Cobb

Well buddy, first good luck. To bad you chose a crappy party to fight an uphill battle for. It would have been cooler if you were an independent fighting an uphill battle for a unique vision.

Secondly how are western values derived as the correct values to be pursued? Was it simply a matter of personally what you found in your best interest? Secondly is what is in your best interest simultaneously in the best interest of the race as a whole?

To eliminate identity politics per se is to say that politics in general and specifically the politics that you choose to pursue (Republicanism) that are non-identity based are in the best interest of that race the you want to subsume the identity of.

What this means in practical terms is that you believe the majority in power (which is whom in reality you will be subsuming to) will have a sufficient altruistic or pragmatic in some instances rationale for having a platform the considers the minority. If the minority and the considerations of the minorities needs have provide no pragmatic value in terms of the majority then the minority continues to have its needs unmet. That is the law of power. How do you deal with that if you eliminate in this instance identity politics?

If the majority pay your bills, and the minority neither vote your way, nor provide any other 'value' what incentive is there to see to them? Nada.

Now, for your position to have any efficacy in improving blacks collective position in America, if you care about blacks at all (I won't hold you to that) you would first have to prove that your merging yourself into a generalist position and fighting for that cause would be more pragmatic and effective than holding to a position of specificity that is targeted.

I am interested in hearing your arguments for generalism as opposed to specifism.

Quoting Boyd. Heh. Good on you.

I've been following everything you've been writing recently with great interest and agreement. Thanks.

I think, Dell, that you are conflating a lot of terms here, but we can straighten all that out.

First of all, I don't believe that a Mercedes-Benz engineer considers the race of the driver for which he builds his vehicle. And while I have never personally driven a Mercedes, I am highly confident that it is a superior automobile and that my black ass will be perfectly comfortable in the seat.

The problem with the black minority position in American politics is that it assumes that the Mercedes of American power will discover their asses to be black and for that reason alone, activate an ejection seat. And so they keep protesting at the Mercedes Benz plant, and talking about all the crooks who drive Mercedez, and demanding that Mercedes make a Black Power edition and querying the number of Mercedes in Africa. They do all of that instead of saving money to actually buy a Mercedes.

I am saying that identity politics is exactly the same thing, and instead of appreciating America for the Mercedes of nations that it is, these eternal minorities actually believe that their complaints are improving the quality of America. Nothing could be further from the truth - they are orthagonal to American values and throw the baby out with the bathwater. They refuse to understand how the country works, ie the engineering of the Mercedes, rather than what kind of music is playing on the stereo.

I don't have to care about black people if I care about human beings.

The fact is I especially care about certain black people because what they do, rather than who they are. In the political arena that means putting values in sharp contrast. That's why I communicate from the perspective of the Old School, so that people can see what some intelligent work has been done in understanding the ideas that move the country forward. If the majority of black people don't understand those relevent ideas, then that doesn't dilute the value of the ideas. It just means those people are wrong. If they don't correct themselves, that is their responsibility, I'm not going to preach and spam them away from watching Urkel on TV or whatever it is they do that keeps them in relative ignorance of the great wisdom here in this corner of the blogosphere.

BTW, what Chap is talking about is my new number one quote from Boyd:
"The most important thing in life is to be free to do things. There are only two ways to insure that freedom — you can be rich or you can you reduce your needs to zero."

So the question in light of this is whether blackfolks are reducing their needs to zero or trying to be rich. Obviously if they hate rich (in the personna of Bush) then they should be reducing their needs to zero. Are they?

I don't have to care about black people if I care about human beings.

That would make you Oprah Winfrey. ;-)

I am saying that identity politics is exactly the same thing, and instead of appreciating America for the Mercedes of nations that it is, these eternal minorities actually believe that their complaints are improving the quality of America. Nothing could be further from the truth - they are orthagonal to American values and throw the baby out with the bathwater. They refuse to understand how the country works, ie the engineering of the Mercedes, rather than what kind of music is playing on the stereo.

"I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually."*

Fortunately, James Baldwin knew what he was talking about. Yet I seem to recall that he died in exile. He struggled mightitly as an artist simply to tell the truth as he saw it, and we are better for his clever insight. Such is an artist's duty. But what is artful in any of the empty slander heaped upon the person of GW Bush?

Baldwin, like most great writers of fiction made us see ourselves in new ways. He created space for a person who did not exist in the popular imagination, and most importantly, he did so with loving care. I'm no expert on Baldwin, but that's what I read. In that he was a great crafter of identity. But is identity and loving care the central basis for democracy? Is the crafting of policy like the crafting of fiction? Is the business of government to give us a sense of self? No, no, no. The business of politics is to reach a fair ajudication of our conflicts of interest, and it is foolish to assert that it is a sense of self which generates the politics of the Republican Party. Those who believe so are both misinformed and unclear about the very concept. They are stuck in existential matters and oblivious to the reality of politics.

How many times have I called these fools on that very question? They will sell their votes and support to anyone who calls them by the name they want to hear. Rhetorical patronage I called it. And when Howard Dean said he'd talk about racial identity, some saw him as the second coming of JFK. But when it comes to demanding anything more than vagueries of 'caring' ..

To be sure there are many levels of politicking working in this nation. And I suppose we must leave people to their notions. Surely somebody in Congress can get re-elected on the basis of not calling certain people 'refugees'. It's a free country. There are Coalitions of the Damned everywhere who look for clever ways to undermine public support for the police. There are wooly intellects of dubious repute who will span the globe (especially Venezuela and Cuba) to find radical critiques of the American system, and certainly such ideas have their place. But I wonder in all of that perpetual criticism if it is done more to secure the place of the critic, than it is to aid and abet the nation itself.

I have my doubts.