#WalkAway from Identity Politics

There were three outstanding themes experienced by attendees of last month's #WalkAway March. There was the sense of freedom that comes from escaping the Democrat’s plantation. There was the excitement of meeting new people and making new friends. But there was also an element of sadness over the family and friends lost due to the issues that riven our country.

One man I met there was a U.S. Army veteran of the Vietnam War. He became estranged from his two sisters, the only family he has, partially over Trump and the whole Kavanaugh media circus.

There’s also a friend (who wasn’t at the march) that became alienated from a person she knew for 30 years. They met while in high school, and he was her first gay friend. She walked away, he didn’t. Something similar happened with her mother’s cousin, who knew her since birth, who “changed her diapers” as she put it. Because of various family events, they had to remain in contact, but their interactions became infrequent, their conversations became terse. A mutual friend told me about how much grief she was experiencing over this. The description reminded me of the AIDS crisis writ small.

These same stories are repeated all across America.

Why is this happening?

This is partially due to the changing definition of friendship. We all have online friends, most of whom we’ll never meet. What is the basis of these friendships? It’s not two good people who share similar virtues and who wish each other well, but rather two people clicking the “like” button – not the same thing!

Other types of friendships, like those based on utility or pleasure – are by definition transitory. That’s all that online friends are – friendships based on utility or pleasure. Yet we equate them with real friendships, in their importance and in their permanence.

All types of friendships require time and effort and real-world interaction to cultivate and maintain. Given the number of social media “friends” that people have, it is simply not possible to maintain them all! Once the “friendship” has outlived its usefulness, or is lost in quantity, we either allow it to fade or we terminate it in the most brutal way possible - online interactions allow people to be rude to each other without any real-world consequences.

This somewhat explains the plight of the Vietnam veteran mentioned earlier: he lives in Buffalo, New York, while one sister lives in Florida, and the other is in Arizona. They maintained contact only via social media. There was no real-world interaction, so the friendships withered.

This does not explain the other person mentioned above. In her case, and I think most cases, the dissolution of friendships was solely over ideological differences. The ideology in play is identity politics.

Here’s how it works:

• People belong to identity groups, either by birth or choice or assignment. These identities are artificial, and two members of the same group frequently have nothing in common except for that identity – yet there is an expectation of solidarity.
• Membership in an identity group is not the same as a gym membership. Membership defines and determines their whole existence, and to doubt this is blasphemy.
• Current and historical events are seen by members of any class through the lens of their identity. Doubting the identity or the veracity of its history is an offense to the very core of their being, and to do so makes you ableist, misogynistic, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, racist.
• Each group has its own cultural norms. These norms must be respected by other groups, because it is taken on faith that all cultures are equal. They are skeptical of some religions, yet they accept items like this on faith. They are true believers.
• People are encouraged to interact only with other members of their identity. They exist in a bubble yet claim that they are living rich and full lives. They do not go outside their comfort zone, yet they consider themselves brave.
• People are to be loyal to their identity class. They are expected to favor their own, yet they wonder why the world is suddenly so racist.
• People are expected (in most cases) to be proud of their identity.
• To shore up this pride, each identity has its own history. Events that do not fit with a particular group’s history can be safely ignored, or revised, or destroyed. This results in an ever-shifting narrative.
• There is one group that acts as an oppressor, and that group is the white male (either heterosexual or homosexual). Their culture is not to be respected, and pride in that identity is considered to be the very height of racism.
• The degree that an individual is oppressed depends on the number of intersections that this person belongs to. For example, a black disabled lesbian crossdresser is more oppressed than your average lesbian. It’s sort of like a food pyramid of victimhood.
• Those who aren’t oppressors are victims. But not only are they victims, they are helpless, since self-defense is considered wrong.
• Being helpless victims, they are subject to fear, uncertainty, and doubt inflicted by anyone who wishes to manipulate them.
• Since they live in a bubble, they are in no position to verify that they should really be afraid of any particular current event, or whether they are just being manipulated.

Identity politics provides a convenient excuse to prune one’s real-world friends list. And when people indeed end a friendship over identity politics, instead of being angry or upset, they have the warm glow of smugness that comes with virtue signaling. From their standpoint, the friendship was based on a mistaken identity – you fooled them, until they became “woke”.

Identity politics is designed to divide and conquer. It is working.

What can be done? We must begin with a dose of reality.

First, realize that “Hallmark moments” almost never happen in the real world, and it is not possible to hold one’s breath until they do happen. If you doubt this, ask any draft resister or gay man who has been estranged from his family.

Next, look at the pretense under which the friendship was ended: one side believes that the other is a heretic who engages in wrongthink. Ask yourself: why hold on to people who aren’t adult enough to understand that individuals can have different opinions or principles?

Believing in identity politics requires that one suspends their sense of reality. Anybody with an ounce of integrity would reject the theory rather than reject the facts. Ask yourself: do you really want to be friends with a person who trusts their identity group’s agitprop over their own lying eyes? Can you trust someone who outsources their sense of judgement?

Look at the extent the other side is willing to go to purge wrongthink: they are willing to fire you from your employment, to deny you ways of earning money via online activities, to destroy your career. Ask yourself: in good conscience, would you be able to do this?

Finally, ask yourself: is the person who terminated your friendship over identity politics experiencing the same sense of loss?

The situation appears even more intractable when you realize that social justice is a kind of cult, and people who advocate identity politics are not just fervent believers, but the fundamentalists of this cult.

Again, what can be done?

It is tempting to retreat, hole up, and wait for this to pass. It won’t pass. In fact, retreating makes things worse, since everybody will then ask themselves: why not take whole what others propose to divide?

We cannot forget what is at stake: our country, our home. They demand that we relinquish our sovereignty as individuals and as a country. All these are too important to abandon for the social justice warriors’ obvious and vulgar games.

We also cannot forget that we hold the upper hand. The funding of their universities, their affirmative action programs, and their welfare state, depends on us. We can live without them, but not vise versa. Further, we have the element of stability that their narrative du jour precludes - and they know it.

The solution lies in more engagement, not less. It requires that we break down the bubbles which identity politics requires people to inhabit. Even then it will not be easy, since it is far harder to make a believer into a skeptic than to make a skeptic into a believer.

Why I'm a Racist

Racism is a form of determinism: it is the theory that the content of an individual's mind is innate and determined (somehow) by their genetic heritage. An individual's virtues or vices are not determined by his choices, according to this theory, but rather by the collective "blood" of his ancestors.

The central problem of racism is that it short-circuits our ability to make accurate judgements about a person. Euclid, the ancient Greek mathematician, reportedly told his student Ptolemy I, who later became one of the successors of Alexander the Great, that "there is no royal road to knowledge." This is what racism is: a royal road to knowledge of an individual's character, without any cognitive effort beyond noticing that individual's skin tone.

So, why am I a racist?

Easy: the standard of what constitutes racism has changed.

It used to be that lynching was considered a racist act. Here's a partial list of what constitutes modern racism:

• Math
• Logic
• Physics
• English grammar
• Meritocracy
• Medical school admissions
• Hiring standards for police and fire departments
• Classical sculpture
• Allowing restroom access only to paying customers
• Business hours

Notice the commonality: all of these examples constitute a replacement of objective standards by some ill-defined subjective criteria with the stated goal of "increasing diversity." Racism is thus "eliminated" by eliminating rigor and high expectations, and hoping that the outcome is somehow "fair." Everybody gets a participation trophy when equality of outcome replaces equality of opportunity.

One consequence of this redefinition of racism is that it mocks and cheapens the achievements of those who fought against actual racism. It equates microaggressions with lynchings, thus elevating the banal to the level of evil.

A second consequence is that it lowers the standards of doing good. It allows people to fool themselves into believing that they are achieving something important when they obstruct traffic or kneel at a football game. Anybody can be Sojourner Truth or MLK without leaving the comfort of their keyboard - all they have to do is play the victim and be offended. What such people do not understand is that achievement is only possible through rigorous standards; remove those standards, and significant accomplishments will not arise. Sending men to the moon required exacting standards of physics and mathematics; protesting the Apollo 11 launch only required four mules and two wagons.

Third, this redefinition of racism allows anti-white prejudice to be acceptable and to go unchallenged. White guilt is "earned" for having and demanding high expectations, and there is no way of atoning for this "sin", since ignoring race is itself racist, as is noticing race.

The ultimate problem of redefining racism in this manner is that it significantly reduces the quality of life for everybody, not just whites, all while misplacing the responsibility on the wrong party. For example, when a person receives substandard care from a graduate of a medical school boasting affirmative action as an admittance criteria, who will get the blame: the student who took advantage of this lowered acceptance criteria, or the administrator who decided that admission by reason of diversity was a good idea?

Those who promulgate this redefinition of racism thus offer us the following choice: be called a racist, or abandon strict standards of excellence. Rational people must not allow themselves to be skewered on the horns of this false dichotomy - rational people want both rigorous standards as well as the right to make objective judgements. But if wanting to retain math, logic, and the other beneficiaries of exacting standards makes me racist, then I'm a racist. I'm going to own the "fact" that I'm a racist. Just don't expect me to go to a Klan rally.

No Hiding Place

It starts in the crib.

Young children spend an inordinate amount of time exploring the physical world - they learn how balls bounce, how liquids splash, why they shouldn’t touch a hot stove, etc. They’re not limited to physics, though: they learn about poison ivy, they learn why one should never pull a cat’s tail, they learn to distinguish between friendly and unfriendly dogs. Their investigations include people, too - they trust their parents, and they learn that the vast majority of people in the world are kind. More than that, they begin learning how to distinguish between people who wish them well and those who desire to harm them.

The world is a wonderful place, according to this perspective, and we are confident in our ability to survive and to be happy in it.

That is, until the world stops being benevolent.

In the first week of January, in Chicago, a white special-needs teenager was kidnapped and held captive by four black teenagers for 24 to 48 hours. One of his captors was an acquaintance. The victim was bound and gagged, partially scalped, forced to drink from a toilet, and verbally abused by his captors, who said things like "fuck white people" and "fuck Donald Trump". Parts of this attack were livestreamed on Facebook.

Thanks to Facebook Live, we have photos of the victim as he is being assaulted, and there's one in particular showing him cowering in a corner, looking directly at the camera.

Oh God, that photo.

Anybody who has been so assaulted saw that photo in their mind whenever they closed their eyes. They were unable to sleep the night they read the news. They were extremely angry, and irritable to those around them for days afterward. They went to work the next day, in part to avoid thinking about the incident, but mostly out of fear of just what they would do if left to their own devices.

There's a popular phrase to describe what the four thugs did: they "objectified" their victim. That's a euphemism, for objects cannot experience fear, or betrayal, or helplessness, or any of the other emotions the victim experienced. Just look at that photo.

It's also easy to assume that the thugs got a sexual thrill, as if the event were an elaborate BDSM scene gone awry. No, they were thrilled over the fact that they could torture with impunity, that there was nothing stopping them - not the victim, not the police, not bystanders, and certainly not their own consciences.

The attackers didn't stop because the victim capitulated to their demands. There were no demands, at least of the type this victim could understand. Rather, the thugs stopped because they got bored.

Surely the police would show some courage about this event, wouldn't they? They didn't. Speaking of the four assailants, Chicago Police Commander Kevin Duffin stammered: "You know, although they are adults, they’re 18... Kids make stupid decisions — I shouldn’t call them kids, they’re legally adults, but they’re young adults and they make stupid decisions. That certainly will be part of whether or not a hate crime is — seek a hate crime and determine whether or not this is sincere or just ranting and raving."

You know, the very fact that the four perpetrators did adult stuff makes them adults. And it is irrelevant whether they were sincere or just ranting and raving: those four adults acted as the feral animals that they are, and "ranting and raving" cannot be used as an excuse for what those feral animals did. You'd almost expect Duffin to say it wasn't a hate crime, since Trump-supporters aren't a "protected class".

Later, the four thugs were indeed charged with a hate crime. Was it because the attackers were black and the victim white? Or was it because the victim has special needs? That ambiguity is the police commander's safe space, or as he put it: "It’s half a dozen of one, six of the other", which is another euphemism, meaning that he's more than happy with that ambiguity.

One would hope that the good Commander got a fair price for his spine, for he has clearly sold it.

Commander Duffin's handwringing was matched by the quality of media coverage - Duffin may not have explicitly provided the main stream media their soundbites, but his doubts certainly gave them license.

CNN's Don Lemon essentially echoed the Police Commander's words: "I don’t think it's evil. I don't think it's evil. I think these are young people and I think they have bad home training. I have no idea who is raising these young people, because no one I know on earth who is 17-years-old or 70-years-old would ever think of treating another person like that. It is inhumane. And you wonder, at 18-years-old, where is your parent, where is your guardian?"

On the same Don Lemon program, another member of the press described the attack as an example of "man's inhumanity to man" - that's yet another euphemism, meant to absolve the perpetrators while allowing the speaker to signal his "concern".

At least Don Lemon mentioned the race of the victim and the attackers - he had to, since TV is a visual medium. In the "This Week in Hate" column, the New York Times described the events in a race-neutral fashion: "Four people have been charged with a hate crime, among other charges, in the beating in Chicago of a teenager with mental disabilities, which was broadcast on Facebook Live on January 3. The video shows one of the suspects shouting about Donald Trump and 'white people.'"

Most reprehensible of all is the CBS Radio's report which acknowledged the race factor but reversed the races of the victim and the attackers:

"The viral video of a beating and knife attack in Chicago suggests the assault had racial overtones. CBS’s Dean Reynolds tells us the victim is described as a mentally-challenged teenager.

"In the video he is choked and repeatedly called the n-word. His clothes are slashed and he is terrorized with a knife. His alleged captors repeatedly reference Donald Trump. Police are holding four people in connection with the attack."

The hate crime debate, the media's distortion of the events, the police commander's cowardice, all of these, are distractions from the actual events. It is the substitution of politics for ethics - and look at the type of politics involved. All these actions are the actions of cowards, substituting fairness in place of justice, thereby achieving neither. With their dissembling, the media and the Chicago Police are excusing monsters and the evil that they do.

Justice can be achieved only if one has the pertinent facts, and excusing evil requires that those facts be obscured; justice is thus precluded.

Any bystander with a shred of decency would interfere. They certainly wouldn't stand and do nothing but watch, or take videos with their cellphones like those thugs did. They wouldn't stop to wonder whether the attackers were adults or "just kids". They wouldn't try to decide whether they were witnessing a hate crime. They wouldn't attempt to psychoanalyze the attackers. At the very least, they would use their cellphones to call the police - and hope that Commander Duffin would not answer.

At best, bystanders would put away their cellphones and set upon the assailants. Their need for justice exceeds society's "desire" for cultural sensitivity and abrogation of personal responsibility. They would stop the thugs not with necessary force, but with overwhelming force - proportionality be damned. Why? Because that will be the only opportunity for justice to be served.

That opportunity is now past. All we can do is watch, observe the helplessness, observe the betrayal of a lifetime's worth of experience, and witness the abrupt end to the victim's childhood.

Improvise, Adapt, and…

Last spring, I was talking with this one retired Marine - his maritime security business wasn’t doing too good, and I was encouraging him to make some changes to it, but to persevere. He should “improvise, adapt, and be victorious,” I said.

He stopped me in the middle of what I hoped was an inspirational rant and said: “Overcome. It’s ‘improvise, adapt, and overcome’.”

Rant: over. Moment: gone. Marine-turned-business-owner: not victorious.


This is how I learned the phrase “improvise, adapt, and be victorious”.

The context: The year was 1981 or 1982 1979 or 1980. Jimmy Carter was the asshole in office. It was a couple of years after the asshole gave the Panama Canal away, and a year or so after the asshole Peanut Farmer in Chief decided to impose draft registration on all men 18 and over. Asshole.

The scene: I was in downtown Akron, Ohio, my hometown. There was a man holding a sign that read “Don’t Register for the Draft”. He was a few years older than me, light brown curly hair, wearing a red checkered shirt. He wasn't part of a group or anything, just a one man protest.

He was being harangued by this one woman. She was right in his face, in an emotional state somewhere past furious, past apoplectic, and bordering on homicidal. The man with the sign stood there, perfectly calm. It was irresistible force vs immovable object, and it was the best show of restraint I have ever seen!

The lady saw me. I don’t remember exactly what she did next, but she walked away.

The man and I started talking. I had already made up my mind not to register. I was having trouble finding the words explaining this decision. It would be years before I would phrase it as: “because I’m a free man, and I intend to stay free.”

I asked him “what can be done?” He replied: “all we can do is improvise, adapt, and be victorious.” I remember thinking that that was a strange phrase, but didn't inquire.

I sometimes wonder whatever happened to the man with the sign. Did he survive? Yes, I’m sure of it. Did he survive intact? No: none of us did. The treatment we all got was, and continues to be, quite rough. 

Getting through all that will leave one with enough anger, enough rage, to last a lifetime. And, enough pride for 10 lifetimes. Exactly the ingredients needed to overcome and to be victorious.