Why Political Parties Are Important

Last Monday there was a joint news conference by Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott. They both said that they were still interested in being members of Parliament, but weren't interested in being members of political parties. Instead, they want to run as, and, if elected, sit as independents.

Jody Wilson-Raybould,
Photo by Erich Saide, image c/o Wiki Commons.

I took the trouble to watch Raybould's entire press conference on YouTube, and I have to admit that I wasn't impressed. I thought most of what she said consisted just of empty platitudes, but there were a few things that "jumped out" at me. I thought I'd take the time to "deconstruct" them for my readers, and in doing so explain why I was so disappointed.

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There is less room for partisanship in our evolving democracy.

The thing about the word "partisan" is that it really just means "someone who supports a particular point of view". If you are totally against "partisanship", you are ultimately against basing your politics on anything but immediate expediency. (That's the expressed viewpoint of Donald Trump when he says "he's a "deal maker".) I find it pretty hard to believe that this is what Raybould means. In fact, it's pretty obvious to me that she's a "partisan" in favour of her own particular way of wanting to do politics, as opposed to some other type. Reading between the lines, I might assume that what she means is that she's opposed to party loyalty based exclusively superficial reasons. But I'd suggest that that is not a fair understanding of why the various members of the Liberal party do what they do.

As an independent I will be truly free to take the guidance of the citizens of Vancouver Granville and to represent you. I will not have to try and convince myself that just because the way it has always been done means that it must continue to be done this way.

A lot of politicians make noises about "taking the guidance" of the citizens, but that's pretty much an empty slogan. That's because it is enormously difficult and expensive to scientifically poll an entire riding in order to find out what people really do think about an issue. It's certainly not enough to just listen to the people who call your office on the phone, write you emails, or, show up at town halls---all of those avenues are easily manipulated by organized campaigns to sway leaders. As Liz Sandals stated when I interviewed her, she could read letters and emails from constituents where the same few talking points repeatedly came up over and over again---which indicates that they had been organized by some sort of organization (party, church, website, etc) to push a specific agenda. How exactly is listening to these campaigns an improvement over supporting a party's agenda?

Moreover, people's opinions are pretty much worthless unless they are informed. We have lots of folks spewing misinformation like "vaccines cause autism". What if a majority of the phone calls to her constituency office supported a ban on measles vaccination? Would Raybould "take the guidance" of her voters and vote in favour? Or would she follow her conscience and the best evidence that has been presented to her? Isn't part of the problem we face as a society that there are entrenched interests who have learned to effectively use propaganda to get people to do things (like denying climate change) that are objectively not in their own interest? Where What does Raybould's "principled stance" mean in this situation?

And that last sentence (I will not have to try and convince myself that just because the way it has always been done means that it must continue to be done this way.) seems to imply that the only reason MPs won't support whatever it is she is proposing is because of some sort of inertia. Does she really believe this? Or is this just another partisan smear---but one that favours her worldview instead of another's?

Before 2015 I'd never been involved in federal or provincial politics and I'd never been a member of a political party. My leadership experience before running to be your MP has been in the indigenous world. Advocating for transformation in the relations with indigenous peoples. As some of you know, in my cultural teachings, we strive to work though consensus. While there are a diversity of views, tensions and challenges, we do not entrench them in political parties. And we often frown on personal ambition. 

She freely admits that she has absolutely zero experience in parliamentary politics. She hasn't even had a membership in any political party. And yet, she ran and was immediately made the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada. Then she had a disagreement with the head of her party, and made a big stink over something. She got kicked out of the caucus and now wants to tell all the other politicians how they really should act.

This reminds me of a sort of fundamentalist preacher I used to hear during my childhood in "Jesusland". They used to go on and on about how awful they'd been and all the terrible life choices they'd made before they found Jesus. But now they had him in their hip pocket and they wanted everyone else do what they said they should do---specifically because of their past history of making bad choices. When I heard this, the immediate thing I thought was that it all boiled down to "I made lots of horrible life choices in the past, and now I want you to follow my latest one".

The situation isn't exactly the same. But I am concerned about her reference to "consensus". The thing about that ideal is that it gives enormous power to whomever wants to veto and prevent something from happening, but precious little to anyone who wants to do anything. Moreover, it also involves ferocious battles over who gets to define what the "status quo" is, and what is "innovation" (ie: that thing that is easily vetoed.)

The commitment to consensus, the importance of speaking the truth, and striving to honour and uphold each other. These are the core values of my culture and teachings. 

The big issue is deciding what exactly "the truth" is, and what does it mean to "honour and uphold each other"?

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These are the ultimate questions, aren't they? I often meet people who think it is remarkably easy to identify the "truth" of any problem. Generally, if they let me, I find after asking a few questions that they really don't know very much at all. This is what is known as "Socratic questioning", and it's the basis of philosophy and science. (I was dealing with it in my last editorial Truth is a Conversation.)

One of the things you learn by being in a political party (and I was for many years) is that there are a great many different ideas about "the truth" and it is tremendously difficult to create any sort of consensus about what it might be. And if you want to work together as a group towards a common purpose---be it winning an election or preventing runaway climate change---it is tremendously difficult to create a process where everyone feels "honoured" and "upheld".

It's not only a question of people having different points of view, it's also that no matter where you are in the "party food chain", you simply cannot be involved in every decision that directly affects you. The party leadership consists of many people who are all tremendously busy with the demands of government business, party business, dealing with the media, meeting with community leaders, constituents, and, preparing for the next election. And when you do get a chance to bring your concerns to someone, they have to consider how a specific decision will seem to people who don't know what you know, and who live in totally different circumstances. Moreover, all the people you deal with are human beings who get sick, are tired, are under stress, who are carrying baggage from their childhood----who basically make just as many stupid mistakes as everyone else. In fact, being in a political party is much like being in a giant, fractious, crazy family.

You have to have a thick skin and be tremendously aware of the frailties inherent in the human condition to be successful in politics. You also have to learn that "The perfect is the enemy of the good".  And the key thing you have to learn is that you cannot work with a group if your bring to it the attitude of "My way or the highway". 

If Jody Wilson-Raybould had been involved in the Liberals for any length of time she would realize how incredibly hard it is to "get along" with a huge number of people who have different personal histories, different points of view, and, different life situations. It's not a trivial thing to do. But if you can manage to do it, you are doing something of great importance to society. You are working with an institution that "stitches together" the nation and forges some sort of common worldview that can make things "work". It does this by creating a mechanism where people can get together and make the compromises that are necessary if people are going to live together---not in harmony, but at least without burning the house down. That's why we have political parties. 

I don't want to sound too harsh, but in the light of my experience in politics, I couldn't help but think that her entire 15 minute press conference was just a lot of empty verbiage that meant pretty much nothing at all. Indeed, it reminded me of an episode of the sitcom Cheers that I'd seen years ago. I found a scene from it on YouTube. Take a look and see if it rings "true" to you.

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One last point. Elizabeth May approached Raybould with a suggestion that she join the Green Party. That was, IMHO, a perfectly acceptable solution to both her and Philpott's situation. It is very difficult to get elected as an independent for purely practical reasons. It might seem that the two MPs would find themselves a better "fit" in the Green caucus anyway.

But then May said something in an interview that was absolutely extra-ordinary. She said that she would step aside and let Raybould run for the leadership of the party---presumably with her endorsement. In effect, she was treating the party leadership like her own private possession that she was free to give away to someone else. I mentioned how appalled I was by this at a breakfast meeting and someone immediately piped up and said how hard May works, and how committed she is to the environment. Luckily someone else immediately replied for me by saying that it was possible to be hard working and committed, and still have a tremendously wrong-headed view of leadership at the same time. (That allowed me to keep my powder dry.)

Elizabeth May is also someone who'd never been involved in the Green Party before she became leader. As it transitions away from her being the only elected member of Parliament, I suspect that there are going to be internal battles as something like an "internal culture" begins to grow within the Green Party of Canada. Just remember that this isn't a betrayal of anyone's ideals---it's just a symptom of childhood's end and a movement towards developing an adult point of view. I do, however, wish people would get rid of the "star candidate" complex that parachutes people into high public office with absolutely zero experience in political parties, though. 

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This week I saw a twitter rant from Adam Donaldson about how hard it is to get people to support indie media in the city. He made the perfectly reasonable point that if 1,000 people did a two dollar a month subscription to Guelph Politico, he'd have the sort of financial independence that would allow him cut a great deal of stress out of his life. Indeed, he said he was on the verge of calling it quits because it's so hard to get support from the community. I could say much the same thing. What triggered this was a complaint by someone who missed the good old days of the Guelph Mercury.

Well, I wrote a column for three years at the old Merc, and those days weren't really all that good. And I too get a bit miffed when I hear nostalgic whining about how great it was when a pile of dead trees that had been bled dry by corporate vampires like Conrad Black was delivered to your door every day. For a very long time before it died, it was a dreadful paper. And it cost a great deal more than $2/month too. We have well over 100,000 people in this city. If people had the idea that they need to pay for local news just like anything else, and were willing to pay a trivial amount of money through a Patreon subscription, we'd have a thriving independent local news culture in this city. But you've got to actually do it. 

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Furthermore, I say to you---climate change must be dealt with!

Making Up Our Minds: Mind Your Language!

One of the things that every citizen needs to remember is that there are a lot of very smart people in this world who want to trick you into supporting some action that isn't in your own best interest. One way that they often do this is by manipulating language to confuse you. I thought I'd devote this weekend's editorial to some of the more common tactics that political weasels employ.

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Loaded Language

This is when a politician uses words that have a specific assumption that supports them is "baked into" their meaning. For example, conservative politicians have gone to great lengths to get Canadians to call refugees who cross the border outside of the customs entry points "illegal immigrants". In actual fact, what these people are doing is perfectly legal and in keeping with the United Nations refugee rules. The problem is that Canada has an agreement with the USA that suggests that since America is such a mellow, immigrant-friendly place, that there's no need for anyone to come from there to claim refugee status in Canada. (And then came Trump---. Maybe this "Safe Third Party Agreement" wasn't such a good idea after all.) This rule doesn't invalidate international law, however, so these people are not "illegal" in any way, shape, or, form.

Unfortunately, the lazy-ass, mainstream media haven't "pushed back" against this blatant attempt to confuse voters, and most of it has adopted the phrase themselves. This has allowed the Conservatives to pretty much take over the debate and force the other parties onto their back legs. This has damaged political discourse in Canada and allowed the alt-right a way of making immigration---which has historically been seen very positively by most Canadians---into a political football. 

False Dichotomies

People will sometimes manipulate a conversation to strongly imply that there are only two possible options and then force you to answer "yes" or "no". Sometimes this is done to create phony statistics in favour of a given point of view. This is called a "push poll". I remember a pollster explaining the concept to Peter Gzowski (an ancient CBC radio host) by polling the general public about whether or not Knowlton Nash (an equally ancient CBC tv news reader) wore skirts that were too short for decency. (Of course, Nash never wore a skirt in his life.) 

My personal favourite example is the basis of a Gary Larson cartoon.  

Gary Larson cartoon from the Far Side,
used under the fair use provision of the Copy Right law.

 

One recent example of a false dichotomy is the idea that the only two choices that Canadians face is to either destroy the Albertan economy by limiting oil production, or, avoid doing our bit to prevent out-of-control climate change. The assumption seems to be that there is something wrong with Albertans in that they are genetically incapable of doing anything else than work in the tar sands. (Poor souls---is it the result of some sort of in-breeding?) The idea that they might want to fund their government by putting in place a sales tax (like all the other ox-like,  dull, subhuman provinces) or diversify their economy (again, like the other ox-like, dull, subhuman provinces) seems to be impossible to contemplate. (There's no sense wondering what the poor, feckless souls did with the royalties they charged on all their conventional oil. Conservatives are notoriously bad with money. They just don't seem to be able to help themselves, poor dears. Just witness what Doug Ford is now doing with the Ontario budget.)   

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Last Thursday I heard a talk by Patti Broughton about the Guelph Arts Council. Afterwards I had a brief talk with her, we exchanged business cards, and, I decided to join the organization. I told her about the Back-Grounder and she said that I should join, even though this is a journalism project rather than fiction. The membership is $30/year, so there's one more expense that I've taken on with this publication. Unfortunately, she'd never heard of it before. What that tells me is that I should be putting more effort into letting people know about it. So, I'm asking readers to consider sharing the link to my blog with the other people on social media. I need to take advantage of "word-of-mouth" advertising just as much as I need subscribers. So while I like it when people click on the "like" button, I also would like you to click on the "share" one too.  

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Plastic Words

One last thing I'd like readers to consider happens when politicians use "plastic words". These are phrases or descriptors that seem to mean something, but when you ask people to define what exactly they think that they mean, you get very different explanations. One of the best use of these comes from an environmental debate that goes back decades. 

In 1972 an international think tank called "The Club of Rome" published a report titled Limits to Growth that put forward the totally obvious (if your head isn't stuffed firmly up your butt) observation that economic growth cannot continue forever on a planet that is not also growing. The idea was that there is always a "limiting factor" in any population that stops it from growing beyond a certain size. These could be a specific essential nutrient, or, it could be that beyond a certain point the ability of the ecosystem to recycle waste becomes overwhelmed and the organism poisons itself.

Unfortunately, the world dominant religion---capitalism---is based on the idea that economic growth can continue forever. And as we all know, for many people whenever facts conflict with ideology, facts always have to go out the window. That means that the "punk and plain" words of the Club of Rome report had to be sabotaged and safely removed from public discussion.

An innocuous title, but yet one of
the most effective pieces of anti-environmental
propaganda ever produced! 
Image from the Wiki Commons. 

Enter the Bruntland Commission, which came up with an alternative to Limits to Growth, known as Our Common Future. The genius of the slime-bags behind this was that they came up with a plastic phrase---sustainable development---which then drove the phrase "limits to growth" completely out of public discourse.  

The "great thing" about this term, is that it allows people who want to save the world (ie:  who want to have sustainability) to use the same words as those who want to sustain the existing status quo (ie: who want to have sustained economic growth.) At that point, the discussion about whether or not the human race should still be growing like crazy, cutting down forests, polluting the oceans, etc, stopped being honestly discussed because everyone agreed on the same thing. Wow! Plastic words are like magic. 

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Furthermore, I say to you---climate change must be dealt with!

One Possible Reason Why the Populists are Angry

Kate Manne, from her
Twitter Feed

I recently listened to a fascinating podcast interview between Ezra Klein and the philosopher Kate Manne titled This Conversation Will Change How You Understand Misogyny. I can't say that it actually changed the way I look at the current populist backlash that we are facing in politics, but it did reinforce something that I've been thinking about for years and it also helped me better articulate those ideas to the point where I think I can now share them with the people who follow my blog.

The two key points that underlie Manne's analysis is to accept two starting points. First, you have to get rid of the idea that human beings are discrete, atomic entities who freely choose everything that they do. The idea is that modern research has clearly shown

Ezra Klein, c/o Wiki Commons

that in a wide variety of different ways everyone is a product of their childhood, culture, biology, etc. All of these things have a profound effect on how we understand the world and act. This isn't to say that none of us have what we call "free will"---according to Manne---just that the exercise of that freedom has to take into account the subtle ways in which these various factors colour the way we see things. For Manne, the only "freedom" that we really have includes how we try to understand, compensate for, and, overcome these elements that have created who we are.

This is an important issue with a lot of different social issues because it reframes them from being directed onto the individual and instead talks about the society they inhabit. In the specific case that she was talking about with Klein, for example, seeing the world this way changes the conversation from being "do I hate women?" to "is what I'm doing right now something that doesn't help women become equal members of society?" The same thing could be said about other "identity politics" issues. The emphasis changes from "am I a racist?" to "does the immigration policy I support discriminate against non-whites?" It also has impact on the environment: "am I a climate change denier?" to "does this policy I'm supporting make the future sustainable?" Once we assume that people are to a very large part formed by the culture they live in, then if we want to make the world a better place, we need to change the culture instead of blame the individual.

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This leads to the second point that Manne identifies, namely that one of the key ways that culture controls human behaviour is through shaming. Gender is obviously rigidly controlled in our culture through shaming---"man-up", "don't be a sissy", "real men don't eat quiche", "that's so gay", "that haircut is so butch!", "that skirt makes you look like a slut!", etc, etc. It might be harder to recognize this in other aspects of culture, but once you understand what to look for, it becomes easier to see.

Shaming is a complex behaviour in that it involves pointing out that someone is expected to live up to a specific norm---and that they are failing to do so. As such, it is inherently hierarchical because it always involves someone taking on the role of being a judge who can decide who is or is not living up to their understanding of acceptable behaviour. It isn't just a case of someone being told that they don't "make the grade", though, it is also a case of someone internalizing this code to the point where the comment from the "outsider" has a deep emotional "sting". 

Let me illustrate this point with an example from my own life.

I have worked as a porter in an academic Library for over 30 years. Sometimes it's slow in the building and there is nothing to do except the odd walk-through and wait for someone to call on the radio or telephone for help. One night I happened to be suffering from a truly hideous migraine headache and was sitting behind a cup of tea trying to keep my eyeballs from falling out of my head. My supervisor showed-up to pick up something from his office. The next day he called me into his office and told me he was very upset about me being where I was the night before and called me "lazy" because I wasn't actively doing something. (I asked him what exactly I was supposed to be doing and he had no answer---he was actually an incompetent boob who didn't really understand my job.) This event put me into a tremendous depression that went on for weeks, led to some serious weight loss (my significant other called me "the incredible shrinking man"), and, only ended after I went to a professional for some therapy.

The point was that I had never been accused of being "lazy" in my entire life and my self-image was tied directly to being a "hard worker". When my boss called me "lazy", he totally shattered this belief about myself and deeply shamed me. It was only after the therapist pointed out that many workplaces are deeply hypocritical about how much people actually do, that many bosses have absolutely zero understanding about who does what, and, that in most cases our interactions at work are exercises in "gamesmanship" and "deception" that I realized that it was ridiculous for me to care what my incompetent boss thought of me. It also helped me immensely to hear this from a professional---who was actually provided by my workplace---which helped get out from under the deep shame that I'd felt because of this whole incident. 

I will admit that my example might seem a bit extreme, but not when you consider that a lot of working-class people have built their entire definition of self-worth on the concept of being "hard workers". I had this reinforced the other night with a cab driver. I mentioned something about having grown up on a farm and she started going on about how "farm people are all WORKERS". You could tell that in her universe this is obviously the most positive thing anyone can say about someone else. And this makes sense. When you have very little value placed on your being by society-at-large, one of the very few ways you can feel good about yourself is to at least think that you are doing the best you can with the very limited opportunities available.

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Another thing about working class culture is that it teaches people to be ashamed about asking for support. I have to admit that it's taken a bit out of me every time I switch to the blue font and start asking for people to support this blog in order to break the "habit" of assuming that all news on the Internet should be "free". Well, here's "the ask". If you like this blog enough to read it, you should consider supporting it. I don't want money from poor people, but if you aren't, perhaps you could kick something in both to "pay your way" and also to pay for the folks who can't afford to support it. It's easy---you can subscribe using Patreon, or toss something in the Tip Jar. If you don't want to do that, send me a cheque by mail:  124-A Surrey Street East Guelph, N1H 3P9  (made out to Bill Hulet.) (Thanks to Evelyn for being so awesome!) 

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Right now we are going through a period of rapid social change. When I was young there were schools and jobs that just refused to admit women. It was against the law to be gay and police raided their bars. Discrimination was casual and accepted just about everywhere. That's all gone. Just to give you an idea of how much things have changed, a co-worker mentioned to me the other day that it had been years and years since he'd heard a joke that made fun of an ethnic group. I had to admit that I could say the same thing---and that amazed me. They used to a common part of social discourse.

How did this change happen? I'd suggest that it simply became no longer acceptable for people to make "Newfie", or "Polack", or whatever type of dumb jokes anymore. People were shamed into no longer repeating them. I can certainly still remember the first time I was shamed by someone because I repeated a dumb anti-gay joke. It stung, and at first I had a hard time understanding what the problem was, but after some other similar incidents, some reflection, and, time, I simply "moved on" and this sort of thing ceased to be part of my casual conversation.

Unfortunately, some people don't see this sort of negative feedback as being an opportunity to rethink what they believe in. Instead, they get very upset and see the other people's attempt to modify their behaviour through shaming as being an assault on their sense of worth---just like when my boss called me "lazy".

The cartoon show South Park devoted an episode titled Smug Alert! to this issue. It involved the citizens of South Park all buying hybrid cars and becoming so self-righteous that they develop a deep cloud of "smug" over the city that threatened to destroy everything. Just to give you a sense of what the show is like, among other things, people owning hybrids were shown being so in love with themselves that they love the smell of their own farts. (I thought about putting a link to the entire show in the post, but there was so much casual homophobia in the episode---people routinely say something is "gay" because is it "fake", "silly", or, just plain bad---that I gagged on including it.)

Another example from popular literature comes from Barbara Kingsolver's  novel Flight Behaviour. In that book monarch butterflies stop over-wintering in Mexico and instead settle on a wooded valley in Appalachia that is going to be clear cut so a poor land owner can pay off some of his bills. Kingsolver specifically said in an interview that she wrote the book so readers could understand the sort of rural society that breeds climate change denial. In what I suspect she felt was a truly "telling" vignette, an outsider tells a poverty-stricken rural dweller that he should buy a hybrid car in order to "save the planet". I've been involved in the environmental movement for a very long time and I have yet to see this sort of stupid insensitivity to poverty by anyone. I mention this point specifically not because I think that this is an accurate portrayal of how environmentalists act, but because I think it is "spot on" about how some folks think environmentalists act. (I couldn't quite figure out what Kingsolver actually thinks about this, but I suspected that she believes the lie about the environmental movement.)

Barbara Kingsolver,
Photo by Annie Griffiths

I think that both South Park and Kingsolver are serving a useful purpose in articulating exactly what it is that populists are really angry about. A lot of people have lived their lives by defining themselves against a set of very clear notions. But along comes the rapid change of society and all of a sudden hard work isn't as important as having good "people skills". You think that being "gay" is a ridiculous perversion---and yet we have a Premier who is an "out" lesbian. You lost your good-paying job in the oil patch that proved that you were both a "WORKER" and a "good provider" and those damned environmentalists and First Nations types are refusing to let companies build a pipeline.  And the government keeps letting in more and more of those funny brown-skinned folks to compete with your jobs. And on top of all of this, whenever you complain smart-ass people with an education try to shame you into shutting up by saying that you are a ignorant boob who needs "sensitivity training". In fact, if you are too vocal about what you actually feel, you can end up losing your job. What ever happened to free speech?

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I've understood the importance of shaming for social control since well before I heard the conversation between Klein and Manne. I mentioned this to a friend once and suggested that environmentalists need to develop methods of shaming people in order to stop them from doing environmentally damaging things like driving big cars and flying all over the planet on their vacations. Her response was totally unexpected. She totally lost it and said that "shame" is a totally horrible thing to inflict on anyone. I was surprised by the depth of emotion behind her response. In retrospect, I think I now understand what was going on. This friend thinks Brexit is a good idea and believed that Donald Trump would do some good in the USA. She is also someone with a very strong work ethic (she's a "WORKER") who has had to suffer from a great deal of profound indignity in her life. I think that she has developed a very sensitive "antenna" to any attempt to put pressure on people to "get with the program". In other words---she's allergic to "smug". For someone like her, I'm not sure that trying to use informal social pressure is going to do anything except create anger and resentment.

Having said that, I'm not sure what else people can do about "die harders" who keep manifesting behaviour that hurts other or damages the planet. Would it be better to make everything illegal and put them in jail? Should we just try to convince them to change through gentle persuasion and tell the people that they hurt "well, we tried"? I don't really know how else we can get people to stop doing bad things than to let them know that we simply do not approve. It really is the case---as in my example of the racist and sexist jokes---that if enough folks tell you that something is in bad taste many folks will eventually stop doing it.

But in the interim there are going to be a few people that are really, really angry about being told that they need to "pull up their socks" and "get with the program". I suspect that all the people of good will can do is be patient and reflect on the idea that this backlash is only a temporary thing. Most young folks have no problem with this new world. It's just some of the older citizenry who hang tenaciously to the old ways of being. And to paraphrase Max Planck "Civilization progresses one funeral at a time".   

The Village Funeral, by Frank Holl,
Public Domain image c/o Wiki Commons

    

Identity Politics

Years ago there was a big debate among the very small number of people who actually care about "big debates". It centred around whether activism should be put into "single issues" or "political organizing". That is to say, in the grand carnival of society the question raised was whether it was better to organize demonstrations, mount petition drives, fundraise, issue press releases, and, so on for one specific social issue, like wage discrimination against women; or; whether it would be make more sense to put all that effort into building a political party that would fight for that issue plus others like ending carding, gay rights, unions, higher minimum wages, fighting climate change, etc. No one talks about "single issue politics" anymore (mainly because people have learned that it is possible to "walk and chew gum at the same time"), but the discussion continues in a slightly different form in arguments for or against "identity politics".

What distinguishes this new iteration from the old one is that the focus of organizing isn't on the specific social problem---such as police violence---but instead on a specific, sub-group of the population, such as blacks, and their unique experience of the problem, as in the "Black Lives Matter" movement. The argument being that white people have such a profoundly different experience with authority over their lives that you simply cannot understand the problem without actually having lived it yourself as a person of colour.

Public Domain photo by Johnny Silvercloud, c/o Wiki Commons

This change in focus can be threatening to people who are not members of that specific group because it seems to be arguing from a position of "privilege". That is to say, for example, if you simply cannot understand a significant aspect of policing unless you are a black civilian, it feels to some that your point-of-view as a police officer (or white civilian) simply doesn't count. 

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To political organizers (ie: those folks who see the "big picture" and want to build political parties), identity politics is really scary and dangerous. This is because the classic way that populations are manipulated and controlled is through "divide and conquer" tactics. For example, racism has traditionally been a wonderful thing to use against poor whites---because if you could convince a lot of them that they were so much better off than people of colour they would believe that they had a "stake" in the system. And if you identify with the people exploiting you, you don't want to change things.  

Unfortunately, however, understanding the danger of "divide and conquer" doesn't alter the fact that some fractions of the population simply do not have the same experience as others. The vast majority of men have no idea at all about what it's like to be sexually harassed. Most whites have no idea what it's like to be "carded" or stopped by the police for "driving while black". Nor do heterosexual people have any understanding of what it's like to go through life being gay or trans. And the really important thing to remember is that while something like being "carded" or harassed because of your sexual orientation is a totally incidental and minor thing in the life of people that it almost never happens to---it is a huge, big deal if it is a routine part of your life. And because of this tremendous difference in the perception of importance, it has tended to be extremely easy for organizations like political parties, unions, etc---who have tended to be overwhelmingly composed of white, straight men---to simply "bargain away" any movement on these "lifestyle" issues when "more important" stuff like tax rates, minimum wages, base salary, etc, came up for negotiation. This is why groups have recently started to mobilize around the sub-population instead of the issue, and focused on the single issue instead of the broader, political party.

The "divide and conquer" tactic has been attempted, and it has met with mixed results. Some police unions and elements of the Republican party have tried to create a "blue lives matter" campaign to divide people who are concerned about the problems police officers face from the people who are concerned about the problems of blacks---and pit one against the other.  

Public Domain photo by Daniel Oines, c/o Wiki Commons
Image has been cropped by Bill Hulet

This has managed to develop some traction, as the sign above would indicate. In contrast, an earlier attempt to divide divide blacks and gays over same-sex marriage (using appeals to conservative black churches), seems to have fizzled out before it actually got any momentum. Primarily, this happened because the black population is more sensitive to "civil rights" than the general public. They seemed more interested in helping others gain rights that they had to fight for themselves than they disliked gays. (There are still inter-racial couples alive who were forbidden to marry under the old Jim Crow laws. The parallel with laws forbidding gay marriage were obvious to many.) 

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There is an element to identity politics that scares a great many folks. Once you start looking at the world this way there is a danger that it can become a bit of a Pandora's Box---the identities will start to multiply to the point where there will no longer be any sort of majority left. Just to illustrate with my own example, consider the following. I'm a straight, white male. But I'm also someone who grew up in a poor, working class family. I'm a union member in what is considered a good place to work. But I've always worked at physical labour and as a result, various parts of my body have been damaged in ways that cause me considerable pain (arthritis, tendinitis, sciatica.) Moreover, I am married to a woman who has a psychiatric illness that has kept her from being employed for a large part of her adult life. Moreover, I am planning on sponsoring her to come live with me as an immigrant (she's an American citizen.) Also, I am a survivor of an abusive, dysfunctional family, and, as a result, suffer from PTSD. 

Any one of these issues could become something I identify with and see as being key to who I am. I could go on about class discrimination, the casually brutal way people treat the mentally ill, the way managers routinely ask people to do jobs that wear and tear on the body without bothering to think about the cumulative impact that this has over a person's lifetime, and, so on. But the fact of the matter is that compared to many others, I'm doing pretty good. And I understand that---just like everyone else---I have to pick and choose my battles. As a result, I've made it a practice to try to identify my struggles through issues instead of identity. I am not about to cast aspersions on others who emphasize their own specific experience even though I choose to emphasize the value of seeing things within a larger context. We all bring different experiences and gifts to the table, and diversity is generally a strength instead of a liability.

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This raises one last point. 

It's a natural thing to always try to generalize from our own personal experience in order to understand someone else. For example, I was able to scrimp and save, put together a down payment, and, buy my own house---even though it was a slum and I had to gut and rebuilt it over 20 years. So what's stopping someone else? Well, lots of people didn't grow up on farms and learn that they can do just about anything if they put my mind to it. Moreover, houses cost a lot more now than they used to---even slums. I know this stuff logically, but it is still emotionally easy for me to forget about it. How can I avoid making similar judgments about someone else? 

What I try to do is remember the following statement: "I may think I know what that person's life is like---but I really don't. So the rational, the kind, the enlightened thing is to simply suspend judgment. Maybe I will be able to learn a little bit about that person's life, but until then I will just take what they say on its own terms." I know that it's really difficult to remember to suspend judgment, but when you can it is useful to try. And if you continue to try, after a while it becomes easier and easier to do. And at that point you begin to start to listen to what the other person is saying and you also start to lose any resentment you might feel towards granting that person anything that you might have once thought of as being "special privileges".