Identity politics — where fundamentally disintegrating societies go to die?

© 2020 Peter Free

 

17 May 2020

 

 

Consider implications

 

Professor Frank Furedi wrote that:

 

 

Apparently, whether you wear a mask is not simply a reaction to the coronavirus, but a visible statement about your identity and your politics.

 

The fact that mask wearing has become a flashpoint in the culture wars serves as testimony to the degradation of political life in Western societies.

 

The herd-like response incited by identity politics makes it difficult to have an intelligent discussion about how society should respond to the pandemic.

 

[S]ociety rarely learns from the childish controversies provoked by identity obsessions.

 

© 2020 Frank Furedi, It's a mask, not a flag! CULTURE WARS around Covid-19 protection are shameful, RT (16 May 2020)

 

 

The bottomline

 

Americans characteristically combine:

 

 

herd-shared ignorance

 

with

 

an equally widely distributed

 

avoidance of rational analysis.

 

 

The two traits describe culturally based stupidity.

 

 

Coincidentally

 

While writing this, CBS's Sunday Morning is doing a segment on COVID era dreaming. As if COVID-time dreams were somehow majorly different and significantly more important than other REM dreams.

 

One wonders what a genuinely capable society would think of such navel-gazing.

 

 

The moral? — Missing the Big Picture for the teeny ones, is what we happily do

 

The United States is (arguably) exceptional. Just not in respect-generating or survival-worthy ways.

 

We will, one can anticipate, go down with our Shouting Monkey Ship.

 

While blaming Russians, Chinese, Iranians — and maybe some Cubans and Venezuelans — for the sinking.