US Politics Mega-thread - Page 6263

On November 19 2016 03:54 Nebuchad wrote:


Pretty sure you also advocated identity politics for rural communities recently, wouldn't you say?

On November 19 2016 03:56 xDaunt wrote:

"Identity politics" refers to the Title VII classes (race, sex, religion, gender, etc). I wouldn't put rural interests into the same category.

On November 19 2016 03:55 Nevuk wrote:

They call everyone in a position lower in society than themselves boy. The implication by always calling black men boy is to explicitly clarify and reinforce their lower social standing. Basically you're trying to argue that southern culture isn't racist.

On November 19 2016 03:23 LegalLord wrote:
Just because you don't care about cultural decline doesn't mean others don't. As I've said, explaining this issue is like explaining to an uneducated person why college is important. Nevertheless, culture matters, even if you don't see that it does.

On November 19 2016 03:59 xDaunt wrote:

That's not really true. I have a ton of family in the south and consider myself more of a southerner than anything else regionally. And no, I'm not making an argument as to whether there's racism in the South. I'm only commenting on the usage of the word.

On November 19 2016 03:56 xDaunt wrote:

"Identity politics" refers to the Title VII classes (race, sex, religion, gender, etc). I wouldn't put rural interests into the same category.

On that precise point, the New York Times, in a widely circulated article, will describe this day at Trump Tower as a scene of “disarray” for the transition team. In fact, it’s all hands on: Mike Pence, the vice president-elect and transition chief, and Reince Priebus, the new chief of staff, shuttling between full conference rooms; Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and by many accounts his closest advisor, conferring in the halls; Sen. Jeff Sessions in and out of meetings on the transition team floor; Rudy Giuliani upstairs with Trump (overheard: “Is the boss meeting-meeting with Rudy or just shooting the shit?”), and Bannon with a long line of men and women outside his corner office. If this is disarray, it’s a peculiarly focused and organized kind.

On November 19 2016 02:29 Doodsmack wrote:
And yes, alt right white nationalism is at the core of Trump's support, and perhaps policy, considering the position of Bannon. Bannon's stated world view is one of protecting the supremacy of Judeo-Christian culture.

On November 19 2016 04:11 Nebuchad wrote:


Is this another word with an american definition and a world definition?

On November 19 2016 04:15 xDaunt wrote:


Title VII is the major federal anti-discrimination statute in the US that protects people on the basis of things like race, sex, color, religion, and national origin. So really what I'm saying is that "identity politics" is the appeal/pandering to people on the basis of their identity -- race, sex, religion, and sexual orientation -- as opposed to catering to economic interest groups like unions or farmers.

He absolutely — mockingly — rejects the idea that this is a racial line. “I’m not a white nationalist, I’m a nationalist. I’m an economic nationalist,” he tells me. “The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia. The issue now is about Americans looking to not get f—ed over. If we deliver—” by "we" he means the Trump White House "—we’ll get 60 percent of the white vote, and 40 percent of the black and Hispanic vote and we’ll govern for 50 years. That’s what the Democrats missed, they were talking to these people with companies with a $9 billion market cap employing nine people. It’s not reality. They lost sight of what the world is about.”

In a nascent administration that seems, at best, random in its beliefs, Bannon can seem to be not just a focused voice, but almost a messianic one:

“Like [Andrew] Jackson’s populism, we’re going to build an entirely new political movement,” he says. “It’s everything related to jobs. The conservatives are going to go crazy. I’m the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. With negative interest rates throughout the world, it’s the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything. Ship yards, iron works, get them all jacked up. We’re just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks. It will be as exciting as the 1930s, greater than the Reagan revolution — conservatives, plus populists, in an economic nationalist movement.”
....
“I am,” he says, with relish, “Thomas Cromwell in the court of the Tudors.”

On November 19 2016 04:18 Nyxisto wrote:
The identity politics debate basically has gained prominence since control of the institutions has turned around. Decades ago racists love to use identity politics because they were in control of institutions and thus had a grip on it, nowadays identity is seen as a tool of empowerment for minorities and racists have figured out that the marketplace of ideas and some kind of pseudo-egalitarianism is a way better tool to discriminate. Kind of how leaking tons of bullshit has become a better method of censorship than withholding information. Nothing really has changed, it's just that places have been swapped.

On November 19 2016 04:27 xDaunt wrote:
Take a look at this Bannon quote from the interview that I cited earlier:

On November 19 2016 04:47 Doodsmack wrote:


His Vatican speech was not just about economic nationalism, it was very much about Judeo-Christian culture. He's not being up front here.

On November 19 2016 04:49 xDaunt wrote:

Your mistake is in thinking that the two are mutually exclusive and in failing to appreciate why he might give a different emphasis at the Vatican than he would elsewhere.