People in power would like to avoid divisions that are between them and people with less power. Instead they prefer divisions between different groups of people with less power, because that way these groups will be ineffective.
If the median white American man understood this, he would understand that he is siding with the wrong people.
---- PS: Yes, I know the labels for this might be "divide and conquer", and "false consciousness", but I think people have trouble relating to these terms.
I'm sorry, what groups are you saying actually support the "median white American man"?
Last time I checked, they didn't say "universal healthcare if you are exceptionally poor, colored, non-American, and/or female."
Can I ask, what for you are some important examples of anti-"median-white-American-man" statements? I'm aware that there is a prevailing narrative in many parts of the media that this group is being singled out a lot, but personally I don't often see blanket statements of that sort.
From the outside it seems absurd but I'm not sure how to meet you in the middle for this.
Maybe you heard people complaining about how "socialized" medicine would create death panels. Did you reflect on why they were scaring old people in this way?
Or the focus on how the left are actively wanting to kill babies, rather than wanting access to reproductive healthcare. Again, why would right wing media present this patently false image? What are they trying to achieve?
If you can understand that then you might understand why the media you consume is telling you that the left hates you.
Final hint, the phrase "identity politics" is itself identity politics.
But to address your ad hominem attacks:
> Maybe you heard people complaining about how "socialized" medicine would create death panels. Did you reflect on why they were scaring old people in this way?
Well, few things here. For one, any form of medical resource distribution creates death panels or the equivalent. There are not unlimited resources, therefore some people will not receive all they could have used. I don't think this is an argument against socialized health care. (I think that socializing health care would result in massive cost disease, and that efforts in the US to move consumers farther and farther from the prices of health care are also counterproductive, but that's unrelated)
> Or the focus on how the left are actively wanting to kill babies, rather than wanting access to reproductive healthcare. Again, why would right wing media present this patently false image? What are they trying to achieve?
I'm pro-choice, actually. Also pro gay marriage, drug legalization, good sex ed in schools, etc.
But as to why people would present abortion access as killing babies? That's a really trivial question to answer - it's because they believe abortion to be literally killing babies.
> If you can understand that then you might understand why the media you consume is telling you that the left hates you.
I wouldn't say hates - at least not the vast majority of the left. Doesn't care about? Sure.
> Final hint, the phrase "identity politics" is itself identity politics.
Are you saying that the descriptor is wrong? It's been around for a while. [0] And if it's not wrong, I don't see what the objection is.
It's great that you still publicly identify with all the sane and sensible policies that Democrats have been fighting for for decades and have slowly achieved. It's sad that you can't support them in the American two-party system because they harbor so many communist, anti-white campaigners like the Clintons and Obamas and all those other people who would be center right in any sane political system.
But, no worries, you can easily claim to be even more right-on than them, because you're a libertarian. You can attack them for centrist stances they took two decades ago when Reason was still openly denying the Holocaust and supporting Apartheid and somehow hold the moral high ground as yet another Republican criminal gets elected to President and large numbers of the administration get arrested and jailed (weird how that just keeps happening, right?).
But you keep your eye on the real danger, there must be a sexual, racial or religious minority group that's taking things too far for your liking and that's well worth getting angry about. Luckily a bunch of Billionaires are really keen to keep that in the front of your mind at all times so you don't even need to seek this stuff out. Enjoy your anger.
The right mostly doesn't give a shit about the dispossessed, at least as far as potential government intervention goes. They're more social darwinist; if some men are really suffering, maybe they should stop being such losers, goes the thinking.
It makes me a little skeptical that "the left"[1] care that much about the homeless.
[1] I'll be honest I think "the left" and "liberal" are kind of useless catch all term at this point and lumps too many people into one group together. For instance, for this conversation I mean middle class college educated men and women living in coastal american cities that had at least semi-stable childhoods.
This means there's a financial incentive for any given city to treat the homeless like shit. Classic free rider problem; why not let other cities deal with helping them?
If you look at the countries where they do a better job, what you largely see is not a handful of metros doing their part, while other cities and the national government completely shunt the responsibility. The whole country contributes, is at least sort of on the same page. At least, that's been my experience living in Germany and reading about other places.
So in my opinion, what we'd need to see is a federal mandate that doesn't let some cities mooch off of others' charity. But short of Bernie storming the white House and the Dems getting an overwhelming majority in both halves of Congress, it's hard to see that happening.
Anyway, I don't disagree that more liberal cities could do more, but at the same time I don't think the problem is solvable without national involvement.
As for the Dems in congress - You'd need the right kind of democrat also. I think Hillary clinton did a real number to that parties reputation during her time in power. The american democrats desperately need smart, ethical and above all honest new faces that will fight the rampant corruption in american politics.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/...
Why would a smart, ethical and honest person ever get within a gunshot of politics?
And should by any accident that happen, how such a person would survive?
Well yeah, being against government intervention is sort of the classic definition of the American political right. People on the right believe that when possible you should choose private charity over government programs. They also donate more to private charities.
We all know the answer is that the homeless are radically better off in those interventionist countries. Ergo, if we care about results, ours are rather abysmal.
> Well yeah, being against government intervention is sort of the classic definition of the American political right.
To a certain extent, but it also depends on the domain. The right is very much in favor of government intervention for some things, like who you're allowed to marry, or how you can have sex.
It's an odd fact, isn't it? It doesn't mesh well with the portrayal of them as stingy people who don't care about others.
I think another motive here may be that if you provide "the dispossessed" and benefits, you create the incentive to become dispossessed.
This problem is relatively easy to solve on a small community level (all family knows that aunt Rosa isn't actually as sick as she likes to pretend), but becomes extremely complicated when scaled to the whole country.
For example, if someone doesn't know how to find a girlfriend, then PUAs are the only game in town.
Until viable alternatives are presented I suspect that men will keep going with what's available.