AMERICA HAS IDENTITY ISSUES

AMERICA HAS IDENTITY ISSUES

As is so often the case in the  strum und drang of pol­i­tics, the cry that the U.S. pres­i­den­tial elec­tion is about the “future of democ­ra­cy” per­verse­ly both empha­sis­es and hides anoth­er seri­ous mat­ter; a nation­al iden­ti­ty crisis.

For a sig­nif­i­cant seg­ment of MAGA-world denizens, racist and misog­y­nis­tic slurs pass for wit and wisdom.
Don­ald Trump saw it as a cam­paign plus to tell a group of Black jour­nal­ists “I didn’t know she (Kamala Har­ris) was Black until a num­ber of years ago when she hap­pened to turn Black. So I don’t know,  Indi­an or is she Black?”
In a world where job appli­ca­tions, sur­veys, gov­ern­ment forms and I know not what else pro­vide an ever-grow­ing list of  “gen­der iden­ti­ty” options, which West­ern soci­eties are  being encour­aged (nay ordered  by some “activists”) to allow one to change on a dai­ly basis, what dif­fer­ence does racial iden­ti­ty make?
As far as I know, gen­der, eth­nic­i­ty and sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion have no bear­ing on intel­li­gence, char­ac­ter, hon­esty, gen­eros­i­ty, man­ners, tol­er­ance or any­thing else that mat­ters in assess­ing a person’s worth as a human being.
Why is it that a per­son of mixed black and white her­itage must inevitably and only opt to be black?
That Har­ris would be the first female pres­i­dent is sig­nif­i­cant, but needs to be seen in the con­text that she would not be the first female head of state in the world.
While (some) Amer­i­cans might ask why it took so long for them to catch up, in the end it’s real­ly just an affir­ma­tion of the quote by Ann Richards, the sec­ond female gov­er­nor of Texas: “Gin­ger Rogers did every­thing Fred Astaire did. She just did it back­wards in high heels”.
To gild the lily on that: Mar­jorie Tay­lor-Greene, and sev­er­al of her Repub­li­can cohorts aren’t clue­less mere­ly because they’re white females. They’re demon­stra­bly, incon­tro­vert­ibly crass, clue­less human beings.

                COUNTER MEASURES

Demo­c­rat oper­a­tives might view the almost inevitable knee ‑jerk, rote ref­er­ences to Harris’s black and Asian eth­nic back­ground as an elec­tabil­i­ty plus. But U.S. pol­i­tics need less empha­sis on that and a lot more on lead­er­ship encom­pass­ing com­pe­tence, intel­li­gence and decency.
Treat­ing slurs that she is a “DEI” (Diver­si­ty Eth­nic­i­ty Iden­ti­ty) can­di­date choice with dis­dain, coun­ter­ing florid rhetoric with facts, bal­ly­hoo and bom­bast with rea­soned argument,and ver­i­fi­able acts, vit­ri­ol with humour, deri­sion and class will dri­ve Harris’s oppo­nent to distraction.
Words like “gal­vanised” and “spec­tac­u­lar trans­for­ma­tion”, floods of cam­paign cash com­pli­ment­ed by “an out­pour­ing of vol­un­teer ener­gy, a rebound in the polls” are all use­ful ways to help put the oppo­si­tion off-kil­ter, but as an indi­ca­tor of poten­tial if not immi­nent vic­to­ry for Har­ris, they hov­er dan­ger­ous­ly on the edge of delusional.
It’s made all the more dif­fi­cult to over­come by Trump’s almost patho­log­i­cal fas­ci­na­tion with the term “fas­cist”.
His “base” seems bliss­ful­ly unaware that cheer­ing for Trump’s promise: “In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote” is iden­ti­fy­ing with fas­cist-style ideology.
In author­i­tar­i­an states 99,9% per­cent of the votes will go to the ego already in charge, no mat­ter how many oppo­si­tion can­di­dates are on the bal­lot paper, or who turns up at the polling stations.
Per­haps as a cam­paign gim­mick the Democ­rats could hand out free Mer­ri­am-Web­ster dic­tio­nar­ies, with the def­i­n­i­tion of fas­cism book­marked and high­light­ed: “Fas­cism: a polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy, move­ment, or regime…that exalts nation and often race above the indi­vid­ual and that stands for a cen­tral­ized auto­cratic gov­ern­ment head­ed by a dic­ta­to­r­i­al leader, severe eco­nom­ic and social reg­i­men­ta­tion, and forcible sup­pres­sion of opposition”.
Copy Num­ber 1 could go to J.D. Vance who, being in thrall to the man he once equat­ed as the equiv­a­lent of Hitler, would seem to have an iden­ti­ty cri­sis that requires pro­fes­sion­al help.

          AS FOR WHAT IT ADDS UP TO

What­ev­er peo­ple tell poll­sters or shout in pub­lic, truth abides in the cur­tained secre­cy where a pen or an elec­tron­ic device marks their real choice.
The best sum­ma­tion of that I know is from – of all places – the very unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic days of apartheid-era South Africa.
Eng­lish speak­ers were gen­er­al­ly lumped as being more benign than Afrikan­ers when it came to belief in a more equi­table soci­ety (although not nec­es­sar­i­ly total racial equal­i­ty). The Pro­gres­sive Fed­er­al Par­ty (the “Progs”) were the local equiv­a­lent of lib­er­als. The Unit­ed Par­ty, (the “UP”) was  kin to cen­trist U.S. Democ­rats (with­out the num­bers). Pow­er was firm­ly held by the Afrikan­er-dom­i­nat­ed Nation­al Par­ty (the “Nats”) which invent­ed apartheid and held the reigns of pow­er that main­tained it.
When it came to vot­ing, how­ev­er, the say­ing was that Eng­lish speak­ers “talk Prog, vote UP and thank God for the Nats”.
That “iden­ti­ty cri­sis” was even­tu­al­ly resolved at the bal­lot box.
To get over the Amer­i­can one, it seems Kamala Har­ris will have  to come up with a “one size fits all” identity.

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4 thoughts on “AMERICA HAS IDENTITY ISSUES

  1. iden­ti­ty cri­sis allen?…
    amer­i­ca faces more than that…
    in the next days, as kamala har­ris names her
    run­ning mate we face a greater crisis…
    a test of our polit­i­cal maturity…
    will the best per­son be cho­sen or will it be
    the most practical?…
    in my opin­ion on the best side we have a
    jew­ish man(josh shapiro) and pete buttigieg
    (a gay man)…practically we have a gov­er­nor who is will­ing to throw down with anyone
    (andy beshear) and a bor­der state rookie
    senator(mark kelly)…
    i think this choice will be a telling measuring
    stick of how advanced we are…or how stuck in the past we shall remain…
    winifer…are you kate’s daughter?…
    your mom was very impor­tant to me as I
    nav­i­gat­ed through my ear­ly days at CBS News…
    she set a won­der­ful pro­fes­sion­al route for me
    to follow…

  2. Inter­est­ing post, Pizz. I remind you though, we in South Africa vot­ed for change when final­ly offered the choice, (I remem­ber see­ing you on the very day) and we con­tin­ue to do so, in what could be one of the few decent sus­tained exam­ples of demo­c­ra­t­ic process. We have our glitch­es, but as an inde­pen­dent elec­tion observ­er who spent 24 hours in a vot­ing sta­tion in May this year, through the vote and the count, I can say with cer­tain­ty that the full spec­trum of vot­ers in SA had a free and fair oppor­tu­ni­ty to make their marks and our Pres­i­dent accept­ed the results with­out ques­tion, despite a ter­ri­ble result for the rul­ing party.
    I dis­agree with you (I have no doubt you are rolling your eyes at this moment) about dif­fer­ences though. Women bring very dif­fer­ent char­ac­ter­is­tics to lead­er­ship than men do — as do peo­ple of dif­fer­ent colours. We are the sum of our life influ­ences and expe­ri­ences and I guar­an­tee mine are very dif­fer­ent than yours because I am a woman and you a man, and we should cel­e­brate that. I have worked close­ly and trav­eled with a young black woman col­league for years and have learned so much from her, in a very con­scious process that has been an absolute joy and has expand­ed my world view sig­nif­i­cant­ly, as well as my abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate bet­ter with peo­ple of dif­fer­ent back­grounds. I’m just back from two weeks of work­ing in rur­al Nige­ria again; four years ago in the first work­shops I facil­i­tat­ed there, there were 25 male par­tic­i­pants and 1 woman. I have per­sis­tent­ly demand­ed more gen­der equi­ty, and this time I got it. The men in the room agreed that what came out of the ses­sions was much rich­er and more insight­ful for it, despite their ear­li­er resistance.
    I am so excit­ed about Kamala Har­ris — and despite the com­ment I read above, it seems she has cho­sen a thor­ough­ly decent man to run with her, and that feels impor­tant. I too won­dered if the US was ready to elect some­one who does­n’t look or sound like what main­stream Amer­i­can politi­cians have tra­di­tion­al­ly been , but it seems from the out­side at least, that there is change com­ing? I so hope so. When Trump was pres­i­dent, he ruled that no Amer­i­can aid could be spent on advo­ca­cy, advice, assis­tance, refer­ral or the pro­vi­sion of any ter­mi­na­tion of preg­nan­cy ser­vices. In Africa, we need repro­duc­tive jus­tice at least as much as we need donor funds (I could argue more than, but I’ll stop now). So I’m with the child­less cat lady, all the way!

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