Hillary Clinton and the Phoniness of Identity Politics
Giorgia Meloni is set to become Italy’s first female prime minister, and Hillary Clinton thinks that this a good thing for women.
when asked about the Italian political scene, Clinton said that "the election of the first woman prime minister in a country always represents a break with the past, and that is certainly a good thing."
Just in case anyone was under any illusions that Hillary simply misspoke, she doubled-down on that statement in a later interview.
Clinton reiterated her same message in an interview clip to be released by Sky's tg24 on Friday night, saying that a win by Meloni would "open doors" for other women even while acknowledging the far-right candidate would still have to be judged by her policies and performance.According to Broder:
Prefacing her comments on Meloni saying she "doesn't know much about her," Clinton said, "every time a woman is elected to head of state or government, that is a step forward. Then that woman, like a man, has to be judged, on what she stands for, on what she does." There have to be "two parts to the analysis" for though a woman premier would "open doors, that's not the end of the story."
This race/gender tokenism view of how the world works only makes sense when you are viewing the world from an already very high peak. For the vast majority of women in Italy, the election of Meloni will probably be a disaster.
The Brothers of Italy’s direct forebears, the neofascist Italian Social Movement, was formed by supporters of Il Duce after World War II.The idea that a woman leader “opens doors” for other women, as Clinton suggested, is of course laughable. That’s especially true when that leader is a fascist keen to stop abortions and do away with employment quotas that favor women — quite literally shuttering women in the nuclear home — while locking out immigrant women from Italy’s body politic all together.
The Identity Politics of Hillary Clinton is very popular among the ruling elites, because it gives the appearance of progress without any actual progress.
For instance, consider this headline about the CIA by NBC.
It's a wonderful, progressive thing that the CIA is now run by women. Let's just ignore the fact that Gina Haspel was known as "Bloody Gina" because she ran the torture program, and led the effort to cover up it's war crimes, under President Bush.
Hurrah for women! After all, isn't it better to have women doing the torturing than men?
The CIA's highest level positions are now all held by women — another stride towards progress pic.twitter.com/Sz4rDw4U7m
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) January 9, 2019
Or we can consider this headline from ABC.
Who better to run our Military-Industrial Complex and be our leading Merchants of Death than women?
They call on well-worn gender stereotypes to assert that women have something special to offer because of their unique talent at negotiating, their fierce protectiveness as mothers, and their “different perspective” on problem solving.
That's the problem. They don't have "different perspectives". If they did then this would actually matter. They have the perspectives of the ruling class, and that's a much more powerful identity than race or gender.
Why should some impoverished woman in the middle east care if the company that manufactured the bomb that killed her whole family was run by a woman or a man?
Comments
I'm imagining an alternative reality
in which Hillary Clinton won the 2016 Presidential Election. Remember that she didn't lose in the swing states by that large a margin. Would we have Trump in the White House now? Clinton really did love the "religious" Right, and would probably have given us Trump's "policies" with Democratic Party affirmation.
“When there's no fight over programme, the election becomes a casting exercise. Trump's win is the unstoppable consequence of this situation.” - Jean-Luc Melanchon
I hate identity politics
My daughter from my first marriage is a Captain in the Greek Army. They get massive amounts of maternity leave, as do most Europeans. So when she sees the U.S. 'show off' its military's inclusive policy, she laughs.
The whole thing is theatrics. It doesn't translate into anything useful...like actual change in policy for the people that need, like extended maternity leave. They wouldn't want to do anything to offend their corporate masters after all.
The people who would
vote for a Clinton at this point would be doing it simply and only out of religious bias, wherein the religion involved is best stated as "it's HER turn".
Religious beliefs of this nature bring with them with the side benefit of forcing the complete and total suspension of any semblance of rational thinking. "I want this woman to control everything" as a central belief provides amazing cover for minor quibbles like "even though she's a complete sociopath" and "but she might kill us all". Such trivia must necessarily be overridden and completely purged from the thought process by the urgency of the Prime Directive, e.g. "it's HER turn". Oooh-rah.
Faugh. I want the world to be run by a poor person, not the soupy stuff from the skag end of the bottom of the already-too-small "elite" gene pool. It'll be a cold day in hell before a vote of mine comes anywhere near anything She can touch, which leaves out the entirety of the Uniparty.
Tl,dr; It is not, and never will be, her turn.
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
Meaningful diversity
The liberals wants to diversify the race, gender, and sexual identity of the CEO's and political leaders.
The right wants to prevent diversity in nationality and religion.
No one is talking about diversity in class. Because that might lead to actual change.
Well, it should
be noted here for the record that only one side is proposing a Wealth Tax on the very rich, mostly promoted by one woman MA senator of the D persuasion, and mostly supported by her fellow Ds and unanimously opposed by the Rs. And such a bill ultimately has the purpose of decreasing the vast income gap differences, which goes to the class discussion.
Class arguments -- they might lead to meaningful change, or they might lead to just creating another identity group.
Re seeking a poor person as Potus, one might argue they would tend to be prone to being easily bought off, roughly as much as a barely rich person seeking that office who wants to become Really rich. Depends on the personal quality, integrity and principles of the person, not his or her class or race or gender or political affiliation etc. And it was a couple of our richest presidents, FDR and JFK, who did the most for poor people, so you can't always judge a person by the size of his bank account.
Hillary needs to be subjected to a soul tax
The more evil you are, the more you pay...
“When there's no fight over programme, the election becomes a casting exercise. Trump's win is the unstoppable consequence of this situation.” - Jean-Luc Melanchon
soul tax
yes, that is a good suggestion. I might take it a step further. Social debt. The interest alone on
that would feed the caged border refugees for years. The ill-begotten riches of the Clinton
foundation could help to pay for the suffering they have caused. By providing food, housing
and health care to the deplorables left behind. Sociopaths should pay for their damages.
"You can't always
judge a person by the size of his banking account."
Sure, I can! Can judge 'em by that as well as by any other meaningless label or metric. The really rich didn't get there by hard work- they got there by either a). having it handed to them, or b). being in the right place at the right time to steal/exploit somebody else's revenue stream (perhaps as a member of a consortium or shadow government) and add it to their own.
When I'm talking poor, I'm talking POOR: someone who has has zero thoughts of "The world is my oyster!". I am specifically not thinking the of the all-too-common type who regards themselves as a temporarily embarrassed rich person: "just wait and their ship will come in, and they'll be where they really belonged all along". That type is unfortunately all too willing to go to any extent to see their fondly-desired world-vision come true, and is probably the most easily corrupted of all. No, I'm talking someone who when handed a check for a million dollars would try to figure out who they could help with it from their own or even a lower strata right away, as opposed to who they could impress or curry favor with to climb up that social/political ladder to whatever stratum they perceive as "next" and "deserved". I honestly want someone who doesn't even have a place in their thoughts for such a a construct.
And in particular, they must never, EVER, have played golf. Not even once. That "sport" right there is the root of all evil. And it wastes water.
See, isn't hanging labels on people fun and easy? So is being a one-issue voter. My issue right now is "if you're one of them and not one of us, it'll be a cold day in hell before I vote for you". Not one hell of a lot of Buddhist monks to vote for here lately, though...
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
Geez... I get so sick of this PC stuff.
Over my working years I had 4 female bosses. Three were great and one was a nightmare. She was absolutely treacherous and caused me to go through a lot of personal angst and career adjustment. So there is no guarantee that one gender or another is going to be one way or the other. I am a woman, and I know from other experiences that women can be the worst back stabbers in the world.
Or as my daughter said to her grandparents when asked what she thought about her new class in North Carolina that was a majority black kids... "well they are just like white kids. Some are nice and some are not." From the mouth of a 5 year old.
Hillary is a consummate liar and her corruption knows no bounds. Her fake support for "all women" is beneath contempt.
"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin
Which calls for
a tune (of course). Mandy Patinkin delivers one of my favorite renditions of the "Carefully Taught/Children Will Listen" medley, smashing together some of the best bits of South Pacific and Into The Woods. The lyrics just beautifully address exactly what you describe. Always worth a relisten...
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owxRpV7l8Dc width:400 height:300]
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
Thanks for this.
I didn't know Mandy Patinkin sang. I loved the role he played in Dead Like Me.
"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin
He's a favorite
who is very seasoned in Broadway as well as doing the whole movie thing. Very versatile, and thoroughly underutilized as an acting talent. His work in "The Princess Bride" still ranks as one of the great performances of the ages...
"Dead Like Me" must have been a pleasant diversion for him. That was a fun show- hadn't thought about that in years! I wonder whatever became of Ellen Muth?
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
Will have to look her up.
We have the whole show on DVD and bring it out once in awhile for good escape time.
"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin
a fine woman, Madeline Albright
The death of 500,000 dead Iraqi children was "a very hard choice, but the price-we think the price is worth it"
campaigning for Hillary... “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.”
Still, I think we'd be better off if women ran the world, except I guess since anyone who wants to run the world is unfit it probably wouldn't be different. So we'd be better off if the right women ran it. But then they wouldn't want to. Ugh.
It’s not about what they look like.
It’s about what they say, think and do.
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
Hillary has a good political nose if you will.
Hillary is just grooming a potential EU war monger.
Varoufakis: Meloni backs main EU and NATO establishment policies
If Varoufakis is correct, the new PM is mostly co-opted by the EU establishment except over some culture war issues. Only difference is her position on immigrants? to the EU establishment? That can be fixed by some good PR witness Obama's transformation on immigration.
In other words...
..They're now OPENLY PROMOTING THE DEFINITION OF SEXISM: Insisting that males and females are inherently more different than alike.
Mega-Bonus Pointz for bringing back Sarah Palin's "Mama Grizzlies" schtick, which was disturbing enough when it was just her.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
I'm hard pressed
to think of anything H has said in the past roughly 6 yrs that I have found noteworthy in a positive sense or principled.
It would be better for the party and country if she went away and officially retired from all political activity. Ditto for Donald. H was always a threat, if elected, to quickly and dangerously ramp up tensions w Russia (over Syria) that would have put the world on the brink, and DJT was always a threat to trample Democracy and stoke domestic divisions that greatly increased the likelihood of civil war. Pick your poison.
Pioneers deserving of mention
Janet Reno (Waco) and Madeline Albright (Iraq sanctions).
As for
I guess the millions of Italian women who voted for Brothers of Italy or one of the coalition partners are just too dumb to realize that? Or could there possibly be some other explanation...
Personally, I much prefer Salvini, but given that the Draghi government was a real disaster, I hope the new government will accomplish something positive - despite what will no doubt be serious efforts by the EU elite to sabotage it.
https://theduran.locals.com/post/2782483/ursula-we-have-tools-if-italy-v...
I suspect that the Clinton marriage was arranged in Langley.