Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Political Constituencies
In response to the video on the absence of certain forerunners in the republican presidential race I would like to ask a few questions. American politics is based almost completely in the concept of "identity," but not identity of thought. What does it mean to be "for" a group of people? I don't believe that someone can be a candidite that is "for" women, or "for" Christians. The very phrase is meaningless. How many different kinds of women are there? How many different kinds of Christians? Now you could be "for" socialism or universal health-care, but you can't be "for" someone simply because they have a slightly different anatomy than someone else. American politics would be far better, and Americans far smarter, if we stopped voting based on our (or the candidate's) appearance and started voting based on real vibrant political beliefs.
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2 comments:
I agree with Thom's statement in some respects, but I think in some instances people want to identify with a certain group when voting so that their rights are protected. For instance, if a candidate were pro-choice or pro-life, the laws that candidate passes or does not pass could end up having an effect on a woman's life so you could say, as a woman, I am voting for this candidate because of this issue. Then again, which side would be "pro" women? That's pretty subjective, so I see where you're coming from. However, I think that Americans are far form being able to distance the identities of the candidates from their political views. People debating about whether Obama would be a good president often include his race and age, and I have heard people I who I usually consider to be kind and tolerant say that they would not vote for a woman because she would be unable to declare war. People have deeply ingrained ideas about the implications behind having a certain identity and they would be very difficult to erase.
I think that lots of American politics are about identity because American life is centered around identity and our membership in various groups. This membership in groups determines a lot about us, how we're treated and what we care about, which is reflected in poltical issues. Group identity issues cannot be erased from politics, because without them, political issues wouldn't be relevant.
I also think the examples Thom used, socialism and universal health care, are still examples of identity politics, in these cases class identity.
So, to sum my point up: identity will be removed from politics once it is removed from American life. Thoughts?
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