- IDENTITY POLITICS

Identity, conflict and community. Adherents of different identity positions could turn into Learners. Their shared identity could shield them from human rights abuse. Identity politics is so divisive it impedes progress. Elites, united regardless of their identity politics, thrive at the expense of self-fragmented identity groups weakened thereby. Reunited, Learners can set off PeaceWorld.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1106222/

LEARNER full text (2024) and chapters

All or nothing, PeaceWorld or death

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1106222/

APPRENTI texte integral (2024) et chapitres

Tout ou rien, Le monde paisible ou la mort

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WORLD WAR COVID
From WeaponWorld to PeaceWorld
Learner, begin

- IDENTITY POLITICS -

Let me begin by burying myself alive in my political identity ― if only to cough up my mandatory exposé and self-simplification everyone expects. 

If you are so passionately devoted to your identity position that you dismiss other kinds, you may dismiss me as just another damned American: rich, male, white, old and straight. Unclean! 

If you care as little as I do about my particulars, please jump to my discussion of identity politics in general, much more interesting at least to me.

Soon dead, give or take the next few decades you’re probably looking forward to while I look back on most of mine.

Rich: give or take the 90% of global wealth we should be sharing at the grass roots but don’t since we’re too busy back-biting each other over our precious identity positions. Instead, we could cooperate against the weapon mentality colossus. It never bothers with such trivia except to trip us up, rip us off and march the kids off to die. 

Once upon a time, the rich earned their keep by promoting the wellbeing of their subordinates. That was their point of honor and justification to rule, even if practiced more often in the breach.

Since the rise of the smirking quisling Ronald Reagan, they have waged economic war against us. Denying it all along, they’ve skimmed off all our benefits: salary gains, savings of all sorts from hard cash and solid stocks to dependable mortgages; employment security, compassionate management, labor union protections and retirement benefits; affordable health care and enhanced public health; educational opportunities for young and old; really innovative technologies besides trivial or lethal ones; reliable infrastructure and beautiful cities; sustainable agriculture and wildlife; crime control, justice and security for one and all; stable foreign relations and planetary peace; mild climate; solid and dependable economies, and trustworthy governance at every level. All of them reduced, one by one, since the 1933-39 New Deal.

They’ve used identity politics to anchor this thieving dictatorship.  Simply put, divide and conquer. 

Somewhere, sooner or later, an outbreak of weapon mentality will burn down homes and make victims disappear. That can happen by means of transcontinental nukes and scalar weapons, by mortars and tank rounds across the neighborhood, by political repression and police terror in the city, or up-close and personal with rioters, torches and maaachehtteh ― take your pick.

Someone wrote: “If the oil runs out in London and food trucks stop, it will turn into Darfur within a few weeks.” The same could be said for any community that relies on supermarkets for sustenance ― the world’s breadbaskets included.

I’d say I am comfortably off if not rich. I wrote this book out of artistic love for its sweet compulsion and because I could not find anything like it, with no work partner or benefactor. At the same time, I held down several small jobs for as long as I had to, without much enthusiasm. The best gigs on WeaponWorld involve bailing the Titanic with a sand bucket instead of a colander. I tasted penniless, friction-free, adult leisure for a few years while I was young and adventurous enough to enjoy them. Lots of free time is valuable for young victims of first love and to raise babies. For the elderly, leisure is more like a funeral: more to benefit the entourage than the guest of honor. 

If I hadn’t been so well off, I couldn’t have presented this text to you for free. Usually, people who make important discoveries are neither starving nor obscenely rich, neither dependent on their invention nor willing to compromise it to earn their daily bread.

White, though I bear the same fifty million genes everyone shares. On official forms, I’d rather put “Race: Other”. I get a rush from this designation. To my mind, those of every race are my brothers, sisters, ancestors and progeny; nobody is not. I celebrate the wandering Bantu, Maya, Berber, Mongol and Bushman (and blue-green algae) genes that grace my genotype. Mongrel stock is the strongest, as any good farmer will tell you. Go ahead and ask a dandelion.

I’m all-American: actually half French, 25% German and a wee quarter Irish. My parents were born on Madagascar and in Queens; and I myself, in the American Hospital on the outskirts of Paris. In other words, I’m a Yankee Doodle hybrid, a cosmopolitan internationalist and proud of it. 

Since the assassination of Kennedy and the war in Vietnam his assassins set up, I have spent my life agonizing over how Repugnant American leadership had to become to force me into the hills bearing an automatic, also as a grateful public dependent (army brat, Dad was a tank commander) and a proud public servant. Life is paradox. 

I am just as ambivalent about my Franco-American identity as anything else. The last minority crypto-bigots around here can get away with insulting in public ― at least in my absence. A noble and ambitious breed, that one: scions of the richest, the most powerful, the most reactionary and backward-looking nations on Earth … a drag on international treaties of peace, human rights and the environment; AWOL, not their champions. Birthplaces of the most magnificent ideals humanity ever aspired to and the foulest deeds carried out in their name.

German: Mozart, Kant and Goebbels; Kultur, passion passionately garroted, pretzel logic, science and civilization … and the timeless stink of military latrines. 

And Irish, finally, to cook up all this malarkey into a fine, mad, mulligan stew. 

Man: guilty as charged, last I checked.

Straight: how happy my wife and other ladies make me, each in her own delicate way.  

Or, as I'd have printed on a T-shirt: 

LEARNER:

Not of this species,

Not from this planet.

So sue me.

Around my first birthday, I chewed through the power cord of my crib light. I recall its Sendak grenadier ornament, so familiar since. The trauma itself became a swift, silent void for me, a flash of black veined with red. A painless memory, thankfully. European house current cauterized a third of my tongue, it reset my nervous system but good. Maman softly lamented I was such a happy baby before. Crib death had taken her firstborn son six years earlier; hell itself would not prevent her from saving me. I wasted imaginary time trying to replace his ghost instead of acting as the young, jealous and admiring brother of a real genius. There is a biological basis for eldest son primogeniture; young parents and their first-borns are usually stronger then later ones.

Ever since, I’ve dealt with infant-onset PTSD, ADHD, dyslexia, ephemeral short-term memory and cavernous absent-mindedness, all unrecognized as such. Despite Maman’s fine cuisine, all but sugar-dense foods were bitter fare for me until today’s weaponized sweeteners. My lifelong sweet tooth earned me type II diabetes. Genetic or reincarnation avatars who’ve starved to death may explain why so many people are obese these days, in psychic compensation; just like headaches from my healed first vertebrae reflect some past-life hanging.  

I got rewired for lone wolf eccentricity. This body, this people and this world: all of them seem strangely alien to me. Everything is so strange here, silly and sad. Nothing feels like home to me; not even my own body. I do not trust this universe. If this galaxy were openly compassionate like the Buddhists wished, it would pack itself with mindless but willing biomass in a cosmic moment. Imagine supernovas, neutron stars and black holes of gleefully compacting flesh. So death, wounds, grief and terror must prevail everywhere there’s life, because why? Is all that pain somehow simpler, more rewarding or more conducive to perpetual motion?

So we primates huddle around our latest camp fires and share what warmth, understanding and empathy this universe tolerates for the time being. Human compassion is to this merciless universe what the life force is to entropy and its heat death. We hold a thin, bright line against the enfolding darkness.

My memory is like a rooftop in a hurricane: everything on it can blow away. I’ve forgotten the name of people I worked with for years, at a job I retired from months ago. I interrupt conversations, not from incivility but because I must speak before I forget what I want to say, which happens often. Against new age advice, I plot my answers rather than listen more carefully. Many people take my lifetime dementia for failure to care about them, who they are or what they say. That’s not the case, I am an equal opportunity forgetter of people, things and spacetime coordinates I enjoy, dislike, don’t know or care about. I write notes to myself, but how to index and retrieve this flurry of random reminders? For all our gadgets and pixels, we are so clumsy with our data!

At school, I was labeled “clever but lazy” and coasted along on easy C’s. Homework was a blasted no man’s land I rarely crossed. Reading a page of a typically boring textbook, anything not captivating vaporized. Legal small print blurs on sight. I could not memorize so many boring dates and places and names, so I dropped out of college. Aristotelian logic seems incoherent to me; a bright child could punch a hole through its first premises. Scientists and historians are carnival barkers of nose ring supposition constantly revised as reality comes more into focus, with many gaping holes dismissed as pseudo science. What little math I understand fashions gorgeous epicycles out of nothing, subsequently divided by (n-1) to confirm the probability of what? Don’t get me started on calculus: turn algebra inside out, then those results inside out several times and inventory the results. Calculus professors have two kinds of students: they pass those who follow their convoluted number baking recipe on faith, and fail those who try to understand the underside of things and get hopelessly lost because the stuff makes predictable results but no sense.

I was a total nerd long before nerd-dom became viral. I love history’s varied topics and hunger for more. I keep hitting the books, hacking new trails through the triple tier canopy of ignorance that visibly grows back in my wake. 

No grownup diagnosed my problems or addressed them. My parents suspected nothing. Until recently, I never considered my liabilities strange or felt a need for professional intervention. Compensation strategies routine for ADHD kids nowadays were unheard of during my stone age education. It’s too late for me now -- old dog and new tricks. I’ve dealt as best I could, sailing blindly past reefs of lost detail and missed opportunities. Don’t bother arranging a meeting with me; I will miss it or the Fates will see that I do. 

I’m not bitter, rather proud of my jury-rig. I would not be me without those liabilities I either outswam or was mauled by. 

As Edith Piaf sang perfectly : Non, rien de rien, je ne regrette rien.

I know the easiest way to make a fool of myself (besides writing this self-revealing chapter) is to generalize about human ethnicity and race. As if that would hold me back!

As far as I can tell, bigot and identity politician are synonyms. It is just a question of which sub-identity you choose to be prejudiced for or against, and how passionately you believe yours will benefit by outplaying another. Everyone sings the same no-brain, zero-sum duet (“What I win, the Other must lose”) — the vacuous calculus of psychopaths.

At this point, you should realize that I have nothing good to say about identity politics and a lot to criticize ― having taken its backhand slap in the face on more than one occasion. Walk away if you’re so inclined, or stick around and hear me out. Just remember that every time you are excluded, punished or denied something important for reasons other than your merit and the content of your character (as the great Martin Luther King put it so aptly), someone else’s identity politics or your own have come into play. Judge not, lest ye be judged.

Any conclusion that one sex is responsible for peace while the other sustains war, that’s just another weapon myth and hopeless simplification. 

A partial (cursory and biased) list of names might help us challenge this prejudice: the Berber Al Kahina, Nehanda of Zimbabwe, Rama Valona the Cruel of Madagascar, Queen Ya Asantewa, the same Unzinga, Catherine the Great of Russia, Catherine de Medici, Elizabeth the Great of England, Joan of Arc, Maria Theresa, Rebecca Felton, Margaret Thatcher, Trung Trac, Trung Nhi, Phung Thi Chin, Trieu Au, Tsu Hsi (Cixi, the Empress Dowager of China), Mulan, Zenobia, Boudicca, Semiramis and Indira (versus) Mahatma Gandhi, Buddha, Ashoka and Martin Luther King. Sorry if I left out your favorite lady conqueror or peaceful gentleman.

The ultimate power of women should be their right to block the stupidest decisions men make (and insist on better alternatives). Had that custom always been obeyed, the worst decisions would not have been chosen and would be less likely selections in the future. 

While alpha-dominant males rely on aggression to begin with, many women tend toward cooperation and consensus at their expense, at least until their kids are in danger. At that point, look out! Alpha-dominant females can become more aggressive than stereotypical males. Once their elite menfolk had fallen in battle, female leaders were thrust into leadership positions and often fought battles, sieges and wars of annihilation to successful conclusion or extinction. 

Until recently, progressive leaders recruited more females than did the forces of patriarchal reaction. Nowadays, reactionaries find they can recruit raving maniacs just as easily among women and minority members as from among rich, old, white coots. 

Progressives should abandon their routine diffidence and replace it with the unconditional ferocity of females defending their young. “They’re threatening the kids! Go get ‘em!”

Our schools are pillars of weapon regimentation. To a great extent, women run them. In the absence of peace mentality, female chauvinists might differ slightly from their male counterparts, but rule no more wisely. Even though many women fill current military service roles, their leadership role remains marginal. Grooming women for war has exploded the population of female criminals.

Like the other pit-falls of identity politics, gender-based explanations of institutional degeneracy are merely divisive. The crux lies elsewhere. Why dispute the relative merits of pacifism over feminism or any other identity issue, for that matter? That would be as pointless as declaring one leg of a chair the most important, or one tree in the forest. 

What I mentioned about women applies to every abused minority: racial, ethnic, religious and sexual. Women rarely constitute a minority, but weapon managers mistreat them as such, (part of the Plant Trap, recall). The existence of harmless minorities has never validated their persecution. Such abuse merely empowers a minority of psychopaths nesting within a peaceful majority obeying good moral conscience. This tyranny, just another outgrowth of weapon management. 

In any case, the ultimate political power of females resides in their veto of male majority initiatives before the latter push everyone off the deep end. Behind successful men stands a woman sharp enough to let them know when to quit while they are ahead. We ignore this last word of womanhood at our peril. I repeat this idea because it is crucial.

Another weapon myth, upheld on both sides of the aisle, is that homosexuals make up some kind of progressive vanguard. Reactionary homophobes and progressive gays share a misconception that homoeroticism somehow promotes progressive ideals. Gay progressives maintain this error to raise their spirits. Reactionaries do so to brand progressives with the abhorrent gay label. Both parties realize they are lying. It is obvious there are just as many reactionary gays as progressive ones, and a lot more progressive straights than progressive gays.

The same thing could be said about the attitude of any identity group when compared to the remainder. 

The only difference is that reactionary gays must shut up about their erotic tendencies that their reactionary allies loathe, whereas progressives are slightly more tolerant and neither silence nor banish their homosexual allies. 

There is no point in giving up on general principles to advance one’s own cause or that of one’s narrow identity group. Even to the point of surrendering potent progressive symbols like Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition so that gays could adorn themselves with it exclusively. And losing vital battles like the 2004 Presidential election over getting gays to enjoy same-sex marriage before anything else can happen.

Whose mucus membranes get to rub up against who’s with full public approval: that priority would be fine and dandy if we were not facing a thousand more crucial issues. This non-issue serves weapon mentality as a perfect distraction from more pressing requirements.

Then again, 2017 has passed, and by some miracle gay marriage has become a legal reality across the land. Now, people can fall back on their progressive or reactionary propensities without worrying about the security of their sexual orientation. Progressive politics have served their purpose; they may now be dismissed in favor of a marginally more permissive status quo otherwise unimproved.

The same argument applies to people whose minority status is based on other criteria. For example, the argument between pro-choicers and right-to-lifers. Who cares how many innocent adults and children get starved and cluster-bombed while you others hash out your precious issue! Unbelievable and unacceptable on any planet but this one.

We are progressive because we believe in Progress; not because we belong to some random identity group supposed to be superior. Those who side with progressives merely to advance their downtrodden cause, who sacrifice important progressive issues to further those of their own identity group, and who turn into raving conservatives (or reflexively apathetic) the moment their own issue gets the upper hand: reactionary wolves in sheep’s clothing.

And we are all Learners, regardless of our identity position. All of us! Whether we choose to loathe or admire other groups, they are Learners just like us. Every Learner should be just as dear to every other, by definition.

The mobilization of women into modern worker and warrior status is another outcome of weapon technology. 

Weapons had become terribly lethal by the late 1800s; so much so that universal (male) conscription had to be adopted to meet enormous body counts. Weapon lethality has multiplied beyond imagining, since. Thus, modern combat demands more and more bodies to top off the stack, including women, the elderly and children. Such so-called non-combatants are found more and more often among the shock troops and shocked amputees of modern combat. 

This exponential surge of "non-combatant" casualties is nothing new. The weapon myth of risk-free non-combatant status – that warriors reserve mayhem for their armed adversaries – it is just another weapon myth. On the contrary, many societies ancient and modern annihilated entire regional populations: man, woman and child. Otherwise all the women and children were sold off as slaves after their menfolk had been massacred; the strategic routine.

Modern war massacres tens and thousands of civilians for every soldier it picks off. It is easier to gun down people who cower under the crossfire and don’t shoot back, or simply deny them survival necessities the military can always find excuse to seize.

Face it: we are all combatants. The question should be: are we Learner combatants who stand a chance at legitimate self-defense since we’re properly motivated and armed (like Swiss citizens are with their Federal militia)? Or are we a disarmed rabble of human livestock ripe for police-state slaughter; carefully divide-and-conquered and self-sabotaged by identity politics? 

You tell me.

A fundamental rule of victory is Concentration of Effort. Those who try to defend everything, defend nothing; those who attack everywhere, win nowhere. Instead of attacking in penny packets across the enemy’s line, or defending every point with the same determination and exposure, one must find a weak spot in the enemy’s layout and throw a crushing force against it. This massive reserve is accumulated by skimping dangerously elsewhere. Once the enemy’s line is shattered, additional reserves must be hurled through the gap. These powerful reserves can also counter-attack an enemy’s assault, assuming he thinks himself more powerful.

Weapon dissidents ignored this requirement; they defended each of their identity positions instead. They forsook all-important concentration of effort, thus any hope of success. Thanks to those politics, their weapons opponents became the only minority in power. 

We have failed to square off against racism, sexism and ageism. Instead, we have allowed professional equivocators and political compromisers to sidestep human rights with the poise of long practice.

I ask you: identity politics have brought us, what? True, we have universal suffrage. Yet today’s crooked politicians and their sociopath cronies have been brought to power by “universal suffrage.” It’s the same with every other social benefit rendered radioactive by the fallout of weapon mentality. 

I beg you, think this through. Who are your actual opponents and what are your real political goals?

Why not uphold education quotas and equal opportunity mandates until each minority and gender group achieves proportional representation? For every minority percentile of a population, the same percentage of minority candidates should take their place among judges, executives, business people, police, governors, legislators and professionals ― or chaos could loom from their absence. Simple merit would promote those most qualified from each identity group. Mediocrities, incompetents and sociopaths (most especially) would find it more difficult to justify their unearned authority in the absence of identity politics. 

What’s more, everyone must be paid the same rate for the same work, whatever their identity. Always keep in mind a weapon society’s triage for lots of cheap, underprivileged infantry.

Others claim that the adherents of the USA, the Western or Northern Hemisphere, the white race, Judeo-Christianity or some other dominant tribe are responsible for most social ills. Meanwhile, the claimants are blameless victims or vengeful freedom fighters completely justified. 

In perceived environments of dearth, the best players at zero-sum games form small, coherent groups of Winners to browbeat a majority of pre-defined Losers. The leaders (“Winners”) of each abused minority point to the ethnic majority as the cause of their Loser’ ills. 

Racial segregation is a sorting device of this kind, as are other forms of segregation: nationalist, religious and ethnic – largely cosmetic. Usually, the Loser majority in each group is set up to hate the Loser majority of other groups, even though they have more in common with each other than with their respective Winners: a minority within each group that protects itself by stoking hatred then displacing it.

In the end, info elites of every kind abuse info proletarians of every kind, especially their own. Rich whites always exploited poor whites (practice makes perfect). Reactionary Hutus hunted down every progressive Hutu before they turned on their Tutsi neighbors. Given the chance, reactionary Tutsis would do likewise with their own progressives. 

Replace your own identity militants in the same statement. Note how well the same shoes fit.

In the real world, human groups pick their leadership from their individual members. From then on, those organizations do exactly what they intended to do to begin with – otherwise, what they felt compelled to do by constraints beyond their control, insofar nature permits – with their leader’s cheerleading or despite his displeasure and eventual replacement. Tolstoy concluded as much. Any assessment of personal leadership beyond this narrow threshold must be absurd.

More often than not, this selection is based on pheromones, looks, birthright and aggression held under strict control. The political charisma of an Alexander or a Napoleon, and the sexual attraction of a Casanova or a Cleopatra, those may just have been the outcomes of irresistible body aroma; other factors, mere reinforcements or subtractions. We are drawn to them instinctively, the way a bee colony relates to its queen. 

I begin to suspect that personalities so noteworthy during their time in history, might have attracted many souls, in free-fall after their death, to reincarnate into their famous life. Assume that reincarnations of this kind transcend space and time, thus do not need to be sequential or nearby. No need to reincarnate in a body born after one’s death and in its neighborhood. Was that the source of their charisma: millions of souls reincarnated in them and acquiring focus once again through their eyes? 

Hitler, Stalin and Mao may have carried a scent just as attractive if not more so than history’s revered saints. Military history demonstrates that this political perfume and sanity do not necessarily occur in the same body ― and perhaps the opposite: only psychopaths and sociopaths might benefit from it. Note the notorious attraction many females feel for abusive “bad boys.” Or Republican voters for certified Repugnants.

Or could it be a negative trait? The ability to inhibit one’s bodily release of stress hormones and their unmistakable trace scent, the absence of which would soothe and attract normal people in stressful situations? It may be that “charismatic” historical leaders retained Type-O trace markers in their skin cells, accepted by all and sundry, that reduce stress levels and foster obedience and adulation in almost everyone. Think of Napoleon (especially in Italy) winning battles of annihilation by a hair’s breadth and directing his subordinates accordingly.

On the other hand, violent racists may suffer from an “allergic reaction” to trace markers released by the target ethnic group. Their prejudice might be the symptom of an immunological disease aggravated by societal norms of bad faith and misdeed.

This holistic and subliminal democracy occurs in most human hierarchies, regardless of other details ― never seriously studied by political scientists. Its results are often irrational, counterintuitive and counterproductive; but they remain sovereign in any case.

There may be another basis of racial and ethnic prejudice, in addition to the odor-mediated one or perhaps a bit subtler. Positive or negative, this bias might be based on immunological and neurological factors instead of sociological ones or in addition to them.

We can picture the human body as a dusty rag mop that releases clouds of dead cells whenever it moves, breathes or is touched; rather than a rubbery, cohesive outer covering, human skin consists of layers of cells the outermost of which are no longer attached to the body ― ready to slough off and scatter at the slightest touch.

Let’s assume that each cell contains one or more distinctive markers: trace biochemicals that identify the individual it was attached to: their genetic background, hygiene habits, diet and/or sexual attributes, among other ethnic or behavioral distinctions.

Nowadays, when a crowd gathers in a poorly ventilated space, they breathe each other’s detached skin cells. Personal prejudice (race, ethnicity, cult, etc.) might be a subtle form of immune reaction to those cells’ biochemical markers, trace elements of which might cross the blood-brain barrier in minute doses and trigger intimidate-fight-flee-or-freeze reactions; perhaps as powerful as those of family affinity, clan loyalty and sexual attraction.

Under certain conditions, a crowd of humans starts behaving like one collective organism beyond rational control. Blind panic, murderous rage or even mute adoration can spread through it like a wildfire. Likewise, groups of females housed together tend to synchronize their estrogen cycle and their periods. 

Biochemical, neurological and immunological markers like those listed here could explain these behavior patterns. Humans may react to these biochemical markers in the same way ants react to theirs. Human equivalents may be more complex, the same way our societies appear to be more complex compared to theirs.

This text suggests some ways to rationalize this process. We can quicken Learning and self-selection for excellence in our topic of passion, and use the world’s Virtual Agora to filter these neurophysiological factors from our politics. We could acknowledge them, study them, put them to better use and regulate their misuse ― as we’ve done with prior peace technologies.

Not long ago in the American South, white bigots sat around with nothing much to do, waiting for a black person to say or do something forbidden. There were thousands of such opportunities. At that point, they could vent their pent-up rage, mob the chosen victim and hurt them bad. Nowadays, not only do the least creative people of every identity group persist at this kind of abuse, at gunpoint if necessary, but they sit around doing nothing much more, waiting for someone outside their narrow identity circle to say or do something they might disapprove of, and try to ruin that person’s life. Such racist ambush predators are good for nothing else.

Bigots are racists are xenophobes. Shadism doesn’t care about the skin color, bone structure, habits, origins or religion of bigot aggressors and their victims ― just as long as they’re different and vulnerable. Sociopaths and their imitators (also the rest of us during our worst moments) need victims who have no way out. Racism serves perfectly.

No race or nation has figured out how to promote racial equality. Only an enlightened and heroic few have done so, born from two or more races ― often interracial soul mates and their mestizo children. Their example inspired social acceptance or triggered their suppression.. 

On the other hand, racial segregation is not imposed by a few brazen individuals, but by an entire race seeking unfair advantage from some happenstance strategic advantage. The same applies for other triggers of identity bias, including religion, sexual orientation and ethnicity.

Who is the worst racist? The dominant bigot who flays his soul by inflicting misery on others, his obvious equals? Or his victim seething with repressed rage and impatient for payback? Does it matter? The poison they share is still poison. The point is not to assign blame or score points, but to discover the antidote and administer it to all parties.

Racial equality comes about through personal enlightenment based on private experience: "That gentle person of the other race and his noble bearing showed me they’re not that bad… That (quote the most recent racial slur) is my partner; so shut up and back off!" 

Racial bias and segregation are based on cultural norms perverted by identity politics: "Since I was a kid, I was taught they are all worthless scum. My experience with them confirmed that fact because I forgot every occurrence that contradicted it." 

Identity politics is the central problem. Those who base their personal value (superiority) on identity politics are dangerously self-deluded. Being proud to belong to a specific identity group, that is fine. Feeling superior about it and debasing others for no other reason ― that is not. 

Personal responsibility is the solution. Those who base their actions and beliefs on a personal assessment of each individual, promote racial equality. In so doing, they demonstrate the nobility of their own identity position. On the other hand, racists make their race look bad, as well as all their other ideals, no matter how honorable they may be.

There is no escaping this truth; no matter how much comfort one may get from denying it. If you hate my words, feel free to call me a racist. That may let you feel better. Others have done so and thus confirmed my argument. The racist would be you, and the racism, your precious identity position, at least until you change your beautiful mind.

What does this have to do with the current ethnic situation in France? Here is what I propose. 

Ethnic bias is a cultural norm that promotes individual belief. Ethnic equality is a series of spontaneous decisions made by individuals, helped along by cultural norms. This reversal of dominant and secondary motives of behavior is very important. 

We can reduce racism by introducing laws and institutions that oppose it, or strengthen it by proposing contrary ones. But we can’t create equality unless we allow people to persuade themselves. Force and law may overcome racism; equality is not so easily enforced.

Human misery and inequality have this in common. Government can elevate or diminish them at will, since they are predictable, quantifiable and vulnerable to institutional meddling. 

Human happiness and equality have the opposite feature in common. They exist within the frame of mind of the individuals directly involved and have no real meaning as far as government is concerned, or vulnerability to being raised or lowered by government decree.

This is what happens when one attempts to force equality. Dutiful female students are forbidden to obey their family’s religious convictions. Forbidding them to wear the veil in the name of equality: that’s crazy! My French readers must seize this predicament before its unforeseen consequences overwhelm them. The ultimate podium of public equality is the guillotine ― to which my French readers must readily admit.

When it comes to human happiness and government’s obligation to do something with it, essentially indefinable and absurd (Defend it? Support it? Push on a rope with it?); those are favorite topics of Constitutional slavers, Repugnants and other meddlers with nothing better to offer.

That brings us to an interesting fork in the trail through the linguistic bramble. Misery is not the opposite of happiness. The former can be quantified (how much food and water did you consume today; how long have you been in pain; how many nights did you sleep in the rain?) whereas the latter cannot be quantified in this way. Go ask a suicidal heir to fortune or a panhandler whistling because the weather is so fine this afternoon. 

Likewise, equality is not the opposite of discrimination. Would equality be the same between the following pairs: identical twins, brother and sister, good friends, total strangers and the members of different ethnicities? Take two minutes to discuss. 

Whereas discrimination: “They are all inferior to mine own,” that’s pretty straight forward.

So what are the linguistic opposites?

Misery – Satisfaction

Happiness – Sadness

Equality – Unfairness

Discrimination – Proper Judgment 

For quite a while during many rewrites, I’ve had no idea what conclusion this tabulation should lead to. However, I suspect it is vital when discussing government functions.

Recently I’ve meditated on these things I must tabulate.

 | BAD | PREFERABLE | DEGREE | RIGOR | RULED BY | CONFIRMED BY | misery | satisfaction | governable | written | men | legal testimony
| injustice | equality | governable | written | men | legal testimony
| sadness | happiness | anarchic | poetic | women | profession of faith
| discrimination | goodjudgment | anarchic | poetic | women | profession of faith
| rape | n/a | by mores | polemic | ? | proof
| other crimes | neutralization | by current law | written | both | proof
| new offenses | liberation from | byjury decision | poetic | everyone | guilty confession

The trick would be to never again support racist aggressors, whatever their identity position ― even if it were the same as our own and therefore very tempting. Better we adhered to a group much larger than theirs; more secure, influential and benevolent than theirs; one that would shield us from identity aggression.

Up ‘til now, our basic political conflicts have been between an in-group and out-groups. Learners should merge into one cherished in-group, then invite every info proletarian and ex-info elite into it, leaving no one outside except those who only wish to be left alone in peace. As for those who would rather violate the peace: identification at infancy, exclusion from positions of authority, special employment and lifetime counseling. 

No community, no matter how well conceived, has managed to immunize itself from ingenious, ambitious and persistent Conspiracies of Greed. Every time you condemn an unjust institution, you are actually condemning that institution’s failure to control its socio- and psychopathic leaders who’ve taken charge. Without them, the same institution would mend its ways automatically.

In a weapon civilization, racial politics are as pointless as gender politics, nativism or any other identify position. It would be just as pointless to distinguish the skin tone, the riches and the sexual proclivities of the oppressed from those of the oppressor. If the situation were reversed and prior victims had achieved dominance, a similar bell curve of abuse and cooperation would emerge. 

If you claim adherence to a certain minority and assume your leaders will behave better than the current crop under the same conditions, you would only need to review the long-term outcome of every weapon revolution to confirm your error. If you could shift your gaze further back in history, you would be horrified to discover your own minority dominant somewhere and treating its subordinates with the same brutality. The only exception would be PeaceWorld.

Learners will not seek dominance limited to their own profit, but commonalties everyone shares fearlessly. Learning is a commonality every human can share in mutual peace and abundance. 

We would stop talking about replacing one information elite with another, expecting greater rewards for our own identity position. Instead, we would promote a Learner Commonwealth with categorically universal equity. No one would be left outside, who would rather come in from the cold.

“Stranger: Then you think that it is a waste of time, talent, and pecuniary means for the poor to contend in opposition to the rich and powerful? 

“Founder: I do; because if these who are poor today become powerful … they will then oppress those who may become poor by the change, and act just as the rich and powerful have always done ... from the beginning to the present moment.” Robert Owen, Dialogue, 18-20. Taken from The Life and Ideas of Robert Owen, by A.L. Morton, 1962, Monthly Review Press, NY, p. 125. 

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