Thread: Detroit....

Originally Posted by JBHoren

And THAT is what "identity politics" is all about: dividing people who otherwise have a strong, mutual bond (workers!), on the basis of race, religion, gender, nationality, or sexual preference.

I don't usually get involved in these kinds of debates, or as a general rule even discuss politics and religion at all, but this one needs some comment IMO. Though we all know that the phrase "identity politics" came into its own in the 90's, generally being attributed to a liberal Democrat/Clinton administration sort of worldview, a basic grasp of our political history can see its inception under another name, even earlier in the Goldwater/Nixon "Southern Strategy" of the Republicans to take the South after LBJ's signing of landmark civil rights legislation in the mid-60's. It has obviously been wildly successful if you look at a red/blue electoral map of the South (at least after the Carter administration). This strategy involved dividing the poor and working people, at that time mainly separating blacks and whites, with hispanics thrown into the mix and being demonized as "illegals" in the last 20 years or so.

Divisive red-herring wedge issues like abortion/women's issues, capital punishment, gun control, and more recently gay rights, science and environmental policies were used in cynical fashion to further inflame the working class into voting for policies that were clearly not in their best interests fiscally. The same party that many Americans who might have at one time called themselves ideologically in-sync with as moderate/conservatives (myself included) was then recently hijacked by a radical fringe element that was clearly a reincarnation of the elder Koch's John Birch Society (look up JBS policies and a history of the Kochs generally in the last 50 years if you doubt it), and so far to the right that most of America could only gasp in wide-eyed amusement at their increasingly nutty pronouncements.

Obviously, the wheels came off of this strategy in the 2012 presidential election (though they seem to have the House sewn up using much the same strategy-all Congressional politics is local!), and we are left with a party that is composed mostly of angry, older white people (and increasingly fewer of them), versus, well, everybody else...

I just think it's important to get it out there that unintentionally-ironic political terminology such as "identity politics" (and my other recent favorite, "low information voters") apply in ways the original users might not always be aware of.

Don't get me wrong-I think it's clear that great, and probably irreparable damage has been/is being done to this country by both parties and the extremes of either ideological spectrum. But "identity politics" and other sorts of Orwellian political methods didn't get their start in the 90's, not by a long shot.

What does all this have to do with Detroit? I haven't a clue. I just wanted to respond to JBHoren's post. Now back to the Detroit blame game; lots of it to go around IMO.

On one hand I didn't mean to throw everybody off the track of figuring out what happened to Detroit and who's fault it was. On the other hand what is the freaking point of it if you don't do something to stop it from happening again? To not talk about these things is like giving up. To argue about it is as productive as pissing in the wind. Glenn's comment on homesteading is the kind of direction I would like to see things go. Although it's jobs that Detroit really needs, the people will follow. Raise tariffs on China and other countries. Localize manufacturing and food production again. This is what Detroit needs and the rest of the country for that matter. We are not going to get that if we let the Koch's of the world run our country. It's that simple.

Ha! I always thought it was the race riots that killed Motor City. Everything after that was kind of foreseeable I thought.