Identity Politics

The UK will soon get its third Prime Minister in a matter of three months.  Fifth one in six years.

After the Brexit vote, when Leave beat Remain by 52 to 48, I commented:

A referendum that was heard around the world. This will certainly have enormous repercussions throughout the world, for years to come. An event perhaps as important as the Berlin Wall coming down ... Real life is always infinitely more unpredictable than we can ever imagine.

I was cheering for Brexit, but for a reason that I have been warning about for years.  A reason that is common to both Brexit and tRump and trumpism here in the US: The loss of the importance of geographic and national identities in a rapidly globalizing economy.

Back in 2014, which now feels like eons ago, I was cheering for Scotland to quit the "united" kingdom.  Yes, of course, I want even the remnants of the old empire to crumble to dust.  That will be poetic justice. And I will continue to laugh at jokes like this one: A demon took a monkey to wife – the result by the Grace of God was the English.

But that was not why I cheered Scotland on.  I wrote then:

I am all in support of an independent Scotland for a very simple reason.  We are so much wrapped up with the idea of globalization that we forget we are humans and we like, we love, identities.  Identities especially when there is a long and rich history of the peoples.  Economics--being materially well off--does matter to us, yes.  But, we seem to overlook that we do not live on bread alone.  There is a lot more than mere material satisfaction that makes us human.  Identity--religious, ethnic, linguistic, ... and often these are also intertwined.

That was in 2014.

The post did not go well with one commenter, and I piled on:

My point was that economics aside, people have plenty of other values that cannot (and should not) be monetized. If they value that, and if they want to express that by wanting to go "Scot free" then more power to them. I assume they know what they want and what they are getting into. 

I would point to my old country as an example of a very high price being paid in order to maintain an artificial entity called India. There was no "India" in history and is a creation of the British. Up until the British Raj, those lands had different cultures, traditions, languages, religions, ... One of the worst decisions that the strong man Patel did was to force those who did not want to join the union by even employing the military.

I built on this as the Brexit vote neared in 2016:

The challenge, as I see it, is to figure out how to understand each other and engage in constructive cross-cultural relationships even while holding on to the identities and without making those identities as a metric for hierarchical comparisons.  The solution is not to erase the identities but to understand that we can create a much better future even as we tightly embrace whatever identity that we want to hold on to.

But, this was a challenge that the left-of-center did not take up.  The right-of-center wholeheartedly embraced it because they found a divisive issue on which they could stir up the emotions.

Going further back, to 2011, I quoted one of my favorite political economic thinkers, Joseph Stiglitz, who wrote:

Of all the costs imposed on our society by the top 1 percent, perhaps the greatest is this: the erosion of our sense of identity, in which fair play, equality of opportunity, and a sense of community are so important.

Way back, in 2006, I authored a newspaper commentary, in which I wrote:

We have been so wrapped up with our fascination with globalization that maybe we assumed that ours is a homogenous world. On the contrary, we have different languages, religions, beliefs, histories. And sometimes, people want explicit recognition of those differences.

So, yes, I have been talking and writing about this forever.

No new prime minister will be able to immediately provide a sense of identity and a sense of community.  Inflation and the cost of heating as winter descends will further agitate Britons of every political stripe.  Should Vlad the Aggressor decide to go nuclear in his failing war against Ukraine, the UK will be torn apart by domestic and foreign agendas.

Meanwhile, here in the US, the far right wants to clearly establish an American identity as nothing but white, Christian, and heterosexual, exactly as Jesus and the Constitution intended!  The old country is bulldozing its way to defining India as Hindu.  In China, you can be whatever you want to be as long as you do not talk about being a Muslim or a Uighur or protest for freedom.

Where do we go from here?

Moral clarity makes it simple: First, vote out the wannabe fascists wherever you have the right to vote! 

And then, compel the political leaders to articulate an inclusive vision that allows for distinct identities within national identities even as we work together as a global humanity.  In the old country, we were fed a line in the civics curriculum: Unity in diversity.  Here in the US, some of us cherish e pluribus unum as the real and only motto.

Otherwise, I need to remind you of this: "We have met the enemy and he is us."