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Comment by okintheory | Hacker News Reader

This is the key point.

People in power would like to avoid divisions that are between them and people with less power. Instead they prefer divisions between different groups of people with less power, because that way these groups will be ineffective.

If the median white American man understood this, he would understand that he is siding with the wrong people.

---- PS: Yes, I know the labels for this might be "divide and conquer", and "false consciousness", but I think people have trouble relating to these terms.

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> If the median white American man understood this, he would understand that he is siding with the wrong people.

I'm sorry, what groups are you saying actually support the "median white American man"?

People who fight for universal healthcare, for example.

Last time I checked, they didn't say "universal healthcare if you are exceptionally poor, colored, non-American, and/or female."

Well, "people who fight for universal healthcare" seems to be pretty constrained to the left of American politics. And while it might just be outgroup homogeneity bias, the American Left has been relatively vocal in its dislike of "average white men"... (At the very least the identity politics subsection seems to be "the farther you are from 'straight white man', the better")

For sure, people who say stuff that sounds like they don't like any white men get a lot of attention. But, I suspect they form a very small minority, also on the Left.

Can I ask, what for you are some important examples of anti-"median-white-American-man" statements? I'm aware that there is a prevailing narrative in many parts of the media that this group is being singled out a lot, but personally I don't often see blanket statements of that sort.

You should think deeper about why the media you consume is presenting you with this impression.

From the outside it seems absurd but I'm not sure how to meet you in the middle for this.

Maybe you heard people complaining about how "socialized" medicine would create death panels. Did you reflect on why they were scaring old people in this way?

Or the focus on how the left are actively wanting to kill babies, rather than wanting access to reproductive healthcare. Again, why would right wing media present this patently false image? What are they trying to achieve?

If you can understand that then you might understand why the media you consume is telling you that the left hates you.

Final hint, the phrase "identity politics" is itself identity politics.

To break things down a bit... Are there people on the right fighting for universal health care? As far as I know that was a factual statement. Same with "anti-white/anti-male idpol is mostly left" - after all, the "pro-white-male idpol" groups seem to be on the right. This doesn't mean the people fighting for universal healthcare on the left are the same people embracing identity politics! But they do seem to share the same tent.

But to address your ad hominem attacks:

> Maybe you heard people complaining about how "socialized" medicine would create death panels. Did you reflect on why they were scaring old people in this way?

Well, few things here. For one, any form of medical resource distribution creates death panels or the equivalent. There are not unlimited resources, therefore some people will not receive all they could have used. I don't think this is an argument against socialized health care. (I think that socializing health care would result in massive cost disease, and that efforts in the US to move consumers farther and farther from the prices of health care are also counterproductive, but that's unrelated)

> Or the focus on how the left are actively wanting to kill babies, rather than wanting access to reproductive healthcare. Again, why would right wing media present this patently false image? What are they trying to achieve?

I'm pro-choice, actually. Also pro gay marriage, drug legalization, good sex ed in schools, etc.

But as to why people would present abortion access as killing babies? That's a really trivial question to answer - it's because they believe abortion to be literally killing babies.

> If you can understand that then you might understand why the media you consume is telling you that the left hates you.

I wouldn't say hates - at least not the vast majority of the left. Doesn't care about? Sure.

> Final hint, the phrase "identity politics" is itself identity politics.

Are you saying that the descriptor is wrong? It's been around for a while. [0] And if it's not wrong, I don't see what the objection is.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_politics

Okay so you're firmly aboard the libertarian to alt-right pipeline, I thought you might just be confused.

It's great that you still publicly identify with all the sane and sensible policies that Democrats have been fighting for for decades and have slowly achieved. It's sad that you can't support them in the American two-party system because they harbor so many communist, anti-white campaigners like the Clintons and Obamas and all those other people who would be center right in any sane political system.

But, no worries, you can easily claim to be even more right-on than them, because you're a libertarian. You can attack them for centrist stances they took two decades ago when Reason was still openly denying the Holocaust and supporting Apartheid and somehow hold the moral high ground as yet another Republican criminal gets elected to President and large numbers of the administration get arrested and jailed (weird how that just keeps happening, right?).

But you keep your eye on the real danger, there must be a sexual, racial or religious minority group that's taking things too far for your liking and that's well worth getting angry about. Luckily a bunch of Billionaires are really keen to keep that in the front of your mind at all times so you don't even need to seek this stuff out. Enjoy your anger.

Do you have any actual responses to what I said, or did you just want to call me names? Because I fail to see how any part of this comment relates to the previous one.

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