Summary

Identity politics is quickly becoming a dangerous trend. It is bad enough when we do it to ourselves, for example, “I am Asian, therefore I will vote for Asian candidates because only they will have my best interests in mind.” It gets far worse when the identity group is assigned to us, and then we are kept in line, by being told, for example, “You are a woman, and if you don’t vote for women candidates wherever possible, you are being a traitor to your gender.”

Nazi Germany identified groups; Jews, homosexuals, the mentally ill, gypsies, and more, and assigned them to concentration camps. Note the name: these identified groups were concentrated in camps, not wanting them to mingle with the rest of the populace, and making it easier to punish them. WWII America forced the relocation and incarceration in concentration camps in the western interior of the country of between 110,000 and 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry. Oh, and the US Supreme Court was just fine that.

Powerful forces, political and otherwise, are using identity politics to force us into ideological camps, and punishing us when we think and act outside of the thinking and actions that are expected and allowed to those identity groups.

For the next 10 minutes, we will tie these two subjects together, and talk about what it means for our Republic.

Transcript

Identity politics is quickly becoming a dangerous trend. It is bad enough when we do it to ourselves, for example, “I am Asian, therefore I will vote for Asian candidates because only they will have my best interests in mind.” It gets far worse when the identity group is assigned to us, and then we are kept in line, by being told, for example, “You are a woman, and if you don’t vote for women candidates wherever possible, you are being a traitor to your gender.”

Nazi Germany identified groups; Jews, homosexuals, the mentally ill, gypsies, and more, and assigned them to concentration camps. Note the name: these identified groups were concentrated in camps, not wanting them to mingle with the rest of the populace, and making it easier to punish them. WWII America forced the relocation and incarceration in concentration camps in the western interior of the country of between 110,000 and 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry. Oh, and the US Supreme Court was just fine that.

Powerful forces, political and otherwise, are using identity politics to force us into ideological camps, and punishing us when we think and act outside of those camps, outside of the thinking and actions that are expected and allowed to those identity groups.

For the next 10 minutes, we will tie these two subjects together, and talk about what it means for our Republic.

Today’s Key Point: Forces that push groups identified by gender, race, religion, disabilities, sexual preference and the like, into camps are always doing the wrong thing. And it does not matter if the camps are secured by physical walls backed by guards, or thought- and action-control walls backed by verbal (and physical) bullies.

Moreover, assigned identity groups are told which other groups to ally with, and which groups are their natural enemies. This  dangerous extension of identity groups is something called intersectionality.

On an international scale, intersectionality, groups pre-aligned with each other against other groups that were also pre-aligned with each other, led to the devastation of WWI in 1914. A Serbian assassinated the Archduke of Austria-Hungary, heir apparent to the Austro-Hungarian throne. Austria appealed to Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany for support, should any shooting start, before they dealt with Serbia, initially believing that Serbia would promptly surrender in guilt for the assassination. Bolstered by Germany’s support,