Recently I performed a little experiment during a sabbatical in France: For a full year I read only European publications, not American ones. My thought was to try seeing the world as European readers did. But it was far more instructive to return home and realize how the lens of identity has transformed American reporting in recent years. How often, for example, the laziest story in American journalism — about the “first X to do Y” — is told and retold. Fascination with the identity drama has even affected foreign reporting, which is in distressingly short supply. However interesting it may be to read, say, about the fate of transgender people in Egypt, it contributes nothing to educating Americans about the powerful political and religious currents that will determine Egypt’s future, and indirectly, our own. No major news outlet in Europe would think of adopting such a focus.The author is mostly concerned about the effect on liberalism, but the effect on America is more significant. This division of America into hostile, tribal camps has done no one any good. That it is coupled to a governing philosophy that insists on one-size fits-all rules, rules that make no room for Federalism or regional differentiation, only makes it more explosive than it already was.
"The End of Identity Liberalism"
And not a day too soon.
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It is interesting that the left has managed to evade the realization that once every "identity" except white has been selected out and fenced in, the whites will be, by default, sorted into their own tribe. Perhaps they expect the whites to somehow assimilate into some of the other groups, but that is unlikely as they have been told quite specifically they are not wanted.
Now they are going to be left with a opposing tribe holding the majority.
I think their idea fell apart for two reasons. They really really believed that Obama's wins in 2008 and 2012 indicated the arrival of the 'minority majority' electorate. They ignored the loud and clear evidence from 2010 and 2014 (and to an extent 2012) that it wasn't happening. The second reason is they forgot the white working class's Democrat identification was an economic one going back to FDR's New Deal when they flipped parties from the GOP. Once the Democrat party became identified as working against their economic interests movement back to the Republican party was their logical choice.
DailyMail is still better for FoxNews and MSNBC and NYTimes put together though. Also Reuters and Yahoo and AP combined.
Recall that "The End of Identity Liberalism?" contains a question mark. Identity Liberalism didn't have the success this year that it anticipated. Trump got higher percentages of the Hispanic and Black votes than Romney or McCain did. Some blacks didn't vote this time, perhaps deciding "If one of our guys isn't running, I am not voting." That is one consequence of identity voting. Black abstention in Detroit helped flip Michigan.
Many Democrats are doubling down on identity politics after the election.
Time will tell. Even with the cracks this year in Identity Liberalism, Democrats still took a plurality of the vote.
Gringo, or their voter fraud machine took the plurality of the vote. They didn't expect Trum to get so many electoral votes in the states, when he had less votes than Romney.
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