Pete Buttigieg and the Death of the Gay-Rights Movement

In a piece in New York Magazine that first looks at the parallels between Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn who lead the British Labour Party to its worst defeat in its history - and the possible catastrophe Sanders will bring to the Democrat Party - Andrew Sullivan then proceeds to look at the disintegration of the gay rights movement in America largely fueled by the far left within the LGBT community who are in the midst of attacking Pete Buttigieg for not being "gay enough."The wrath of these individuals also extends to every white male gay who is derided as either “hetero-normative” (gays who can pass as straights) or “homo-normative” (a person who looks and lives like most socially integrated gay men).  The irony is that it is largely these white gay males who fund the gay rights movement even as the far left believes gays need to support women, racial minorities, trans persons, disabled persons rather than a white gay man who somehow becomes part of the oppressor class simply by virtue of the skin color. I've seen this mindset take over Equality Virginia and other LGBT organizations which which have seemingly lost sight of their original agenda and in publications like Out Magazine which seems to cover anyone other than white gay males.  Sooner or later, those who have funded the movement will stop writing checks - I have to a large extent - and the far leftists will have nothing left.  It's insanity, but appears to be what the far left is best at: self destruction.  Here are column highlights:

One of the many problems with the concept of intersectionality is that it largely precludes activism on behalf of any single minority. Any particular identity is immediately overwhelmed by a variety of additional identities that supplant, complicate, or qualify it. And all these identities have their own hierarchy of oppressors and the oppressed, splintering them still further.

And so it is with what was once the gay-rights movement. A simple defense of the rights and freedom of homosexuals — people, biologically male and female, who are attracted to their own sex — has become impossible in an intersectional framework.

First off, critical queer theory deconstructed the old category of homosexual, which once rested on an apparently natural or innate attraction to members of the same sex. Homosexuality, they argued in contrast, is essentially a political act, a social construction, and the goal of queer politics is to subvert all such constructions, to advance wider and wider liberation. So there are homosexuals and then there are “queers.” The former are largely what queer theorists once lamented as “hetero-normative” (gays who can pass as straights) and are now called “homo-normative” (a person who looks and lives like most integrated gay men). The queer category tends to be defined by a desire to deconstruct the whole idea of nature, gender, and sex, embracing subversive alternatives to the family or the couple, and defining themselves by their performance of masculine or feminine roles, which they choose, in a bid to undermine the determinative role of biological sex. Then critical gender theory places women above men in the general hierarchy of oppression (oppression being correlated with status), deconstructing the classic coalition of gay men and lesbians as equals in pursuing homosexual rights. And then critical race theory adds a racial hierarchy as well, so that white gays are split from and subordinate to black gays, Jews become oppressors (because they have adopted “whiteness”), and Latinos climb up the intersectional ladder, as long as they identify as nonwhite. You can also add a host of other marginalized aspects of the human condition: the disabled, or poor, or undocumented, or HIV-positive … and on and on. When you buy into this vision of our society as defined entirely by oppression of people’s identity and with oppression having a near-infinite number of complicating hierarchies, the idea of a simple “gay rights” movement comes completely unraveled. And this is key, it seems to me, in understanding why “LGBTQ” activists have revealed such hostility to a figure like Pete Buttigieg. He does not deserve their support because he is white, male, cis, Christian, and has managed to be extraordinarily successful in life as well as politics. That places him quite high up on the oppressor matrix, his gayness notwithstanding. The first serious, openly gay candidate for the presidency does not represent “progress,” because he actually threatens “queer survival” — whatever that latter term actually means. In fact, Pete is, in their eyes, a regression — not because of his politics (which are very liberal), but simply because of his whiteness, maleness, cis-ness, and extraordinary talent. Queers should support a woman, a racial minority, a trans person, a disabled person, before they should support a white cis gay man. Here is Strangio elaborating this week on his point:

To all the white LGBTQ people celebrating the ‘milestone’ or ‘history-making’ of Pete, I strongly disagree. Nothing about white people who align with white supremacy to take power represents progress in my view.

Yes, Pete Buttigieg is in “alignment” with “white supremacy.” And that is a far more important thing to know about him than his homosexuality. What Pete has revealed, in other words, is that the gay-rights movement is dead. There are simply too many intersectional identities within the category of being gay to contain them in a movement simply for “gay rights.” What that means is that no gay organization can simply be about gays anymore. It has to be about race, class, gender, ability, immigration status, HIV status, and gender identity. At some point, well-meaning but naïve white, cis, gay men will come to understand that the movement they are largely funding is dedicated to their demonization and marginalization. And maybe, those not wedded to intersectional ideology will eventually decide to stop cutting the checks that makes this possible.

Democrats Need to Run the [Northam and] Lamb Strategy Over and Over

With progressives energized and basically anyone other than white supremacists, Christian extremists and greed driven vulture capitalists coming to the conclusion that Trump/Pence and the larger Republican Party are a cancer on the nation, Democrats have a golden opportunity to win in a wave come November, 2018.  To do so, they need to run good candidates, run organized and interlinked ground games to get voters to the polls and avoid going to far to the left.  Sadly, many liberal activists do not grasp the reality that winning and defeating Republicans, not electing the most ideologically pure candidate, is the goal.  Ralph Northam in Virginia and Conor Lamb in Pennsylvania show the strategy that Democrats need to replicate over and over again.   Whether or not far left liberals will get their heads out of the asses is the big question.  A piece in New York Magazine lays out what Democrats ought to do.  Here are article highlights:

Democrats need to win two dozen Republican seats to gain a House majority. Approximately 118 districts have more Democratic-leaning electorates than the 18th district of Pennsylvania, which voted for Donald Trump by nearly 20 points, and which Democrat Conor Lamb turned into a competitive race. Several days before the election, Republicans were already spreading the word that the discouraging outcome would be the idiosyncratic result of the unusual candidates on the ballot.

Republican candidate Rick Saccone was not an especially weak nominee, having won several races in competitive environments before. . . . . It is also true that Conor Lamb was an especially strong candidate: Young and lacking a voting record to be picked apart, with a background as a Marine, Lamb cut a favorable profile in comparison with the lifelong politician he faced.

And there are a lot of Conor Lambs out there. Very early in the election cycle, Democrats recruited candidates with nontraditional backgrounds, especially in the military, who would appeal to voters in red districts.  “A rough profile of [Democrats’] ideal candidate has started to emerge: veterans, preferably with small business experience too,” reported Politico last April. . . . . The next month, Axios reported that Republicans were already worried about “Democrats recruiting unusually high-quality House candidates for the 2018 midterms.”

Recruiting veterans is an effective strategy for overcoming the Republican tilt of the House map, which requires Democrats to contest deeply conservative territory in an attempt to gain a majority. Republicans have used ethnonationalist themes for decades to sell voters on an unpopular economic agenda: Election messaging is all American flags, crime, and being tough on terrorism, while the policy agenda is about lax business regulation and regressive tax-cutting. 

This disconnect between politics and policy is Republicans’ weakest point. Their strategy can be hacked. . . . . A candidate with a compelling biography — especially those with a military background — can disarm these attacks pretty easily. It is not a panacea, but a major advantage nonetheless.

[O]ne of the ways in which Democrats benefitted from the massive counter-mobilization that formed immediately after the 2016 election is an unusually high number of people willing to rearrange their lives around the goal of saving their country from an unfit president. In many cases, the possibly corny and self-serving narrative of the “military veteran called to serve their country once again” actually applies. Democrats have more or less unanimously regarded a Trump presidency and a pliant Republican Congress as a national emergency.

The unusual success Lamb showed in running a competitive race in Trump country is not a total fluke, but rather proof of concept for a strategy that could replicate itself across the country.

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren both sought to block Northam's nomination - a fact that means I will NEVER vote for either of them if the opportunity arises - in favor of a false leftist.  Had they succeeded, a Republican would now likely be in the Governor's mansion in Richmond. Had similar urges prevailed in Pennsylvania's 18th District, a Republican would have won there as well.  Democrats need to embrace this reality and back candidates accordingly.

Is The Only Problem in American Politics the GOP?

Continuing the theme of the previous post, a piece in New York Magazine ask the question of whether or not the only real problem with American politics is the Republican Party.  True, there are far left elements in the Democrat Party, but is the false equivalency that many pundits and self-appointed mavens of the media try to construct between the far right and the far left true?  In view, it is not and I tend to agree with the author that most of the pathology we see in the political realm comes from the far right, the Christofascists and white supremacists who now dominate the Republican Party. Say what you will about the far left, it doesn't seek to disenfranchise, deport or perhaps even kill its political opponents and/or those who look different or adhere to a different faith or no faith.  Like it or not, most of the hatred we see and domestic terrorism comes from and is committed by right wing extremists. Here are column excepts:

Political scientist Lee Drutman argues in a Vox essay that American politics is descending into what he calls “doom-loop partisanship.” Drutman notes that Americans have been “retreating into our separate tribal epistemologies, each with their own increasingly incompatible set of facts and first premises,” . . . Drutman attributes this to winner-take-all elections, the expanding power of the presidency, and the growing influence of money in politics. I think, despite all the very real design flaws in American politics, the problems he describe stem mainly from the pathologies of the Republican Party.

It is certainly true that the psychological relationship between the parties has a certain symmetry. Both fear each other will cheat to win and use their power to stack the voting deck. . . . But while it is not true that Democrats have allowed illegal voting in nontrivial levels, it is extremely true that Republicans have deliberately made voting inconvenient for Democratic-leaning constituencies. The psychology is parallel, but the underlying facts are not.

Likewise, there is a superficial similarity to the terror with which partisans now greet governments controlled by the opposing party. Obama’s presidency made Republicans [wrongly] terrified of rampant socialism and vengeful minority rule. . . . Trump’s presidency has inspired a similar terror among liberals terrified that Trump would take their insurance and deport immigrants.

Liberal fears have had a much closer relationship to reality. The reason is that the Democratic Party is racially and economically heterogeneous. Even if he had wanted to take vengeance upon white America for its sins, Obama had far too many white supporters to make such a course of action remotely practical. (A majority of Obama’s voters were white, in fact.) On economic issues, the Democratic Party relies on support and input from business and labor alike. Whatever terrors of rampant Jacobinism may have gripped the economic elite, there are limits to the fiscal and regulatory pain Democrats can impose on a constituency that has a seat at the table (many seats, actually).

There is little such balance to be found in the Republican Party. . . . [Republicans] have bottomed out on their minority support and proven able to win national power regardless, by using racial wedge issues to pry away blue-collar whites. Advocates for labor or the poor have no voice whatsoever in the Republican elite. It took a massive national mobilization to narrowly dissuade the party from snatching health insurance away from millions of people too poor or sick to afford it.

[T]he fact is that the Democratic Party is fundamentally accountable to the mainstream news media. And that [mainstream] media play[ers] try to follow rules of objectivity that the right-wing alternative media does not bother with.

What matters is that Democratic politicians need to please a news media that is open to contrary facts and willing — and arguably eager — to hold them accountable. The mainstream media have have its liberal biases, but it also misses the other way — see the Times’ disastrously wrong report, a week before the election, that the FBI saw no links between the Trump campaign and Russia and no intention by Russia to help Trump. One cannot imagine Fox News publishing an equivalently wrong story against the Republican Party’s interests — its errors all run in the same direction.

Whatever interest liberals may have in finding congenial media, they don’t dismiss the mainstream media out of hand in the way conservatives have been trained over decades to do. When the conservative news media criticizes Republicans, it is almost always to play the role of ideological enforcer, attacking them for their lack of fervor. One party has a media ecosystem that serves as a guardrail, and the other has one that serves only as an accelerant.

The left has no equivalent to a Rush Limbaugh in influence and sheer lunacy. . . . . There are figures just as crazy as Limbaugh on the left, but they are almost uniformly outside the Democratic Party coalition.

[W]hatever the very real flaws in the American political and electoral system, it is simply impossible to design any kind of a system that can withstand a stress test like a major party captured by a faction as radical as the conservative movement. Its absence of limiting principles to its ideology, indifference to empirical evidence, and inability to concede failings of its dogma lead to an endless succession of failures explained away to the base as faintheartedness.

Republicans are sealed off in a bubble of paranoia and rage, and Democrats are sealed off from that bubble. Democrats fear Republican government because it is dangerous and extreme. Republicans fear Democratic government because they are dangerous and extreme.

 Like the Christofascists who hijacked the GOP base in earnest around the time I left the Republican Party, today's GOP is defined by hatred of others and the embrace of ignorance.  It IS the problem behind so many of the nation's political woes today.