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Is identity politics a bad thing?
Yes... 55%  55%  [ 16 ]
No... 17%  17%  [ 5 ]
Bananas are people too... 28%  28%  [ 8 ]
Total votes : 29

naturalplastic
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30 Nov 2018, 4:30 am

Catlover5 wrote:
Bananas are definitely people. I can tell because they don't taste very nice.


But they do have appeal.



techstepgenr8tion
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30 Nov 2018, 7:40 am

The problems I have with it are the 'how' and 'under what circumstances?'

In the 1960's, in the south, African Americans clearly needed identity politics. When things are really veering off because of where a group has been situated - whether by religion, gender, ethnicity - they have good reason to come together, talk about their common experience, and figure out how to work with other groups to either solve the problem or/and find ways to significantly decrease the kinds of oppression that they're dealing with.

The problem we seem to have as an animals is that we have relatively short lives and for the first thirty years, often first forty years, we have no clue how the world works and often times have to get that knowledge on the sly when our friends, family, and media talking heads aren't looking. On top of that we're trying to prove ourselves to either the opposite gender or our gender of preference, our new-found sex drives around puberty took a 3D world and turn it 2D for another 20-25 years, we're trying to figure out how we'll be able to pay bills and survive under threat of homelessness, thus I think young people are under such mind-bending pressures, and holding so little experience (let alone medieval Catholicism levels of social coercion) that to the extent that activism or identity politics becomes a proving ground for one's 'worth' in their teens and twenties it's taking on a purpose that's much more injurious than helpful to any cause that's being fought for. You also have two other factors that are malignant - older people who are particularly bitter and want to get revenge either for what they did go through or what they interpret themselves as having gone through at the hands of others (favorably distorting the role those close to them, or even they themselves played), in other cases you have people who just want to use a social movement to wring whatever they can out of it and either treat it like their bank account and/or wring name and fame out of it.

This is where I think there has to be some very real quality-over-quantity assessment for identity politics going forward. If it picks up blind momentum and anyone off the street is welcome you have a situation where no one has control, there's no assurance of quality, and some truly strange people rise up the ranks of leadership. Clearly our culture is filled with problems yet to be solved but they're increasingly of a variety that need much more surgical attention and an incoherent mob can't do much with those sorts of scenarios.


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30 Nov 2018, 8:19 am

As a species, we're hard-wired to the depths of our limbic system to be communal animals, but not in a macrocosmic sense. We remain just as tribal today as we were when we were naked hunter-gatherers defending our hunting grounds from rival clans with belligerent grunts and sharpened sticks. The only thing which has evolved is the efficacy of our weapons.
There are no true "LGBT issues", "women's issues", "racial issues", "immigration issues", "ASP/neurodiverse issues", or even "privileged white male" issues; there's only human rights issues. We are all in this together. Collective freedom is always relative; measured by the freedom allowed our most oppressed minority; an injury to one is truly an injury to us all.
The maxim of tyrants throughout time immemorial is "divide and conquer", and our innate tribalism makes us perennially easy prey. As long as we cling so tenaciously to our Neolithic lizard-brained "us versus them" mentality, it'll be our collective destiny to be serfs.



naturalplastic
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30 Nov 2018, 9:49 am

Since all politics is "identity politics" the question is meaningless. So lets all just put the gun to the head of the topic and put it out of its meaningless misery.



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30 Nov 2018, 5:32 pm

kraftiekortie wrote:
I think "identity politics" could have its uses....but I feel there's an overemphasis on it these days.



I am a hard core autist...
I have a major problem with NT social protocols...
And the NT psyche is an unfortunate consequence of the evolutionary process...

The inherent deception in interpersonal interactions are an affront to me...
And while I would be happy if social change could be implemented in regards to the inherent conscious and pathological NT corruption of reality, it is axiomatic that this will never happen...

Is this a form of identity politics, and if so, why is my position a bad thing?



Pepe
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30 Nov 2018, 5:37 pm

naturalplastic wrote:
Since all politics is "identity politics" the question is meaningless. So lets all just put the gun to the head of the topic and put it out of its meaningless misery.


This is not a gratuitous thread...
I overwhelmingly post to gain personal enlightenment...
I thought I had made this clear...

Why are you interested in denying my personal growth?



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30 Nov 2018, 6:59 pm

No.


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30 Nov 2018, 7:33 pm

Fnord wrote:
"Us Versus Them" cultural mentality. .


And "us" are virtuous, and "them" are wicked.


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30 Nov 2018, 7:35 pm

JohnPowell wrote:
kraftiekortie wrote:
Lincoln wasn't keen on slavery, either----but he sensed that immediate emancipation would have dire consequences, too.


No. He wanted them sent back to Africa.


At the end of his life, Lincoln proclaimed blacks would get full citizenship. Doesn't seem like he stuck with that "back to Africa" plan. In fact, that last speech given by Lincoln was the impetus for John Wilkes Boothe, who had been in the audience, to switch his plan with his conspirators from simply kidnapping Lincoln to actually assassinating him.


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Drake
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30 Nov 2018, 8:01 pm

LoveNotHate wrote:
Fnord wrote:
"Us Versus Them" cultural mentality. .


And "us" are virtuous, and "them" are wicked.



naturalplastic
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30 Nov 2018, 8:08 pm

Pepe wrote:
naturalplastic wrote:
Since all politics is "identity politics" the question is meaningless. So lets all just put the gun to the head of the topic and put it out of its meaningless misery.


This is not a gratuitous thread...
I overwhelmingly post to gain personal enlightenment...
I thought I had made this clear...

Why are you interested in denying my personal growth?


What are you talking about?

I just did enlighten you and just did enable your personal growth by pointing out the obvious to you (that being that ALL politics is "identity politics"! I recommended that you CONTINUE said growth and enlightenment by not getting mired in the rut of this dead end thread, and moving on to the next topic. :)

When Moses told the Pharoah to "let my people go" that was identity politics. When the Barons got the king to sign the Magna Carta that was identity politics (nobles as a group vs the King). And as more and more classes of folks demanded enfranchisement during the evolution of angloamericna democracy each step was an example of identity politics.

I am open to the idea that now in 2018 weve gone a little too far or a little too fast with it, and maybe we should digest the changes already made recently.



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01 Dec 2018, 2:53 am

Drake wrote:
LoveNotHate wrote:
Fnord wrote:
"Us Versus Them" cultural mentality. .


And "us" are virtuous, and "them" are wicked.



Goes to show you, human beings are no smarter than a bunch of dumb birds. But we humans, having marvelous brains and self awareness, have no excuse.


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01 Dec 2018, 10:45 am

Kraichgauer wrote:
JohnPowell wrote:
kraftiekortie wrote:
Lincoln wasn't keen on slavery, either----but he sensed that immediate emancipation would have dire consequences, too.


No. He wanted them sent back to Africa.


At the end of his life, Lincoln proclaimed blacks would get full citizenship. Doesn't seem like he stuck with that "back to Africa" plan. In fact, that last speech given by Lincoln was the impetus for John Wilkes Boothe, who had been in the audience, to switch his plan with his conspirators from simply kidnapping Lincoln to actually assassinating him.


Just pandering propaganda from him. He was a white supremacist.


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JohnPowell
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01 Dec 2018, 10:46 am

It's just basic divide and conquer.


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01 Dec 2018, 3:52 pm

JohnPowell wrote:
Kraichgauer wrote:
JohnPowell wrote:
kraftiekortie wrote:
Lincoln wasn't keen on slavery, either----but he sensed that immediate emancipation would have dire consequences, too.


No. He wanted them sent back to Africa.


At the end of his life, Lincoln proclaimed blacks would get full citizenship. Doesn't seem like he stuck with that "back to Africa" plan. In fact, that last speech given by Lincoln was the impetus for John Wilkes Boothe, who had been in the audience, to switch his plan with his conspirators from simply kidnapping Lincoln to actually assassinating him.


Just pandering propaganda from him. He was a white supremacist.


No, Lincoln wasn't a white supremacist. He learned and grew as both a leader and as a human being in the White House. The man who shot him was a white supremacist.


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01 Dec 2018, 4:05 pm

Kraichgauer wrote:
JohnPowell wrote:
Kraichgauer wrote:
JohnPowell wrote:
kraftiekortie wrote:
Lincoln wasn't keen on slavery, either----but he sensed that immediate emancipation would have dire consequences, too.


No. He wanted them sent back to Africa.


At the end of his life, Lincoln proclaimed blacks would get full citizenship. Doesn't seem like he stuck with that "back to Africa" plan. In fact, that last speech given by Lincoln was the impetus for John Wilkes Boothe, who had been in the audience, to switch his plan with his conspirators from simply kidnapping Lincoln to actually assassinating him.


Just pandering propaganda from him. He was a white supremacist.


No, Lincoln wasn't a white supremacist. He learned and grew as both a leader and as a human being in the White House. The man who shot him was a white supremacist.



How do define "white supremist?" Lincoln clearly didn't believe blacks were equal to whites, which was probably an opinion the majority of white men in this country held at that time.


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