Governing in the Age of Outrage

This week’s outrage seems to focus on two freshman Representatives in the House.  Individuals who’ve made it quite clear they believe their faith is superior to all others and another faith is to be vilified and eliminated, if possible, from our political system as a good first step to its total elimination from the world.  They are supported by a third media savvy Representative and backed in a kind of “kid gloves” approach by their party leaders who choose to condemn anti-tolerance, but not really THEIR anti-tolerance.

Of course, those who recognize the hate speech as hate speech are all over this, many going so far as to question why we are even allowing “their religion” and “their views” to be a part of “our government.”

I guess the real question is how far will identify politics go, or how long will it take before we achieve the ultimate end of a representative government able to work for a common good, rather than vilification of all the various groups who are a foundation of what was once a homogeneous nation?

I use the term "homogeneous" for that is what I was taught as a boy.  “E Pluribus Unum” is found on our coinage, and it was put there intentionally to remind us that we are “Out of many, one.”

It should be obvious to anyone who cares to actually look at the issue of identity politics – it is all about the gaining of power and position in society.  There is no real secondary reason.  It is justified by saying we need to seek all the social buzz words like “tolerance,” “equality,” or “justice” but at the end of the day the groups who make these claims have shown no real evidence they want to stop at recognition or equality, they all want to dominate and destroy their opponents, just as the tycoons of the industrial age sought to dominate and destroy their rivals.  I think I can safely conclude this is a human standard, which would carry back to almost all human societies throughout written history.

As we embrace the new standards of identity politics and its major components of victimhood and intolerance it seems inevitable the two major parties, who’ve more or less guided this nation since the mid-1800s, will fracture and divide and perhaps become a multitude of parties with a need for coalition building – as is common in most parliamentary governments.  Unfortunately, most coalition building requires acceptance of mutual common ground, and in the age of Twitter^© common respect and acceptance seems increasingly unlikely in the public forums.

Just my two cents.