Identity politics lacks "proportion" and "balance"

Was Donald Trump acting bored and restless during the singing of the national anthem before the Super Bowl because the singer, Demi Lovato, is Hispanic? Just a thought. Anyways, Hillary Clinton was making the rounds again with her identity politics and complete lack of balance, proportion or—egads—honesty, this time on the Ellen DeGeneres show, which you can tell by DeGeneres’ fangirl excitement explains why Clinton only appears on “fangirl” interview programming. Clinton told her once again that Sanders is “unelectable.” That’s odd—wasn’t this two-time loser the fawning media’s “prohibitive favorite” in 2008 and 2016—facing first  the “inadequate black male” who “white people won’t vote for,” and the second time to the “unelectable” Donald Trump? Before, Clinton was blaming everyone and everything under the sun for her loss to Trump, but is now blaming Sanders almost exclusively, for among other things not endorsing her until July, which is odd. When did Clinton endorse Obama? Wasn’t it around that same month in 2008 that this sicko was insisting that some “miracle” might happen, like something might happen to Obama like what happened Robert F. Kennedy in 1968? 

Clinton continues to prove on a daily basis that she is as much a trafficker in lies and falsehoods as Trump, although Elizabeth Warren is a close runner-up.  She claims that the majority of Sanders’ support didn’t vote for her; yet polls show that a higher percentage of Sanders supporters voted for Clinton than Clinton’s voted for Obama in 2008. I mean, does anybody remember Clinton being “out there” campaigning for Obama, even in 2012? Clinton “doubled-down” on claiming that Sanders is “unlikeable” and “unelectable,” despite the evidence that Clinton proved to be less “likeable” than even Trump. While Trump was claiming he was going to “Make America Great Again,” all the megalomaniacal Clinton had to offer was “I’m With Her” while those working class voters in the Midwest were asking “Yeah, but what’s in it for us?” 

Clinton claimed that Sanders is sowing “discord” in the Democratic Party, yet it is Clinton and the Democratic establishment who have been the principle agents of discord in their hypocritical attacks on Sanders. Why don’t people like DeGeneres have the courage to tell her foul to her face, that Clinton has only the illusion that people “like” her because she only allows herself to be interviewed by her fans? Well, because for people like DeGeneres it is also all about identity politics; remember when she hosted the Academy awards show a few years ago, she showed her petty politics by moaning that 12 Years a Slave would probably win Best Picture over Gravity with that film’s slightly “feminist” angle because of race (it was the first time that a film by a black director won the award). Clinton, for all her many faults, is still someone of whom people who politicize gender identify with.

Of course, Clinton was of the past, and that is where she should stay, because we don’t need the “advice” of a two-time loser. Dealing with the “now,” Warren’s current campaign slogan is “Courage Over Cynicism,” and “cynicism” certainly defines Warren devolving from being an alleged “policy wonk” to “identity” politics. Instead of defending her policies—let alone explaining them—she is making gender politics the “theme” of her campaign. Like so many female candidates who can’t compete on the issues, she resorts to appeals to gender “victimization.” In the “MeToo” era that might work for fellow “victims,” but it turns off most voters, who don’t think that it is a good enough reason to vote for her. Meanwhile, John McCormack of the National Review called out another fan favorite, Pete Buttigieg, calling his campaign increasingly a “cult of personality” over substance. 

Identity politics has a bad habit in delving in not just hypocrisy (the Black Lives Matter movement tends to ignore high crime and homicide rates in their communities), but for  gender politicians a decided lack of balance and proportion. After a female New York Times reporter responded to the news of Kobe Bryant’s and eight other deaths (including his daughter and two other girls) by tweeting a link to a story about a 2003 sexual assault accusation, another such story surfaced concerning the principal of Camas High School in Washington State, Liza Sejkora, who was suspended over a now-deleted Facebook post that read: “Not gonna lie. Seems to me that Karma caught up with a rapist today.” The fallout was so rapid that she quickly deleted the post, but not before many students heard of it and demanded her firing and threatened a walkout. Former WNBA star and friend of Bryant's, Lisa Leslie, questioned why people are relitigating the past when his family and that of the rest who were killed in the helicopter crash are grieving. Bryant's alleged victim is still among the living, helped by an unknown, but likely substantial, sum of money from a civil settlement. And I have nothing but contempt for anything that Amy "I used to date Hispanic guys, but now I prefer consensual" Schumer has to say in defense of insensitive racists like herself.

 

Balance and proportion come into play when we note that women don’t seem to want to take “ownership” over crimes when the victims are children and the perpetrators are female. Last September in Albany Township in Pennsylvania, Lisa Snyder called 9-1-1 to report that her 8-year-old son had hanged himself with a dog leash, after killing his 4-year-old sister because he “didn’t want to go alone,” or so she claimed. In December she was charged with first-degree murder and third-degree murder—and animal cruelty, including having “sexual intercourse” with a dog. Unfortunately for Snyder, would-be apologists and defenders were few, because the evil of her actions were clearly planned and calculated; she had only days earlier purchased the dog leash without a dog the size it was meant for, and investigators had discovered on her computer searches for how to hang people. Also on her computer were  found photos of her engaging in those “sex acts” with that dog, which she apparently “shared” with another woman on the Internet.

But this story did not receive any national press. One story that did receive a little more “press” was one concerning an Arizona woman, Rachel Henry, who suffocated to death her three young children while “singing” to them two years ago, a case which has only this month led to charges of murder; judging from the articles on the murders, there was much “sympathy” for Henry and dozens of possible “explanations” for her actions. But the judge in the case was apparently appalled by her attitude about the killings. When told she would have to post $3 million bail or go to prison, Henry expressed “surprise” that she wasn’t going home. She also wondered why she had to post bail anyways because she didn’t have a job. This is clearly a person who doesn’t believe she did anything wrong—and she would be correct in that assumption if you read those reports largely composed by female “researchers” and “psychologists” who try to make differentiation in the level of moral and criminal culpability between “maternal” and “paternal” filicide the same as “understandable” with the former, and “evil” with the latter.

Shoehorning in politics is something that is becoming increasingly tiresome and is mostly a U.S. fad. A UK reviewer of the Avengers’ film Endgame on Amazon noted that “I hated the 'Brie Larson' role (MC’s “Captain Marvel,” who is supposed to be “stronger” than DC’s Superman) and the all WOMEN scene in the theater nearly made me walk out. Don't understand me wrong, I have nothing against what they believe in or anyone's opinion, it is just that I am not from the States and I do not care. When I go to watch a movie, I do not care who sleeps with whom, who marries what, or the gender power identity politics enforced into the movies. I go to watch a movie to have a break from reality, have fun with family and friends, but recently this is turning to dust with the quality released by Hollywood, as if someone snapped their fingers and just killed creativity in Hollywood. My disgust is focused at the fact that the movie had too much forced political narrative and lately Disney is excelling at it.”

As an aside, I’m not “into” today’s comic book movies, not just because of the forced politics (except when it comes to characters with “ethnic” backgrounds, because there aren’t any), but they take themselves way too seriously, when they are in reality complete CGI fantasies. I thought that Thor: Ragnarok  was fairly entertaining because it poked fun at the genre (more so than Guardians of the Galaxy, although less so than Galaxy Quest), Wonder Woman was alright because of its humanity; I certainly didn't see it as the feminist "girlpower" anthem that some have chosen to (and frankly, I’d take Gal Gadot’s “foreign” sensibility over Larson’s American “sensibility” 365 days a year, 366 if it’s a leap year), and  of course there was the Joker which isn’t really a “comic book” movie anyway.

It’s not easy to escape identity politics, even at the dentist’s office, where I was the other day. A white female dental assistant who was assisting the dentist working on my teeth was singing the words to Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” that was being piped in through loud speaker, and then talked with the dentist about how her white daughters were going to special schools, and about recent films. She apparently didn’t “get” Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and admitted she didn’t see the “foreign language” film up for a best Oscar nomination because she isn’t into films with subtitles; that was the Korean film Parasite (the academy voters were apparently only limited in its election year politics, because the deserving Spanish-language film Roma did not make it among the 10 films up for best picture). Perhaps this shouldn’t be a surprise, since Parasite is a black comedy that examines social class prejudice, and not American gender politics. After I was able to open my mouth again I mentioned that I was old enough to appreciate Hollywood for its “nostalgia” value, it’s insertion of the antics of the Manson Family into the narrative, the old-timey radio commercials, and the look at how former Hollywood stars had fallen so low that they had to take roles beneath their past glory. I went on to say that films like Hollywood appealed to me because I dislike today’s politicized bullshit. She listened politely and walked out, addressing me as "senor."

I had to move on to another cubicle to get my teeth cleaned; the assistant there was also “ethnic,” and he tended to agree with my perspective of the world we live in. I don’t take being patronized lightly, especially when there are truer demarcation lines in this country. I mentioned that I wished two-time loser Hillary was would just shut the hell up about Sanders, about how J-Lo probably pissed Trump off with she and her daughter’s inserting a few lines of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” into their Super Bowl performance while unveiling her Puerto Rican flag wrap. I also noted that Trump’s complete lack of empathy for Puerto Rico’s U.S. citizens after Hurricane Maria and the recent earthquakes proved that it wasn’t just about illegal immigrants with Trump and Stephen Miller. I also mentioned a memory of the past, back when I was "little," about a boy my age or a little younger who seemed to be happy-go-lucky and had this infectious smile--which unfortunately revealed a mouthful of rotting teeth. Even then it bothered me, even when I had my own problems, like when a gang of white kids had me pinned down right in front of our house, stuffing grass in my mouth. I wonder why his parents didn't teach him how to brush his teeth (they couldn't have been that poor), or why teachers never said anything; I mean, this wasn't some barrio, this was suburban Wisconsin. Yeah, that's right, the kid was Hispanic, and he could have just have been one of those kids locked-up in one Trump's concentration camps.

When I we were finished, I walked past the cubicle and observed that assistant looked at me with a depressed expression, having overheard the conversation. Sorry for harshing your mellow, but some people in this world have things a lot tougher than you and your daughters will ever know.