Identity Theft

I suppose it’s too early to pronounce the term “meltdown” on identity politics. In fact, I guess it will _always_ be too early to express hope that this most grotesque and decaying manifestation of liberalism will finally perish of its own weight. But it’s good to see, now and then, at least a few absurd cases which lend credence to the condemnation any right-thinking person should pronounce on this phenomenon. And three stories in one day provide an unexpected bonus.

The first concerns a Pennsylvania state legislator who objected to a resolution “recognizing a Muslim group’s upcoming convention” by saying that “the Muslims do not recognize Jesus Christ as God.” Well OK… but that’s also true of Jews and not a few people who call themselves “Christians”, and you don’t see resolutions recognizing their conventions getting derailed. But wait a minute – what on earth is a state legislature doing passing “resolutions” “recognizing” conventions, anyway? Don’t they have anything better to do? Well, the answer is no; see immediately preceding post. In this case, the convention was that of “the U.S. chapter of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community” – you know, that same convention that grabs all the headlines every year? Right, I never heard of it. Now, if the state legislature is going to dig that deep for something to “recognize”, how many other conventions, meetings, gatherings, pow-wows, etc. are going to feel they have a right to demand equal recognition? This could turn into a full-time job… which is, of course, the whole idea. In any case, this particular resolution was “sent back to committee”, which is another way of saying “to Siberia”, and it might just not see the light of day again… or at least not in time to excite and inspire the conventioneers who – we all know – were just waiting with baited breath for a show of support from the Wise Men of Harrisburg.

Secondly, we have a school out somewhere in the boonies in Thailand, where we can be sure political correctness and identity politics have not yet penetrated (if that is the word – read on). But wait! Apparently they have, because out of an enrollment of 2600, 200 identified themselves as “transgender” on a survey. Well, it’s hard to know which question to ask first. To begin with, how to Thai kids out in the sticks even know what “transgender” means, to say nothing of whether they themselves qualify? And then, what on earth is a school (public, we assume) doing asking questions about its students’ transgender identification? Maybe they’re looking for federal grant money or something. But then – can you imagine almost 10% of the students in any American school openly identifying themselves as “transgender”? Does it mean they get special lunches? I just don’t get it. (The article didn’t say how many of the 200 were biological male vs. female. Well, they could have asked that question too! Problem is, they might have gotten a lot of people checking the box for “Uncertain” – then what?)

And finally, we have an item from the source – the very fountainhead – of identity politics, namely South Africa, where “the high court” (I’ll bet they were) ruled that “Chinese South Africans are to be reclassified as black people.” This was to enable them to benefit from anti-white government programs, i.e. from discrimination, which might have otherwise continued to fall on them as well. You have to hand it to them, I guess – they know a winning color when they see one. Of course, South Africa doesn’t have to keep calling all of its preferred victim groups “black” – they could just call them “minorities” the way we do. Oh wait, you say blacks are in the majority in South Africa? But so are all of our minorities – in the aggregate, I mean. If you add up all the minorities, victim groups, and grievance groups in the U.S. you wind up with way more than half the population. And yet they are still referred to as “minorities”, which I guess means that the balance of the population is a “majority” even though it’s in the minority. Or maybe it’s that any given minority is a minority compared with the aggregate of all other minorities plus the majority (which is itself a minority) – in which case, most “discrimination” and “bigotry” and “hate” is something inflicted by one minority on another. Right? Which means that every minority spends just as much time discriminating as being discriminated against. Which means, we could do away with all anti-discrimination laws, since everyone is breaking even, i.e. everyone is equally a victim and a perpetrator. Oh wait, I forgot about white Christian heterosexual men. They are always perpetrators, and never victims. So I guess the laws have to stay on the books. Well, I tried.