Or the young woman in southwestern France who "cares for elderly people who live at home alone in rural areas, driving from one to another, to feed them, bathe them, offer a moment of cheerful company and understanding. She loves her vocation, loves helping old people, although it barely allows her to make a living. She will be among those who will have to pay more to get from one patient to the next."
Another "polluting oaf."
As commentator O Societyr astutely put it: "The Paris protests aren't over a fuel tax any more than Colin Kaepernick is about the American National Anthem. Kaepernick is protesting police brutality and the Gilets Jaunes are protesting their 'Let them eat cake' government."
The ability of leftists to reject the diversions and cut through to the crux of the matter in one case, while quickly succumbing to them in the other is a perfect example of the left's diminished attention to, and concern for, class.
As Tanden and Libe' remarks indicate, it's not just "identity" that's up there in the hierarchy of the checklist. As I've said before , the left has succumbed to deprecating a politics of class solidarity in favor of a politics of solidarity based on like-mindedness on a checklist of issues.
But this has things backward. Solidarity is not a matter of prior agreement. It's bedrock socialism that you can only build a movement with the working-class we have, not the one we wish for. Which means solidarity must start with material interest, not like-mindedness, You don't have to agree with me for me to defend your interests.
Agreement doesn't precede, it results from, solidarity. You get--earn and build--popular support for progressive, socialist, and revolutionary ideas and programs by defending and fighting for people's material interests, not by interrogating people who are in actual revolt against the neo-liberal state to see whether they have the correct ideas regarding everything on your checklist, and insulting and attacking them if they don't. That's the approach of the liberal intellectual, not the left socialist.
Agreement will come from respectful engagement in a common fight for a dignified life for everyone. Or it won't. There are no guarantees. Because everybody in a capitalist society gets " taught wrong on purpose ," a lot of people with a lot of half-assed ideas--whether kinda-sorta racist or sexist, or kinda-sorta authoritarian, or kinda-sorta in thrall to liberal capitalist politicians, or kinda-sorta self-righteous, or kinda-sorta skeptical of global warming--must get together and learn what ideas, attitudes, and actions help the movement, and what kind of bullshit will guarantee defeat and has to go. Or they won't, and the movement will fail, or turn nasty.
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