Lib Upsets Libs by Telling the Truth

Columbia Professor Urges Democrats to End ‘Disastrous’ Identity Politics
by Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D. 25 Aug 2017

“American liberalism in the twenty-first century is in crisis,” writes Columbia University Professor Mark Lilla, due in no small part to its embrace of a “disastrous” identity politics that divides instead of uniting.

In his newly released book, The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics, Lilla, a self-described “frustrated American liberal,” decries the implosion of the Democratic Party and liberalism itself, brought on by a growing disconnect from middle America and the inability to paint a compelling vision for the future.

Lilla’s new work expands upon “The End of Identity Liberalism,” an essay he wrote shortly after last November’s Presidential election. In it, he urged fellow liberals to face up to their party’s share in responsibility for Trump’s victory, which Lilla attributed to the rise “identity liberalism.”

Liberalism, Lilla contends in his book, is rightly considered by many “as a creed professed mainly by educated urban elites cut off from the rest of the country who see the issues of the day principally through the lens of identities.”

The core of their error, Lilla suggests, is that Democrats have thrown themselves headlong into identity politics, focusing on what divides rather than what unites. As a result, many feel alienated from a party that once knew how to bring people together.

“The majority of Americans have made it abundantly clear that they no longer respond to whatever larger message we have been conveying over the past decades,” he writes.

Contra the opinion of many of his colleagues, Lilla says that the source of conservatives’ strength has been “not money, not false advertising, not fear-mongering, not racism” but rather a shared image for America’s future, which—he claims—the Democrats have been unable to produce.

The liberal vision, on the other hand, which earlier centered on shared values that bind the nation together, eventually gave way to “a pseudo-politics of self-regard and increasingly narrow and exclusionary self-definition that is now cultivated in our colleges and universities,” he writes.

So rather than expounding a common vision for the future, Democrats have embraced a divisive vision of fragmentation, trying desperately to please an unending series of special interest groups who see themselves as victims requiring special attention.

Democrats therefore no longer appeal to Americans, he argues, but rather to “women, Hispanics, ‘ethnic Americans,’ the LGBT community, Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.”

The reaction of liberals to Lilla’s book has been overwhelmingly negative, which may simply suggest how deeply the rot of identity politics has penetrated his political comrades in arms.

Predictably, the New York Times finds Lilla’s analysis thoroughly distasteful, and published a review by Yale University History Professor Beverly Gage that dismissed Lilla’s critique as “trolling disguised as erudition.”

Writing in The Los Angeles Review of Books, Columbia law professor Katherine Franke went further still, comparing Lilla to David Duke, the former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

While Lilla may have effectively put his finger on the key problem undermining the modern Democrat project, there is little sign that his message will garner any support from the guardians of liberal orthodoxy.

Andrew Sullivan: Around the Bend and Back Again

Even a broken clock is right occasionally. The Washington Free Beacon quotes Andrew Sullivan from an interview with members of the New Republic. Mostly Sullivan is entirely smitten with, and worshipful of, Barack Obama. But there is one quote that I'd like to share, because it contradicts everything else he says:

"Andrew Sullivan on Identity Politics

[T]he left’s obsession with race and gender and all the other Marxist notions helped create the white identity politics that is now going to run this country.

[Laughter and shouting]

ANNETTE GORDON-REED: Marxist? Marxist identity politics?

That’s what has allowed white identity politics to emerge and to win. … [I]f the left thinks that it didn’t stress identity politics enough, they are gravely mistaken. The only progress that will come on these issues is by getting rid of that poison …"

Perhaps he was suddenly possessed... with a fit of uncharacteristic rationality. He'll likely get over it.

No Room For Whites in the New Color Identity Democrat Party

Remember when the Democrats were all-white racist slave-owners? Separate-but-equal racists? KKK/Jim Crow? Now they're going to be the non-white racist, Perpetual Victimhood of Color party.

Former Sanders Spokeswoman: "We Don't Need White People Leading The Democratic Party"

"Symone Sanders, former spokeswoman for the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, appeared on CNN Wednesday afternoon to weigh in on the future of the DNC and the Democratic party. Sanders dismissed the idea of Howard Dean returning as DNC chairman commenting, "we don't need white people leading the Democratic party right now."

"Howard Dean is also on record maligning young people and millennials. Telling those Bernie folks they just need to get in line and maligning Bernie Sanders. And that is not what we need," Sanders said about the former party chairman.

"In my opinion we don't need white people leading the Democratic party right now," Sanders said. "The Democratic party is diverse, and it should be reflected as so in leadership and throughout the staff, at the highest levels. From the vice chairs to the secretaries all the way down to the people working in the offices at the DNC."

"I think we need a robust discussion about this and I think we need to hear more from all the candidates," Sanders told CNN's Brianna Keilar. "Jaime Harrison of South Carolina, he's great, too. He's done real party building, but everybody doesn't necessarily know Jaime and they want to know what he stands for. So I want to hear more from everybody."

"I want to hear from the millennials and the brown folks," she finished."

Rather than universal tolerance for humankind, the Dems have kept their racism. Only the skin colors have changed. Identity Politics is still all they have to offer. Remember the dim past when Hillary "deserved" the presidency because of her identity? Whoops! Wrong identity.

I Self-Identify As Anglo-Hun-Nordic-Franco-Latino-Sapien-Sapien-Neanderthal-Cro-Magnon-American-Legal Parentage.

Hm. Did you know that there is a “FOX News – Latino”? I didn’t, until today. Today’s Latino complaint is that Trump actually used a brand new secret code word, “Univision”, which Latinos actually know means “Mexico”. So Trump was telling Jorge Ramos to go back to Mexico when he told Ramos to “go back to Univision”, which is where Ramos is from and represents.

Every sentence Trump utters (if “utters” can be used to describe Trump’s style) is re-interpreted within the racist context of “Latino” cultural diktat. When Trump said that there are criminals amongst the illegals, he actually declared that “all Latinos are criminals”, and so is declared xenophobic and racist. That is Leftist-speak for tarring the truth speaker to avoid the spoken truths. Some things, and some classes, are sacrosanct, which means that any defects which the class might have cannot be spoken of.

Here’s the fact regarding Ramos: he was being a complete ass. He intended to produce exactly what happened – a firm, civil response by removing the ass from the group – so that he could claim discrimination and racism. Which he promptly did.

If Latinos are buying into this, then shame on them. Responding to incivility is rational and is, in fact, civil. That means that objecting to it is to endorse and promote incivility and in the case of illegals, lawlessness. That is the logical conclusion; but logic in not in play here.

This is reminiscent of the phobic Leftist anti-Semitic attacks on Israel, whenever Israel finally responds to being suicide bombed, shelled and rocketed by Palestinians and other Islamics. Party A is free to abuse Party B, but party B had better not respond to that abuse.

Party A in this case clearly is Mexico, the government of which published a pamphlet telling illegals how to behave when illegally entering the USA. Now the Mexican government is threatening its relationship with Texas, because Texas is fighting the waves of anchor babies produced by lawbreaking illegals, which abuse is promoted by Mexico.

So it is racist and xenophobic to object to illegal activities by whoever wants to violate US laws. This is the mentality of the era.

If some Americans insist on self-identifying as Latino, then I feel obligated to also self-identify as Anglo-Hun-Nordic-Franco-Latino-Sapien-Sapien-Neanderthal-Cro-Magnon-American-Legal Parentage. I have the documentation to prove it, except for the Cro-Magnon; I just feel Cro-Magnon, so that’s how I self-identify. I also self-identify with Red-Deer-Cave-People; but just on weekends.

Identity Police

I have taken a casual interest in the "GamerGate" tempest because it seems to be a complete microcosm of the entire culture war currently raging beneath the radar of "low information" folks. It has all the elements of the overall Leftist class war, including messiahism, designated Victimhood, and designated Oppressor Class. Only in GamerGate, the names are different: the messiahs are "social justice warriors" (SJWs), a suitably pompous self appellation; the Victimhood class is the ever-popular female sex as a generic victimhood class; and anyone else falls into the designated Oppressor Class, called GamerGaters (I think that's how it works).

Apparently GamerGate has attracted outsiders who participate as SJWs and possibly some who participate as GamerGaters. It seems, from the outside anyway, that the Victimhood group is presupposed, after some trigger incident which is no longer pertinent to the current conversation.

Now the SJWs are also "Identity Police", not actually a new category but an interesting twist. A conversation grabbed by Vox Day shows the new inclusion. Blacks have long been Identity Police, designating wrong thinkers as "not black enough" or "Uncle Toms", while Obama the half-black has been plenty black enough to vote for.

Now wrong thinking homosexuals are "not really Gay". And Vox recalls someone declaring Margaret Thatcher not a female:

"I remember a prominent feminist member of the faculty standing up and saying that "Margaret Thatcher was not of the gender woman" due to her offensive politics".

We already know that "all men are rapists" and "all whites are racist; but blacks cannot be racist", and other wisdom from the AtheoLeft. Now we also know that your very biological sex and sexual preference can be removed, as well as your color and membership in the human race.

After a while the designated Oppressor Class will cover so many humans (ex-humans?) that very few will remain in either the designated Victimhood class or the Messiah class. It's tempting to think that there should be enough of us in the ex-human/Oppressor class to smudge out the messiahs, especially since, in the west anyway, the messiahs are all mouth and no substance. Or are they? Obama has systematically turned the Armed Forces into a hot bed of politically correct, top down messiahs by firing those generals, admirals, colonels, etc. who do not subscribe to the PC messiah dogma. What is left is anybody's guess, but it cannot be good because like all messiahs, it is insanity personified. And what with the government making tens of billions of dollars in secret purchases recently, who knows what they are up to?

When the next two years are over, we will know. Unless the Chinese become our masters first, that is.