jerry Seinfeld
That's just to name a few.
Oh, wait. Those are all white males, so that disqualifies them, right? No. What would disqualify them is if they aren't funny. They know comedy, so their opinions on comedy matter.
But in case that logic isn't enough for you, consider what Chris Rock said.

I stopped playing colleges... [it's] their willingness not to offend anybody. Kids raised on a culture of “We’re not going to keep score in the game because we don’t want anybody to lose.” Or just ignoring race to a fault. You can’t say “the black kid over there.” No, it’s “the guy with the red shoes.” You can’t even be offensive on your way to being inoffensive.
...This is not as much fun as it used to be.

I remember making fun of conservatives back in the 80's and 90's, and telling them how they were typifying the stereotype of the "humorless conservative". Progressives have shot themselves in the foot by giving away one of their most powerful weapons.

Lastly, there is also a word of warning that the loudest members of Identity Politics community will probably fail to heed at their own peril.

The left’s obsession with cultural signaling reflects the absence of a proactive political agenda, and “is only possible at certain moments: when liberalism seems to have failed but the right is not yet in charge.”
But one day conservatism will be culturally ascendant again, and the left will find itself attacked by the very tools it once employed.

You don't need a lot of imagination to think of what this might look like. Conservative Christians are already convinced that they are victims and under attack by the current culture (think War on Christmas).
But in case you still can't picture what this will look like, consider this example.

Last September, a coalition of leftist Columbia University student groups had a party to welcome incoming freshmen. The party was held in Potluck House, a special-interest housing community dedicated to food and conviviality, and the decorations were appropriately sans culottes.
One student attending the party, however, thought the mockup of a bloody guillotine went a bit too far, and submitted a complaint to the Office of Residential Life. The party’s violent imagery and anti-liberal language, the student said, “threatened [their] identity by creating an unsafe space for capitalists.” Potluck House was officially sanctioned.
This is ridiculous. There are few “safer spaces” for capitalism than an Ivy League university located in a global financial hub.

It is ridiculous, but progressives have already proven that ridiculous is not part of the context worth considering, and so whether a claim is ridiculous doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is if anyone claims to be offended.
Many of the most effective ideas and weapons of the right were originally created by the left and then warped and twisted to be used against the people they were supposed to have helped. Don't be surprised when they censorious nature of Identity Politics and Political Correctness is adopted by the right and used against us before long.

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Last chance for constructive criticism before I post it to the GOS in a hour or so.

It'll either get ignored or inspire a flame war. Nothing in between.

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mimi's picture

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gulfgal98's picture

And find that any controversy that will be found is due to the reader reacting in the context of identity politics. There are some great quotes here too. This series of sentences sums it up for me.

What gives these feminists the ability of ESP to see inside the minds of other people are determine their "true motives"? It's fair to compare this pursuit of purity of thought is an echo of another age, when the target was heretics and the objective was to purge our society of sin.

The narcissism and Identity Politics go hand-in-hand. Statements that appear on face value to be about something entirely different, are actually all about you and something that offends you.

What's more, the hurt feelings of any one person becomes more important that any form of political debate by the greater society. Not only that, the offense doesn't even have to be real because the hurt feelings are real and that is the only thing that matters.

In the first sentence, one could substitute nearly any identity oriented group for "feminists" and the outcome is still the same because of the inhibiting factor of identity politics. I also have notice that this outrage of identity politics is often used to stifle any real and meaningful dialogue. We saw that with Praenomen's diary in which the DEO brigade swooped in and began intimidating people who had rec'd the diary for his use of the term "race card." Sadly, a number of recommenders not only with drew their recs and but were forced into public apologies for having done so. Meanwhile, the real crux of the diary was buried under the outrage porn.

I noticed a similar response to David Mizner's diary on Hillary Clinton the other day.

I think this is an excellent diary and honestly, not nearly as flame baiting as I would have thought. However, it takes only the smallest of sparks to ignite outrage porn over at dkos. Excellent. Good

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

Sadly, a number of recommenders not only with drew their recs and but were forced into public apologies for having done so.

I missed that. Sheesh!
The self-censorship of the left is really over the top.

Anyway, I just posted it here.
It should get interesting...or get ignored. Either way I've said my piece.

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gulfgal98's picture

I am heading over there now. Good Luck. Being ignored would be the worst thing so let's hope you stir things up a bit since she who is inevitable just announced yesterday. Wink

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

My diary made it halfway up the rec list and then I refreshed and it suddenly vanished from the rec list. It's almost like someone hit the reset switch.

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Unabashed Liberal's picture

that with FSC's official entrance into the campaign fray, they've given some of their top Commenters/Minions instructions to play down diaries that in any way 'take away' from her?

(Sounds paranoid, I know, but it really would not surprise me if DKos has a game plan of some kind, in regards to handling negative FSC diaries.)

Mollie

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Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.

cybrestrike's picture

And drop in a rec for support.

And honestly, it's a very well written piece. Identity politics can get a bit messy and this explains a lot of it. Thanks for sharing this with us!

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Big Al's picture

manufactured than most people know, or want to know. The Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and all sorts of others
contribute money and people into identity politics for their own agendas which serve to divide the people into smaller and more
manageable groups and steer the identity politic agendas in the directions they want.

Outrage porn is probably more accurate than what I've called it, which is basically "hate" porn. I noticed a diary I wrote a couple
years ago was brought up at Daily Kos a few days ago, "Daily Kos is a Hate Site". It's basically about how Daily Kos exists to hate
on anyone that is different from their and their conservative neoliberal imperialist agenda.

http://www.voicesonthesquare.com/essays/2013/04/19/daily-kos-hate-site

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/04/10/1376913/-Wildcat-Strike-of-DK-f...

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The question was: why?
Thanks to Naomi Klein and Adam Curtis, I think I understand it now......and its even more stupid than I originally thought.

The people that engage in Outrage Porn would be the same ones spreading gossip about their neighbors, and maybe suggesting witchcraft, in an age before electricity.

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Big Al's picture

there's pictures and everything to prove it.

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Unabashed Liberal's picture

spoke to this topic on Air America.

Said Democrats always used identity politics to manipulate the Base. I remember that we almost fell out of our chairs when he blatantly acknowledged this--since he was a powerful insider for decades.

Love your work.

And, thanks--excellent diary, gjohnsit!

(Will head over to DKos later, if taxes allow!)

Mollie

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Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.

thank you for posting it here, I love how you pin the tail on the donkey right from the get go.

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I was going to start with the thought experiment section about how blacks are actually worse off after 6 years of Obama. Despite knowing that it would REALLY set some people off.

But then I spotted that DKos is literally part of the dictionary definition of Outrage Porn and I thought that was just too good to be ignored.

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Unabashed Liberal's picture

was mostly responsible for a second PBO term.

He lost between 6-7 million votes from the his previous run (I've seen more than one figure on this).

At the same time, the Dem GOTV machine upped the percentage of the black voter turnout from his historic first run, by several percent.

That's one reason why no one is allowed to bring up the topic of identity politics at DKos.

And the language regarding "Hillary Defectors" is already getting ramped up on so-called progressive radio. There is especially quite a bit of concern that the Black Community will not be loyal to FSC--because of WJC's comments in 2008, pulling the nomination of Lani Guinier for US Assistant Attorney General, NAFTA, welfare reform, etc.

I'll have to hold my nose, but I plan to start calling in again to a couple of these shows. I'm so sick and tired of the lies and distortions that are spewed on a daily basis by some of the hosts.

I hope this diary catches fire!

Mollie

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Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.

I'll wait a bit before T & R'ing at dKos. My user name can be a lightning rod if not lost in a crowd.

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gulfgal98's picture

Then I went to post a comment, and it went down. I copied my comment, so when it comes back up, I will post it there.

In the meantime, here is what I was going to post:

Identity politics obscures the big picture issues

We have see it far too many times in which something someone said either here or in the public eye is elevated far above the big picture issues that affect us all. The rec list is consistently filled with outrage diaries, while some of the most important and life threatening issues affecting nearly every one of us are ignored.

What gjohnsit is saying in this diary, if I read it correctly, is that identity politics does have a place in securing equal rights and treatment for all persons. But what we are seeing more and more is that it is replacing the larger, big picture issues that affect us all and depleting our energies away from those issues.

What gives these feminists the ability of ESP to see inside the minds of other people are determine their "true motives"? It's fair to compare this pursuit of purity of thought is an echo of another age, when the target was heretics and the objective was to purge our society of sin.

The narcissism and Identity Politics go hand-in-hand. Statements that appear on face value to be about something entirely different, are actually all about you and something that offends you.

What's more, the hurt feelings of any one person becomes more important that any form of political debate by the greater society. Not only that, the offense doesn't even have to be real because the hurt feelings are real and that is the only thing that matters.

The above quoted excerpt refers to feminists, but we could insert any identity centric group in place of feminists and the outcome is still the same.

We are losing on the big picture issues because often we are fighting a bunch of small battles among ourselves, instead of fighting for the big issues such as economic equality, climate change, and endless wars that affect every one of us.

Focusing on identity politics is exactly what the oligarchs want. It is another easy way to divide and conquer us. As a result of our inability to focus upon the big picture issues, the oligarchs continue to win.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

Unabashed Liberal's picture

running a race based upon identity politics.

That's why I hope to get out the specifics of the toxic Multi-Employer Plan (pension) legislation that the majority Dem Senate helped ram through mid-December.

This amendment spits in the face of those whom she claims to care the most about--women.

These plans have a pension payout that negates "pay inequality" for women. Per US DOL, women currently earn 78 cents on the dollar of men's earnings.

Supposedly, Ms Inevitable will be running on this platform.

Tomorrow is national Equal Pay [for Equal Work] Day, which FSC is expected to champion as her cause.

Mollie

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Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.

I actually tried to read the comments, realized I was just pissing myself off, and left. There was a time when I gave a damn about dailykos, the comments, diaries, people, but not anymore. dailykos is a total waste of my time. I go there less and less, participate less and less, and am happier more and more.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

smiley7's picture

I recon that each step that separates we/us from human is a win for fascism in the game
of this century after "the century of self."

Until the focus bores through the castle wall into regarding what it's like to be human; collectively we lose.

A better approach imho is a simple task to ask what have we in common, albeit difficult to do when propagandized constantly by $$$'s tweeting and 'texting.'

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My addition to the diary on DKos:

I guess I should have figured out beforehand that if a group of people thought that an individual's feelings trumped the parameters of political debate, then it would only be natural that they should think that an individual's values have to be respected by other people no matter what they are.
The point being made above by some people is that its OK to think that gay/women/minority rights here in the US are a more important issue than us killing tens of thousands of people overseas.
I blame myself for not figuring that one out until now.

That being said, I doubt people have really thought this one through.
If you must respect other people's values absolutely, then what if my values were beating up gays/women/minorities? Aren't my values as important as yours?
No? So then people's values aren't totally subjective after all. You can judge them.
So how can you honestly defend your value of defending gay/women/minority rights here in the states, while still defending not caring about us killing gay/women/minorities overseas?
Either you are defending a double-standard or you aren't. If you aren't, then I can judge your values objectively.

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gulfgal98's picture

made a great comment that flew over too many heads there. I excerpted two parts that get to the heart of her comment.

Human and civil rights are about all humans, they are universal inalienable truths.

We seem to be arguing about whose victimization is worse and misdirecting our outrage instead of focusing on the real cause of our oppression. We should all be fighting for those self evident truths and rights that both sides look on as an impediment to there nasty global anti-democratic agenda.

Even after she posted that, we still saw people not getting it about the universality of all of this.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

gjohnsit, I'll hope you'll take this criticism in the spirit that it's offered. I certainly don't have a problem with you, as a person - indeed, I used to rec most of your diaries on Dkos when I saw them. However, I have significant issues with many things said in this diary.

So, it's basically this: it is possible to walk and chew bubble gum at the same time. I can be outraged that we have endless wars, that torture is ongoing, that Gitmo is still open, that Obama increased laws regarding state secrets and has a worse record than Bush in that area, that the NSA (and, hell, all the other governmental agencies too - thanks, Patriot Act!) spies on all of us, that Edward Snowden remains in Russia because WTF?!, that drones are flying and killing innocent civilians, that Obama can assassinate any American citizen anywhere in the world at any time for any goddamned reason, that the environment is quickly scaring the shit out of people, that the EPA has become a joke, that Wall Street was never prosecuted and continues to destroy world economies, that corporations seemingly run both the Republican and Democratic parties, that the middle class and the poor are left to mow their lawns with almost zero help, that Obama put Social Security cuts on the table, that the gap between the rich and the poor has gotten bigger and bigger under Obama, that CEOS of large companies in America make $5287.00 per HOUR, AND! I can still be worried about racism, sexism, and homophobia on a daily basis.

I can, and do, worry about all of those things.

When you originally wrote the Identity Politics diary here a week or so ago, I tipped it because I thought it was strong. You do bring up some important points within the context of identifying narcissism, the lack of coalition-building within identity politics, and the lack of humor often associated with these groups. That's all true, and it's disconcerting. A few weeks ago, after some California bigot paid $100 to put an amendment on the ballot stating that it should be legal to simply kill gay folks, a few days later, a lesbian paid $100 to put an amendment on the ballot called the Ignorant Jackass Law. LOL, it was hilarious. She basically was like, "Yeah, so, this ignorant jackass wants to kill all the gays, so let's make him (or anyone else who utters homophobic remarks in a public forum) attend sensitivity training for one year."

Of course, neither of the amendments are going to make it on the ballot, but the lesbian's response was pitch-perfect: she just sought to make fun of this douchebag, and mockery is a very adept and clever form of contempt. The response on Dkos was predictable. "OMG, the lesbian is hurting our cause!" "OMG, I can't believe she would do that, how COULD she?!" "OMG, she doesn't think our cause is SERIOUS and I HATE her because of it!"

It was stupid and inane. What that woman did was fucking hysterical, and I love it. Smile

All that being said, I felt that your diary was condescending, and I did NOT feel that way about the previous draft you posted here. It's almost like reading two different diaries, honestly. I could be wrong, but it seemed as if you were talking specifically to Obama supporters (who used cries of "racism!" to silence critics) and Hillary supporters (who use cries of "sexism!" to silence critics). While I certainly agree that that's been an issue, within both Dkos and the Democratic Party generally, it doesn't change the fact that racism, sexism, and homophobia are huge problems for large segments of the population. People of color, women, and LGBT experience discrimination all the time, every day. Identity politics are perhaps trivial to you, but they're important to me. I'm not trying to gain anymore rights than a white male has; I just want to level the playing field for everyone.

Another thing to keep in mind is that eliminating racism, sexism, and homophobia appears to be at least somewhat solvable, in the grand scheme of things. Do you think the next president, either Republican or Democrat, is going to prosecute the Wall Street thieves? Most likely not, unless we overhaul the system or get a third party in there to change the schematics of how our government functions. By stark contrast, 37 states now have legalized gay marriage - 37! That is unbelievable and wonderful, and unheard of even two years ago!

I'm excited that Americans are making so much progress in decreasing racism, sexism, and homophobia, in such a short time frame. It is heartening to see such changes, and to see the public sentiment shift so far to the left in these areas. I am a bisexual woman, so this effects me personally. It has become radically unpopular to be racist, sexist, or homophobic, and I applaud that. That's a big step towards leveling the playing field.

We probably can't get Bush, Cheney, or Obama to be charged with crimes against humanity, but maybe we can do some other stuff instead.

That's it. Thanks for reading.

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I miss Colorado.

I'm on my phone, so if this comes out weird, forgive me. I believe that with power and money you can do anything you want including gay marry, fly to another country to do what isn't legal or can't get done here. So if we make headway on power and money, we can declare anything legal we choose. I also think it is easier to build a coalition around wealth inequality than It is a social issue. We all need food, water and housing, and it isn't free. None of us "need" to be married to anyone.

I believe that there are too many PC police. I agree with Maher about the Muslim religion as I understand him. i agree with his opinion of religions and liberals. I think it is a mistake to reduce the drug war, police abuse, and high incarceration rates in the US to a minority issue. There are plenty of poor white people in the same boat even if not as many. Even if I wanted, I couldn't possibly never offend someone. I grew up with sticks and stones, and I believe in it. My "feelings" are my problem. Being able to handle them constructively is what separates children and adults. If you cause me physical or financial damage, however, now you have a problem.

I'm not much good at settling for what I can get. It is low hanging fruit. I'll take it and appreciate it, but only on my way down from shooting for the top. Are there racists, homophobes, sexists, and assholes? Absutely, but they don't make my world. This would explain why social issues are not as important to me as the money and power. Dailykos would say it is my white privilege. I say it is looking out for the bigger and broader self-interests of everyone - money and power. We all need to eat and sleep.

I hope this is coming out as intended. Hard to create in a 1" screen. Great conversation Shiz and Gjohnsit. It deserves a debate.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

but I'm unclear about what we can do regarding the money and power part. That's why it's hard for me to read and look at this shit on a daily basis - what are the solutions to these huge problems? I don't have the answer for that, and I'm not sure anyone else here does, either. It seems almost impossible to overcome ... insurmountable. It bums me right the fuck out.

It's a next-to-impossible situation to discuss, because there ARE no solid solutions, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't push for change. We should always push for change and progress.

Unless and until we get a president (and/or a Congress) who is anti-capitalist, I'm just not sure how any of this is going to become solvable. The 99% is screwed financially, because the 1% controls everything in this country. It is terrible to think of, and even more terrible to witness on a consistent basis.

Bill Maher is right about Islam being supremely prejudiced against both gender and gay rights, but America isn't an "Islamic" nation, nor is it a Christian nation. However, the drug war, police abuse, and high incarceration rates ARE definitely a minority issue. If you're white, you really don't have much to worry about. If you're in a "minority" status, then you most certainly do.

Sure, I guess none of us "need" to be married to anyone, so you'd be cool with just being your husband's "friend" and not being legally eligible to be involved with anything regarding your husband? Really? I find that hard to believe, dkmich.

I'm with you about the "white privilege" bullshit, because I think it's more like white guilt than anything else. But that doesn't mean that cops in this country aren't massacring black people in droves, because I truly believe they are.

Uhm ... I'm not sure how to say this without being a dick, but I am coming to wonder if there's not a generation divide here? I sense that I am a youngin around these parts, and I'm cool with that, but I feel like we're kind of talking past each other a bit.

In any case, I appreciate what you said, woman. Thanks. Smile

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I miss Colorado.

mimi's picture

I think there is something like that probably causing a bit of a difficulty to understand each other. Nobody, at least not me, and I believe no one else who is serious, would deny that there are the drug war, police abuse, and high incarceration rates and that they ARE definitely a minority issue. And certainly it is true that if you're white, you really don't have to worry that much about those specific issues. If you're in a "minority" status, then you most certainly do. All that is de facto there and correct.

But I don't see that these minority issues are denied by those who say, that the overlaying encompassing policies which are true to the meaning of social democracy. That means to me anti-capitalistic policies that are strongly supporting equal rights for anybody, ie including all those issues that discriminate the minorities, as well as those that actually discriminate and worries majorities as well. Identity and minority policies are included, not excluded, they are as valid and equally important as other policy issues. They go together. In that sense I don't see that minority issues are at all ignored or not worried about.

I think you allow yourself to be divided out or away from an overarching policy theme, that is designed to include minority issues, by not perceiving it as such inclusive attempt. So, then your perception has allowed the minority policy issue to become a divisive issue. That imo opinion that shouldn't be the case and I truly believe that you don't trust those, who pursue those overarching policy themes to be truly inclusive of all minority rights. It's a matter of distrust, perhaps very understandably so, but those people, who try to tell you that their policy goals are inclusive of your minority issues, and then see they can't convince you to see them as trustworthy, feel helpless and also put aside, divided from you and conquered by it. That's the way one loses, imo.

Most people would honestly change that. I am convinced of it. Unless you call all your American countrymen bat-shit crazy, I think they are pretty interested in doing the right thing for everyone.

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no one else who is serious, would deny that there are the drug war, police abuse, and high incarceration rates and that they ARE definitely a minority issue.

To dismiss the remaining part of the problem and its victims and insult them while doing it gains minorities the oppressed and downtrodden no allies in the fight for justice and equality.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

Now that I'm on a real keyboard, let me add...

The only solution I have is to vote for the craziest of the crazy until the whole fucking country implodes. If we give the stupid exactly what they vote for - in triplicate- maybe they'll bury themselves. Seriously? We need a major crisis and an FDR. Have to hit bottom before we can come up.

I am NOT saying that minorities do not bear the brunt of the discrimination, hate, evil, and injustice that takes place in this country. Nobody can argue with that. What I am saying is that it isn't exclusive to them. American justice is saved for the poor and most disposable among us, and minorities because of the tools of discrimination, fear, and hate, are most of the most vulnerable people among us. IF you discount and dismiss the injustice done to poor and vulnerable whites, what do you gain? You make it a racial issue, loose and lose the teapots, and reduce abuse of power to just another social issue when it is an economic issue. The only color this country respects is GREEN, and dividing allies is not a good strategy.

Talk about white privilege and the obtuseness of white people, there is an absence of understanding of what it means to be among it. (admist it?) It is still all about pecking order. At no point in time does the pecking order ever stop - unless you reach the top of the pile like Romney and the Kochs. If you think white suburban kids aren't as susceptable tocops, arrests, and injustice - you're wrong. What makes the difference is that the parents can afford to fight back and save their kids - something no one should have to do or everyone should be able to do. If I said this on dailykos, I would get - Oh, the poor babies - what a burden to be able to afford Jeffrey Feiger/high priced lawyer. When it's your kid facing a criminal record, ruined future, and time in jail just for being a stupid kid and doing what we've all done, it IS a big deal even IF they are white. As I said dividing your allies is a stupid strategy when the whole freaking argument about over armed, unaccountable cops and a corrupt criminal justice system has agreement from whites, blacks, brown, men, women, rich (some), poor and middle class when the fight is targeted on the inequal double standard of the American economic and justice systems. This doesn't mean that you can't acknowledge that some get hurt worse than others. It means you have to acknowledge the debate doesn't begin and end with minorities and the debate shouldn't diminishing the other side. (not implying that you personally are diminishing anything) If we keep it a "big gummint (cops)" invading and abusing everyone, the libertarians and teapots will join the fight. If you dismiss dismiss whites and make it a racial issue, they're gone; and we fight this fight with what remains of a corrupt and useless Democratic Party. blah, blah, ramble, ramble - sorry.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

This all makes complete sense to me, so thanks for taking the time to explain. Smile

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I miss Colorado.

I could always make the diary more professional.
I don't regret any point I made. How I made them is another story.

Nevertheless, this will probably be my last adventure into the subject. I opened the door. Now its up to others to explore the subject further.
Things are about to go down with Greece and maybe Yemen. And then there is the global deflation.
It's time to pay more attention to those things.

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I'm glad you are focusing on international issues, and what's going on in both Yemen and Greece are extremely important.

I'm going to concentrate on domestic issues, however.

Peace, gj.

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I miss Colorado.

gulfgal98's picture

but sadly, it did not get the kind of eyes it needed to spawn a truly adult conversation about how we are allowing ourselves to be divided by both major political parties. IMO, resolving the big picture issues goes a long way toward resolving the social issues we are seeing today. The legislators raising these social issues are using them as shiny objects to divert our attention away from the fleecing of our pocketbooks and the environmental destruction they are doing to our home, Earth. If we do not have security of food, water, shelter, and healthcare, then we are not truly free. That is why I listed economic inequality, climate change (including all environmental issues), and endless wars as being the big picture issues facing us all.

But then, I was a planner by trade so I tend to look at things in a big picture way. Even my Peace Vigil activities are based upon the fact that I see these endless wars as being the most overt symptoms of the corruption in our government and its capture by the oligarch war profiteers.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

mimi's picture

if you go over there at the gos and read through the comments.

While I certainly agree that that's been an issue, within both Dkos and the Democratic Party generally, it doesn't change the fact that racism, sexism, and homophobia are huge problems for large segments of the population. People of color, women, and LGBT experience discrimination all the time, every day. Identity politics are perhaps trivial to you, but they're important to me. I'm not trying to gain anymore rights than a white male has;

I was a bit puzzled that some read his diary that way. To me it didn't say that Identity politics were trivial, I read that using identity politics as a tool to silence others and initiate more of a divide than there actually is, was his theme.

I tried to defend this pov. Probably not successfully. Here is the main one. I dont think that this diary's theme ...

I feel you are very upset and fed up, but I would try to read the thread on the gos and reconsider your evaluation. It might be worth it. No offense and hopefully you recover from the disappointments you seem to have about his diary. One day I will put mine together about it as well.

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gulfgal98's picture

It is not about the fact that identity issues are not important, because they are. But the problem is that they are being used by the oligarchs to divide us human beings against one another. I think you and I along with Shaharazade were trying to make those points.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

mimi's picture

he/she felt was their best understanding of the diary's intent and issue.

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When I get pissed off, I usually don't hold back. LOL. But I respect gjohnsit and think he's a good dude.

I read the comments of the diary on GOS, which I think informed my problem with the tone of the diary. I found his comments rather dismissive in many cases, and that's partially why I wrote my own comment here.

As I've stated elsewhere, I do think the Democratic Party uses social issues as a front to gain money and power. That's pretty clear to me now, and it wasn't clear to me even two weeks ago. I feel that gjohnsit's original diary was heading in a positive direction towards explaining that phenomenon, but the second diary was too murky. It's hard to get those points when told that feminists are too "oversensitive".

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I miss Colorado.

mimi's picture

and again. Many opportunities to find ways and quotes that make those points clearer. I am glad to see you back here, Shiz, and don't hold back, it's not good for your health. Smile As the saying goes: "Shoot me for it, if you want to, but I am going to tell you my opinion anyway". I kinda love those guys and gals. Go for it. I feel I need an OPOL peace to add here.

Peace.

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