Episodes In Identity Politics, Part 1

     We hear the phrase identity politics often enough. We’re told – mostly by persons in the Right – that it’s toxic, something that’s slowly but steadily destroying the social and political cohesion of our nation. However, we seldom get a clear explanation of why that is so.

     Here’s one, from the Web’s favorite Bookworm:

     I’ll start with a phone call I had the other day with another lawyer who is an ardent Progressive and a good friend. I usually find his Progressivism amusing because, both personally and professionally, his every instinct is conservative. It’s just that, being gay, he is marinated in a toxic Leftist soup and fails to recognize the cognitive dissonance that permeates his life. [emphasis added by FWP]

     Bookworm has noted, en passant, the corrupting effect of submersion in a fully colonized and conquered group. Let’s call this lawyer Smith for convenience, since Bookworm didn’t mention his name. If Smith’s personal and professional instincts are conservative, how did he come to embrace Leftist political precepts and positions?

     Through his identity group.

     Homosexuals have been encouraged to make their sexual orientation and political concessions to it the heart of their existence. It’s been going on for a while, of course: since the Fifties at least. Just as with the “civil rights movement,” the Left decided that it would “own” the homosexual-rights issue and use it to colonize that group. Northern California homosexuals have been a particular target of the Left, as they’re disproportionately numerous in that region and tend toward close associations.

     When a man begins to see one aspect of his life, character, or personality as central to his identity, and is regularly immersed in a group of similarly minded persons, he will tend to absorb the other postulates and convictions of that group. This influence in especially strong when the group is essentially uniform about its postulates and convictions. That makes the political subversion of an identity group a huge win for the Left.

     I’ve ranted in the past about the dangers of joinerism. Consider this another link in that chain – a chain that can be used to drag the unsuspecting away from practices and convictions that are to his benefit, and toward an abyss from which escape is problematic at best. Verbum sat sapienti.