Identity

Subject: Identity

Identity politics, the impulse we all have, black, white, Muslim, Christian, atheist, gay, straight, men, women, obese, thin, athletic, chair bound, we all acquire a tribal affinity and defend that affinity regardless.
The so called 'progressives' who see society as a mix, with inter connected needs and inter connected responsibilities have done their best to redesign us, to reeducate us into a new paradigm, a new way of thinking.    Words have been allocated to prevent discussion,  intellectual derivations which strike the fear of God into conversation for fear of being called 'racist', or 'misogynistic', sexist, or lacking a sympathetic bias towards those sections of society who promote their own 'exceptionality'.
The rise of Trump was predicated on his galvanising the unsung, unspoken about rump of our society, the white working-class who had spent years watching this intellectual hand wringing as the 'identity mania' took hold and more and more groups of  people demanded to be recognised as exceptional. The political environment in America and in Europe were 'gung ho' on redefining society down to its particular, down to its nut and bolt, like an assembly instruction on a 'flat pack' piece of furniture, miss one screw we are told and the furniture will fall apart. Of course those of you who have erected a piece of kit and found that at the finish you have a couple of bits still in your hand but which don't seem to affect the finished masterpiece are the recipient of one of lives truisms. Perfection is a false dawn.  Society is the same, as we delve deeper into each part of that constitutional myriad  in an attempt to identify, we loose the cohesion that the other parts hold to keep it all together. The exclusion, or rather the assumptions made that the white working class would go along with our sociological experiments, even if they were feeling increasingly marginalised went spectacularly astray in the last Presidential Election.
It's a lesson which the ideologically minded seem unwilling to learn as they plunge us deeper and deeper into "troubled waters". Generally speaking people are pretty accommodating but press them into some sort of homogeneous idealism and they will react with a bang.