When Steve Bannon left the White House last week, he made a telling remark. He argued that the “race-identify politics” of the left was fantastic from his perspective, and that he “can’t get enough of it.” He was talking about renewed politics of racism following Charlottesville, but I’m pretty sure he is also quite happy with identity politics on gender, LGBTQ issues, and many other areas.

My problem? As an unapologetic leftie, I think I agree with him. And that’s bad.

The issue: what the right likes to call “identity politics” is a liberal response to very real things that are incredibly important in our society. Racism, the personal kind, but more importantly the kind that pops up in our institutions and laws. Sexism, ditto. Anti-LGBTQ sentiments, where the fight is just beginning for equality. (And don’t get me started on marrying our dogs and cats, we can’t even talk about that yet, and everyone knows THAT is a key part of the liberal agenda!) Anti-immigrant politics. All of these things effect real people on a day-to-day basis, and real harm is caused by our actions and inactions, not just as individuals, but as a society.

BUT (and it’s a BIG one), the right has been incredibly successful at setting up identity politics as “us versus them.” And in their telling, “us” is anyone who is NOT black on the question of racism. Anyone who is not female, or who does not like “feminism” (demonized for years with certain groups), or who is “pro-life” (another great political term with limited real world meaning).

Very smart people (like Bannon, you can be smart and evil at the same time) have been fighting a branding war in politics for decades now, and the Dems and others on the left not only haven’t shown up to fight the war, but have aided and abetted it many times.

An example: when I hear “feminist,” I think “someone who wants equal rights and treatment for men and women.” Someone who realizes that women are absolutely treated differently in our society, in public and private, in formal and informal ways, in law and in culture — and who believes that this is wrong and should be corrected. I could have just as easily replaced feminism with racism and the same ideas apply.

I, and I believe many on the left, choose to see the world from the perspective of others, not just from my own point of view. “Openness” doesn’t mean that I accept every idea and action equally, but that I am willing and open to look beyond my own experience and attempt to understand what those around me experience. I am not my fellow human beings “keeper,” but I am compassionate to the experience of others, and I am open to understanding that the society that I live in not infrequently causes the harm that others experience. This is both historically (slavery, etc.) and through current laws (drug laws, prison system, equal pay, education, etc.) In the end, I believe that as a member of that society, I and my society have a responsibility to right those wrongs as best we can.

One problem that we face on the left – we too often play the game of “whose identity is more important?” If you are a black female, which of those should you identify with more when fighting for equal rights? The political fights are subtly different in concept, and often VERY different in practice. And what if you are a lesbian black woman? Which rights then? Also, how do our friends help out? What is the role of white women when confronting racism? Or of straight, white males when confronting any injustice? These things have a tendency to divide us — at the very least making us lose focus on the big picture while we have internal discussions about what is right. And that’s among a group of allegedly like-minded, open, compassionate people who try to see the perspective of others.

And all of this makes Steve Bannon’s mouth water, while he does a little interpretive dance and chants “I’m gonna win, I’m gonna win!” (I have a very vivid imagination of what Bannon does behind closed doors, and it’s not pretty.)

Because many Americans do not experience the world the way I and my friends and allies on the left do. Believe it or not, most human beings are still focused on themselves, their families, and their immediate group of friends. They are focused on the things around them and how to make their personal lives better. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that – it’s the way human beings have lived pretty much forever.

Some might suggest that this group suffers from a lack of compassion. I disagree, and suggest that it is rather a limited perspective that is the difference. I personally side with the philosophical belief that most human beings ARE compassionate. We love our families, our children, our friends, and have compassion toward those who are like us. It’s not that we CAN’T have compassion for those who are different — we just have no idea what they are like. They aren’t “us,” but are rather “them.” But when we get to know them, they may become “us.”

We’ve likely all heard of the example, and may know someone like this: the white person who holds racist attitudes toward black people, but who is also perfectly nice to any black person they meet, and may even befriend a person who happens to be black once they get to know them. Because now, that person is not like “the rest of them.” Ditto LGBTQ friends.

Many of these people end up in the moderate to right end of the political spectrum. And now the problem.

If I have a world-view that is limited by my experience, if I have limited exposure to “other” groups, and if I am personally ignorant (defined as “lacking knowledge or awareness”) of the world outside of my immediate life and community, then I am more likely to be susceptible to the messages put out by elites who want to divide us.

Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, the Koch brothers and others in the current circle of alt-right elites may or may not be personally racist, sexist, etc. But they are perfectly happy to use messages of identity as tools to gain political power.

Why is Bannon happy every time identify politics come up? Because if you are like most Americans in “red” areas of the country, you may have very little experience with people who are black (or a black person from a big city, “everyone” knows that they are more dangerous!), then it can be hard to see why you should help in a fight against racism.

The messaging here is dangerously simple:
– it’s not your fault that they live in poverty and shoot at each other.
– you and your family never had slaves.
– they are going to take your jobs.
– why should you pay more taxes to help them get better schools? Your schools aren’t that great either!
– they are all on welfare because they want to be, and use the money on booze and drugs (thank Saint Ronald of Reagan for that one…)
– they are all lazy, and if they really wanted jobs they could get them, just like you!

And what about this “white privilege” crap?? Have they seen my life? Do I LOOK like I go out cruising on my yacht for a month every summer? I can’t afford college for my no-good kids anymore than they can! And every job I’m qualified for is getting shipped abroad, things are tight for me and even tighter for my town!

Side note to the lefties out there who want to respond: “yes, but if you were black and living in your town you’d have all of that, plus the police would arrest you randomly because of the color of your skin. THAT’S what white privilege is!” This statement is highly accurate, but also completely non-compelling for most people living the life described above. “Why the hell should I care?” might be a standard come-back. At which time you can explain to them that they should have compassion for others, and since they already have compassion for others, they will explain to you where you can stick your “holier than thou” attitude.

And Steve Bannon and his ilk win again! There are many more tactics where these come from, I was just picking the low hanging fruit. Suffice it to say that messaging from the right has created a situation where identify politics is now a highly divisive issue across the spectrum, as in “divide and conquer.”

Another quick side note, and this one may be a bit contentious (or maybe not): what makes lefties view the world differently from those on the right? I’d suggest that the data out there shows us two things: people are more likely to have experiences and mind-sets attuned to the leftie viewpoint if they are more educated, and if they have spent more time in an urban environment. Education tends to broaden your perspectives about the world around you and show you people with experiences beyond yourself — sometimes in your classmates and often in the classroom. This is more true of a post-secondary liberal arts education, but has some truth for any education – more of it tends to make you more open to the world around you. And being in an urban setting for lengthy periods of time tends to make you more open to more types of people, simply because you run into them. At work, in your neighborhood, on the streets, etc. Neither of these (education or urban setting) are definitive factors. Just b/c you are urban doesn’t make you liberal. But they are strong contributing factors. And they do explain a good bit of our red/blue state and area divide. Illinois, for instance, is a largely red state geographically, except for the enormous and heavily populated blue area around Chicago, which also happens to have higher average educational levels for adults.

On perspective and compassion – the real question is not whether you are compassionate, but who you define as “us.” A broader perspective typically comes from education or access to people who are “different” from you. And as you get more of that, for some of us at least, you start to leave behind the parochial view of “us” being “those I am familiar with,” and move toward “us” as “other human beings.” We might be able to define the ultimate liberal view as a perspective that wants to treat ALL human beings equally, and that sees being human as the thing that makes us all alike. But I’d argue that most people aren’t there yet, and we absolutely are not as a society.

So what do we do about it? Racism, sexism, anti-LGBTQ and anti-immigrant sentiments/policies and many other anti-human rights issues exist and are HUGE problems in this country. And in part, providing “identity” to those groups is an important piece of solving the problems. But here we have an issue where that very identify, which is good in-and-of-itself, is also being used by political elites on the other side to fuel their political machines, and to divide/conquer.

The answer is not “get everyone more education and move them all to cities.” That’s not going to work. And btw, there are significant political movements on the right that work hard to limit education through lack of funding, denigration of teachers, resources going only to richer areas, etc.

At the moment, I think the answer still lies with Bill Clinton’s internal campaign slogan: “it’s the economy, stupid.” Clinton was on to something, and Trump picked this up and ran with it (ironically beating Hillary with her husband’s brand of politics.) The economy is something that matters to EVERYONE, from top to bottom. And if you can show people that you understand where they stand in the equality, that you are compassionate to them and their issues, then you can cross over a lot of lines in politics. Economy CAN be a uniting issue, but it has to be approached with a lot of information.

Problematically for the left, it is hard to combine identity politics and the economy. It SHOULD be easy — every group identified above, and many others, have economic issues as one of the core elements of their struggle. And they share many of these elements with voters in red areas of the country. More funding is needed in areas such as education and infrastructure. The government needs to push rules that will create more jobs. Clean water is going to be an issue everywhere in the near future. All of these things are cross-over issues. But we need political messages to FRAME them that way, and to overcome the long-term, embedded messages of division and identity politics created on the right.

My personal answer is to focus more on inequality, but this blog post is already long, and that one will take another treatise or two. Inequality COULD be the great uniter — as long as we can overcome the political frame that has been set up over many decades that the US only has one class (the middle class!), and that we don’t want a “class war.” (which, according to famous rich guy Warren Buffet, the rich have already won!)