Identity politics

So — Superman has come out. He’s gay. I know, stop the presses, another figure of the comic book universe is being stripped of his straight, white, maleness and tossed into the volcano of intersectionality. It’s about as edgy and groundbreaking as a consumer-product survey. I was less surprised to learn Superman was getting pinkwashed than I was to find out Superman isn’t Superman anymore. There’s a new Superman, apparently, and it’s Clark Kent and Lois Lane’s son, Jonathan Kent. According to DC Comics sometime this month he’s going to kiss a dude and, poof, be gay, or bisexual, or whatever. It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a pillow-biter! What it isn’t is believable. I mean, have you met any of us gay men?

It seems that recent events, from Black Lives Matter protests to J.K. Rowling’s transphobic Twitter rants, have given the wrong sort of people (Trump supporters) an excuse to inject their ignorant negativity like a poisonous bile into the noble veins of identity politics.But what is identity politics? Identity politics is a beautiful way in which we can bring people of all backgrounds together, before labeling them, allocating each of them demographic privilege points according to their place on the oppression hierarchy pyramid, and finally segregating them. Think of it as scratching a societal OCD itch of needing to organize the books on our shelves into alphabetical order. It’s neat. It’s tidy. It makes sense.

It’s being sold by some as a glorious revolution, but what Western culture is really experiencing is a garden variety nervous breakdown. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when it began, but it’s certainly well progressed, wouldn’t you agree? The latest mania for gathering in furious mobs to denounce and expunge reminders of our past is what therapists call transference. We don’t hate our forebears anything like as much or as vigorously as we hate ourselves. How could we? They gave us everything we have. Instead, we are shamed by them. Born into what, statistically, is the easiest time in human history to be alive, what have we done or worked towards relative to the men and women cast in bronze or marble who came before?

This article is in The Spectator’s October 2019 US edition. Subscribe here. America’s colleges and universities are in crisis. According to the latest data released by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, enrollment is down 1.7 percent compared with 2018, following a drop of 1.8 percent the previous year. If you contrast 2019 with 2017, that’s more than half a million fewer students. The brunt of this decline is being felt in New England, the center of America’s higher-education sector. In eastern Massachusetts, eight colleges have either closed or merged in the past four years, while in Vermont three colleges have gone to the wall in 2019 alone. Most experts think things will get a good deal worse.

Identity politics has long been the cornerstone of Lebanon’s constitutional system. Seats in parliament and jobs in the government bureaucracy are divided between Christians and Muslims, with a Maronite Christian serving as president, a Shi’ite Muslim as the speaker of the parliament, and a Sunni Muslim as the prime minister. Despite a long and bloody civil war, not to mention major changes in the demographic balance of power, this system has survived more or less intact since 1943.

Last night, as I was safely tucked up in bed with a kale smoothie, I was visited by three apparitions, each one determined to change my outlook on the toxic nature of Chr*stm*s. The first ghost appeared at midnight, a shimmering androgynous specter floating in front of my window. ‘Godfrey Elfwick, I am here to show you the error of your ways. Come with me on a journey into your past...’ they said, proffering me a semi-transparent hand. ‘Erm, excuse me, what are your pronouns?’ I inquired respectfully. ‘I’m sorry what?’ was the answer. ‘Well, do you prefer to be referred to as he, she, they, xe, xie, ze, ve, yo...’ As I listed all 592 currently available pronouns, I could see the spirit’s eyes begin to glaze over, and so I took hold of their hand.