What we have going is identity politics. By definition identity politics is about getting greater representation for your “group”. But it is naive to think that “greater” representation for your group does not come with a cost.
Any honest Human Resources department of a major corporation will admit there are times it makes decisions against men in favor of less qualified women in order to achieve corporate diversity goals. I am not saying that is a good thing or a bad thing, it is reality. And when it happens the man suffers.
When Kavanaugh was accused of sexual assault by someone who could not even identify the date and place of the assault, people and their representatives in Congress were prepared to take “her word” over his even when our Constitution presumes innocence until proven guilty, we have to ask “why”.
Some may argue that the innocent men who get falsely accused are far outnumbered by the guilty men who do not get away with sexual assault in a case reduced to “he says… she says”. But that logic is exactly the kind of logic that led to many African American men being falsely sent to prison in the South before DNA proved their innocence sometime decades later. It was not right then… it is not right now.
As a retired executive I have seen and experienced this phenomena. I was accused and presumed guilty of discriminating against a woman for a promotion. Sadly, what freed me from that accusation was not the truth of the situation, but the fact that I had more women reporting to me at every level of management then men.
But what if I hadn’t. In my case, it just happened that over several years, I had more qualified women competing for positions than men, but what if the opposite had been true. Same guy, same decision process… but innocent because of a statistics that could have gone the other way.
There are vindictive women out there as well as women who simply get the facts wrong. There are abusive men out there. But as a society that has gravitated to identity politics we are less inclined to judge the individuals and more inclined to “side with a group”. This is sad. So perhaps the real truth is that “truth” is no longer as important as whose side you are on…
Nothing illustrates this better than the chatter about whether Trump should be impeached or not… if you are a progressive liberal chances are you think Trump should be impeached… if you are a Republican populist chances are you think Trump should not be impeached… If “truth” had anything to do with it, then one might expect a fair number of progressive liberals would think Trump should not be impeached because they do not find the case compelling… likewise a fair number of Republican populists would conclude he should be… but when views are so clearly based on political ideology… it is clear that “truth” has little to do with how people feel on the issue… and what is really going on is partisan “warfare” over power in Washington.
Now as the nation views this raw exercise of power by our elected government representatives, how are we expected to think citizens will not adopt the same strategies to gain power for their identity group. Any policemen that arrests an African American teenager will be labeled a “racist” even if they are African American. Ditto for every border agent that apprehends a Hispanic family even if the border agent is Hispanic. The facts of the case don’t matter, truth does not matter… this is also very sad…
A final example, the Democrats voted to proceed to impeach Trump based on a call he made to Ukraine before they even read the transcript of the call. Let me repeat. Before they read the transcript of the call. Facts don’t matter… this is war!
War on men… war on women… war on minorities… class warfare… America is beginning to treat everything as a war… and the first victim is “truth”…
