Barrel Strength

Sometimes it seems like every bad idea of the 1970s refuses to die but lumbers forward as one of the Great Big Stupid Unkillable Ideas. It seems that some mistakes are so large, so widely held, so deeply believed, that their absurdity must be worked out tragically, in wasted lives and economic and spiritual devastation. The Big Stupid Unkillable Idea of the 1970s under discussion today is Identity Politics. The Wikipedia article shows that a) it was an idea from the 1970s and b) it is of leftist origin.

 I cite Wikipedia’s excellent article on the subject:

“Theorists of identity politics have argued passionately that oppression shapes the consciousness of the oppressed such that oppressed people usually internalize their oppression. Only in the atmosphere which obtains when members of the oppressor group are not present to enforce unjust definitions of equality, justice, and right, and the norms that derive from such definitions, can the oppressed begin the difficult work of consciousness-raising, the first step toward the organization of the oppressed to struggle for a liberation defined in their own terms”.

Now we have Hillary versus Obama: woman versus soi-disant black man, both trying to present themselves as representative of their respective sex and race. The basic proposition before the Democratically-inclined voter is to choose which identification he or she most sorry or apologetic for: black or woman. As Charles Krauthammer pointed out, given that choice, why not go for McCain?

The same suggestion was made by an apolitical woman friend a month ago. If the choice is between people-as-symbols and someone offering substance, the tendency of most people is still to go with the substance.

So I shall declare it aloud on March 17th of the election year: the wheels are coming off the Obama campaign. It is all froth, all posturing, and will not survive the mauling that Hillary is giving him and which McCain and the Republicans will give him. Hillary has already stopped his momentum in real electoral terms. Now the fight is going to be about symbolical posturing, almost entirely, and even more than it is in the usual political campaign. Will actual issues ever present themselves? Between now and November, you can be sure of it.