Can those of youbashing identity politics please explain what exacly you mean?
Identity politics means appealing to a group, outside the scope where the commonality of the group actually has some causal relation to the policy proposal.
So gay marriage is not identity politics, because it involves a real set of people facing similar individual circumstances.
Arguing about 'exactly which episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer are racist' is IP, because it doesn't.
In general, anything primarily about fiction, or involving real-world people in a way indistinguishable from fictional ones, is identity politics. Similarly, any appeal to arbitrary or fictional groups, like 'gamers', or 'whites', counts. A lot, but not all, of nationalism is identity politics, because there are few policies that are positive-sum for everyone in a country.
It is an undeniable fact that the most powerful forms of identity politics in the current world are Trumpism and Brexitism. This should be unsurprising if you are aware of the dictionary definition of the word 'majority'.
Failure to understand and successfully counter that, with either real policies or inclusive narratives, does represent the left's share of culpability for recent events.
]]>fascism is more properly called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.
Mussolini didn't say that, because he was Italian, and had limited English. What's more, there is in fact no record of him saying anything like it:
http://www.publiceye.org/fascist/corporatism.html
The Italian word 'corpo' means 'body'. The corporatism of Fascism was based on that metaphor; individuals were cells, the State was the brain, the leader the Dictator who took the inchoate will of the People and turned it into words.
This has nothing, other than a very distant common linguistic ancestor, to do with the idea of a modern limited-stock corporation.
]]>Probably better off with walled cities where citizens live, and patrolled zones for any agriculture that still needs tracts of land. Would look a lot like the Judge Dredd comics.
]]>So Brexit needs to be explained in similar terms, like:
While there were obvious concerns that another European war would trigger CASE NIGHTMARE RED, others were more worried that too much peace and prosperity would hasten CASE NIGHTMARE BLUE-GREEN. Plus of course there were valid concerns about those Belgian cultists whose idea of 'ever closer union' didn't stop at the epidermis.
So the boys in the forecasting division hatched a plan for a large-scale sympathetic-resonance based exercise to determine which was the bigger immediate problem. This was sold to the government under the cover story of a referendum.
This was entirely successful at it's intended goal; determining what was the worst possible course of action.
Unfortunately, ...
]]>Because that's exactly the issue she's addressing.
Yes, which is why I am basically saying her solution is the preferred one. If you disagree, and think it is wrong, you may need to explain your reasoning a bit better...
]]>They're implicitly accepting the slate nomination, just holding it at arm's reach. So I'd vote "no award".
Have to disagree with this; it is basically handing VD control of your vote. Which if widely followed would mean he could just list the five most obvious choices in each category, and throw the whole thing into chaos. Or just pick all competitors to the thing he actually wants to win...
A better rule, IMHO, is the Guardians of the Galaxy principle. Vote for it if you like it; feel no obligation to find out if you like it if it is only nominated due to being on a slate.
]]>the Laundry Series, Dresden Files, Rivers of London, Doctor Who and Harry Potter all feature super-powerful super-secret British occult agencies who were largely responsible for the unfortunate period where Britain kind of conquered the world a bit.
As pointed out by PC Grant sometime, a very high proportion of the world's population literally believe in magic, in the sense of casting spells. Sorcery is an explicit crime in all kinds of countries (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2228472).
Until fairly recently, the UK formally denied the existence of MI6.
If you start from the premise that magic and imperialism both existed, while hardly anyone in the UK really believes in that kind of magic, then there really isn't an obvious alternative to something like the Laundry. Which is why so many authors use it.
So inevitably, there are going to be a certain number of people out there who believe that James Bond and Bob Howard are approximately equally fictionalised; they make up names and stories, but background details like 'M' and Smersh are for real.
So you do wonder how many of the people running third world intelligence agencies, insurgencies, etc. think that way?
]]>Of course, he had them taken out and beaten up, and that was their last involvement in politics. He didn't even need to have them shot; any politician who can be openly beaten up without them being able to do anything about it has demonstrated their irrelevance.
Fascism isn't a game of gotcha, noone gets to set up camps because of the presence or absence of a comma, or a missing footnote defining a particular word. They get to set up camps when the legal system lacks the ability to stop them.
Note this is not a Godwin; the OP is already talking about camps.
]]>I'm using roughly the Marxist definition of class, where it's about the source of the money, not the amount.
There are far more socialists in the upper-middle and upper classes
Sure, once you get to upper class, there are rather more than you might expect, although sill a clear minority. Always has been, back to Oscar Wilde.
It's just that those groups are quite rightly called the 1%; their votes are irrelevant (the newspapers they own less so).
With Cameron introducing gay marriage, saying nice things about the environment, and not doing much about immigration that any other party wouldn't, it's actually fairly hard to find a liberal/cultural reason not to vote Tory (except, of course, Scottishness).
So it really is about the economics. Labour fell into the trap of trying to make the economics a cultural issue; in order to be a nice person, you should give poor people more money. Some did vote based on that; more said 'it's my money, fuck off' (and apparently didn't tell the pollsters).
Imagine if instead they had successfully communicated the message 'you work for a living; we will arrange things so that people who work for a living get paid more; here's how'...
]]>What sort of political black arts gets the common Brit to vote against his own best interests and side with the party of Thatcher, may dung and misery be upon her?
In a word, class.
Nation-wide, 62% of households are owner-occupiers, 20% are pensioners, 15% own significant quantities of shares. Half of the people who are not in those groups don't even vote, so that's the group that determines elections.
In other words, people who voted Tory or Lib Dem last time, people who would use the word 'my' about a house price, share return or tax bill. They collectively decided those things were more important to them than their wage, and so voted by class interest.
Fun thing about the modern economy; if wages never go up, they are a constant factor, and so politically irrelevant. Certainly Labour had no kind of visible plan that might cause anyone above minimum wage to think 'a vote for them is money for me'.
]]>But does anyone want to explain in very very simple terms why the following interpretation of Cameron's proposal is obviously wrong?
anyone can use encryption, providing they manage their own keys.
as at present, anyone managing their own keys can be ordered to divulge them by a court order.
if someone on the watchlist is using encrypted comms, goto #2.
if some company is offering a service that manages user's keys for them, they have to respect UK court orders in order to be advertised, collect money, and so on in the UK.
not knowing your encryption keys due to use of an key management service not authorised under #4 is not a valid defense against a charge of refusing to supply an encryption key on request in case #3.
It's a valid point that you will still get some social mobility from people having just enough money to stay middle class, but not to pass that status on to their children.
But back in the day, it used to be true that a middle class kid could be assigned by a test result to a secondary modern, not get any kind of education, and work in a shop. While there are still schools nearly that bad, noone with money to spare is going to them.
Somewhat more recently, it was still possible to try, but fail, to qualify for university.
Take away that major source of social mobility and you are left with only the outliers, the entrepreneurs climbing up and addicts dropping down. Doing moderately well, or moderately badly is no longer enough to cross the wider inter-class gap.
]]>I suspect it is more complicated than that.
The useful defininition of middle class is that you have both assets and wage income; a house, a specialist education, or just savings, as well as a job. The key is that both are significant, in that it would really misrepresent your social and financial position if you left out one or the other.
Falling wages and rising house prices both increase the proportion of people who, from a rational view of class-based self-interests, should care about their assets as much as their wages.
Which is why there is a pretty large chunk of people who read the newspapers they do, socialise withe the people they do, and vote the way they do. Almost certainly a plurality of the electorate; not just the Tories and Lib Dems, but Labour, UKIP, and arguably the Greens, are clearly either chasing that vote or at least saying nothing that would alienate it.
Which leaves the country with a large, but almost entirely heriditary, middle class. The children of that middle class, whatever their abilities, basically never end up as anything else. As long as house prices rise and ATMs work, if they do change class they are about as likely to end up as a millionaire, a heroin addict or even a jihadist as actual asset-free working class.
Wheras starting from no assets, buying a house is about as realistic a prospect as starting a company; no actual law against it, but anyone who succeeds in doing it will probably end up being interviewed in at least the local papers.
Thing is, there is only so large an unproductive middle class a country can support. Eventually you hit an equibrium where all the work being done is just supporting existing wealth, and real growth stops.
]]>If the conservatives wanted to set up camps, the lib dems would claim credit that they were only concentration camps, not the ones with fancy chemical showers.
If the conservatives did want to set up extermination camps, the Lib Dems would be 'yes, but they wanted to set up 4, not 3'.
And then new labour would say 'we only want to set up one camp, couldn't you go in coalition with us?' and the Lib Dems would accuse them of not taking the need for camps seriously enough.
If there is hope in British politics, it lies in the expiry of the lib Dem right-ward ratchet on politics that has been going on since the 1970s.
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