The Politics OF Identity has devolved into Politics AS Identity
political identitarians have made vogue what should be socio-culturally rogue!
"Politics AS Identity" - how tribalistic tendencies get exploited politically:
A politics OF identity (of special interest groups) can be grounded in legitimate aspirations & grievances. It can advocate principle-based solutions for the most pressing causes of identifiable groups, often by forming coalitions and making principled compromises with other interest groups.
A politics AS identity (of political identitarians) props up the sick identity structures of individuals & institutions and helps them to construct & maintain self-images. They validate themselves using totems, some totems authentic but way too many others inauthentic & based on gross misperceptions of their true selves, as they desperately try to complete what, too often, turns out to be their near-empty self-identities - at a cost for all.
To wit:
This article treats those dynamics fairly well.
Online political discourse often reveals who the identitarians are among us. On the left & right, they are legion. If you engage them in debate, you will emerge, at least a tad, dumber.
And, as with all vicious & virtuous realities, this can present in all of us to varying degrees. Alas, my complaint is aimed at those who raise the degree of practice of their vicious aspect to an artform.
An Insidious Tactic
Both sides of the spectrum stoke & then pander to outrage to an extent, but Trump's raised it, most egregiously, to an artform.
Trump engages the "stoke then pander to outrage" tactic exclusively, largely apart from any coherent ideological aspirations (who cares about Cheney's 93% conservative voting record?).
Of course, the Left has often used this tactic via class, gender, interracial, intersectional & other forms of politics "as" identity outrage, but it's not been to the near total exclusion of more constructive politics "of" identity aspirations.
the strategy = politics AS identity
the tactic = pander to outrage
the consequence = polarization
See Mary Papenfuss' account of Barr's disenchantment with all the pandering to outrage.
Finally, Trump didn't single-handedly pervert authentic conservatism. It evolved - devolved - under the combined influence of both pols & pundits:
An account of the role played by politicians.
An account of the role played by the media.
Again, while on the Left, too many pols & pundits have engaged the same tactics, presently, in terms of pervasiveness, we don't see a mirror image for the Right’s now gone WAY off the rails, mainstreaming what were, formerly, marginal epistemic vices. In terms of intensity, though, the resulting violence remains similarly frightful.
Both sides remain disingenuous in denying the obvious links between their divisive & polarizing rhetoric & the misbehavior of "a few bad actors."
The constant distortions of the truth & incessant spinning of conspiratorial narratives of Left & Right Wing-nuts have contributed to making what was once socio-culturally rogue, now, vogue, i.e. normalizing falsehoods, scapegoating innocents & promoting the faux-victimization of many who, in so many ways, should truly rather count themselves society’s victors!