The Problem is Inter Generational Politics, Not "Identity Politics"

there was a memorable line in a
mainstream Hollywood movie terrible movie but had one good line in it and that line was war is Old Men talking and young a man dying and I googled around to see if anyone else had actually used that before in some other language did that come from an ancient Greek source did that come from Shakespeare did that come from any plausible political philosopher and no apparently it did originate with a really crappy mainstream Hollywood movie so there you go some frustrated writer contributing to that project managed to get that into the script by and large party politics mainstream party politics is a struggle between people in their 40s and people in their 70s with the balance of wealth power and decision making being in the hands of the people in their 70s and the people who are in their 40s having the delusion that they're young and that they represent the people you know these are two different elites but when you look at the debates that currently divide the American Democrat Party the relatively young people in their 40s if those debates they don't represent the common man they don't represent the youth or the next generation or what have you but they are struggling against the entrenched interests of people in their 70s who are still holding on to power and influence in that party and who have a platform or set of objectives set of policy goals not really commence trouble with what those people in their 40s want so that is by and large the rule for how mainstream party politics works and at any given time you might have a little bit of a paradigm shift where the people in their 40s take over power and guess what it's not always an improvement we tend to use these vague terms like reform and progress as if the relatively young people with relatively new ideas are always going to be better and always going to be correct whereas the old people with the old ideas are always going to be wrong France has been through this several times just in the last 20 years they keep having these paradigm shifts where the new young people take over and everyone is optimistic for about six months this happened again with Emanuel Nicole so the current Prime Minister of France Matt Kroll he's about the same age I am you know what everyone regards him as young I think he's 41 41 is young right oh the young people with these new ideas are taking over well guess what they're terrible ideas guess what he used to be a member of the Socialist Party what did he represent after he gave up or quit socialism might be might be even worse than mainstream socialism now both 70 at the time this video is being recorded 71 percent of the population are opposed to the leadership of Matt crawl and there are literally riots in the streets and people building barricades and lighting things on fire demanding his resignation so that was quick and the history of other major leaders of France within my lifetime has been a similar kind of rapid inversion of public expectations the brief period of optimism that somebody coming into power represented new hope and new ideas and then finding out either they didn't represent any real meaningful alternative to what basically can be called neoliberalism or that the alternative they were offering was even worse than what they had before within the United States I think this same thing could be said to a limited extent about you know President Obama the the hopes that surrounded Obama when he was first elected and that this was some kind of turning point in the history of neoliberalism you have to go back to a much earlier stage of politics in the United Kingdom in England you have to look at the the first election of Tony Blair when Tony Blair published all the vague promises in his book the stakeholder society that was his manifesto when he came into power when people thought this was something new and different it was new and different from quote/unquote old labour there was old labor versus new labor and it's also supposed to be something different from neoliberalism which back then was called neoconservatism and we found out we found out just what it was that Tony Blair really represented and what he gave the British people so we have had a long series of disappointments of this kind in the succession of 40 year olds struggling to take power away from seven-year-olds absurdly in the United States right now Bernie Sanders represents the relatively young people and he is in its 70s you know about Bernie Sanders struggle against the Grandy's of the of the Democrat Party and you know the particular policy what goals Bernie Sanders represents obviously are more popular with both Democrats and Republicans than what the mainstream of either party now represents and maybe we'll see some interesting dirham unfold well coming out of that maybe not um I have a question sent in to me which was basically asking me about my own ability to identify with any political party my own ability to insinuate myself into or participate in the party system and for me in a meaningful sense this question I've gotten from Jordan Chariton Jordan Jordan's wife has actually been helping me with with Chinese lately she's fluent in Chinese so I've been writing and translating some things in the Chinese and have set her some questions and I really appreciate her or helped me on with that um identity politics is right now one of the most abused and most misunderstood concepts and political science and it's a great shame because in answering this question I think it's really it's really useful it's really important to be able to use identity politics in a meaningful and accurate sense there are millions of people millions who vote conservative for no reason other than the fact that they have always voted conservative that their parents and their grandparents voted conservative they have a kind of heredity of political party affiliation they've inherited what they think of as a political identity they may well put some work into cultivating their children trying to pass on that that political identity to the next generation properly understood the reason why we have this category of identity politics as something separate from ethno politics something separate from ethnicity is that there are important ways in which political identity operates in any given political theater as something quite distinct from ethnicity as something quite distinct from religion religious membership religious affiliation and you know it may even be something that that contradicts you know particular policy goals that you know you may have people who personally believe that abortion is acceptable and fine and good that they have no problem with abortion but they still feel committed to the political identity of being a member of the Republican Party in the United States or the Conservative Party in England or whatever example maybe in other anyway there are other cases look at gay rights or other sort of quote-unquote watershed issues and you find many people try to address those issues within their own party because their party affiliation comes first and foremost they're not gonna switch parties over that issue they're going to try to resolve or address that that policy issue that policy goal within their their party affiliations they can hold on to this political identity it's the point being um this politics especially mainstream party politics is not a theater of rational actor economic choice making people do not vote the way they pick a brand of toothpaste they don't stand there and look at the political parties like different brands of toothpaste and say well you know I want something that's all natural and made of organic ingredients but I want something that does have fluoride I noticed these hippie toothpastes they say all-natural organic but they don't have fluoride I want something that's approved they're not coming to this they're not coming to the political party aisle with a given list of policy demands and interests to then make those decisions in a rational in on a rational choice model they're not there are there's a sense of personal identity very often an ethical sense of identity now we've had a huge distraction for more than a century with the idea of class identity and class interest being a major major focus of political science and political theory my small number of yours I can ask you if any of you think the your political affiliation and voting choices would change if overnight suddenly you became much much wealthier than you are if you were suddenly promoted from being a worker to being an executive and an investor if your class identity changed would it change within five years what political demands what policies immersion and conversely if some of you in my audience are shall we say members of the ruling class if your financial fortunes suddenly became much worse if your class identity changed would your political identity change again sorry this is incredibly simple but it really is a great weakness in the marxist class analysis approach to society for most people whether they're rich or poor or whether they their class identity fundamentally changes from one period their life to another and for many of us it changes it many times most of us in the 21st century we may know what it's like to be rich we may know what it's like to be poor we may know what it's like to give orders and take orders work in different stations and different arrangements change careers change where we're living and the conditions of our life many many times um and yet what it is we're pursuing and how we pursue it in the mainstream political party system does not change with our class affiliation with our social classes affiliation our working class affiliation etc etc and we we have a very clear sense of both policy goals and identity politics properly understood as something meaningful and quite separate from class identity so in the 21st century it's peculiar that we can say it would be a luxury to have a political identity at all Jordan is writing to me saying that he feels homeless and rootless within the political party system I think the majority of my viewers feel that way well you say he doesn't feel he has a home in the Conservative Party the Liberal Party or the new Democrat Party these are the big choices in Canada he doesn't feel there's any easy way for him to sign up for any of these parties he doesn't feel that any of these parties are catering to him offering him a set of solutions to problems he can endorse her policy aspirations and goals he can he can get on board with well Jordan if I don't miss my guess you're at the time of life when you're in your 40s and politically it now becomes incumbent on you to stand up against the people in the 70s and in pardon me there are people in their 70s the people over 70 years old who control the parties and to either transform one of the parties to serve your interest or create a new political party I think this is the push and pull that in most mainstream Western democracies all the parties are gonna have to go through if you look at a checklist of the leading issues you really care about sit down and do this alone and challenge yourself to really be a hundred percent honest what would be the issues on your platform some people perceive me as left-wing or liberal some people perceive me as conservative um I'm I want a tough on drugs policy I do not see what sense it makes to quote-unquote tolerate people using heroin and cocaine in the streets of Vancouver in the streets of Victoria now if that's my only criterion if that's the only political objective I care about you know what political parties are gonna be a member of and wish I can't now I also have hard criteria I care about and then I probably care about more having to do with ecology environmentalism veganism and you know status of indigenous people native people indigenous languages minority languages going extinct you know there's a range of other issues where if those are on my checklist almost all of them are gonna force me to the left wing side of the Canadian spectrum the left wing parties will any of those parties have me can I participate in them or contribute aid can I contribute to them positively at all I think the answer is no and again I really do feel I've done a lot of polling I've had a lot of interaction with this audience over the last five years I think the majority of people watching this video whether you're watching in Australia or England or the United States or Canada wherever you may be I think the majority of people who watch my videos are living in countries where their fundamental policy goals their fundamental policy their interests alienate them from make them enemies of any of the existing political parties and that is right now in 2018 largely because in settled Western democracies the agenda the stated policy goals of the ruling mainstream parties have been created by people in their 70s people in their 80s people in their 90's an aging geriatric generation of political hacks who maybe were coming up with new ideas you know 40 years ago but have long since shuffled into a kind of holding pattern that disregards me as you know the examples United States are especially notorious disregards really basic really obvious problems like illegal immigration balance-of-payments international trade ignores the question of minimum wage the plight of the poor very broadly speaking ignores the question of how poor people are supposed to have health care nor does the question of how people are supposed to have poor people are supposed to access higher education and you know that's a generalization above the situation in the United States which the Bernie Sanders campaign throws into relief for all of us makes it very easy for us to see clearly honestly the situation in Canada is maybe only 20% different on every one of those issues we were just looking at the cost of tuition for getting a getting a diploma as a schoolteacher like a normal primary school teacher to be qualified for that in Canada and it's over 20,000 Canadian dollars per year anyway other programs here you know or ten thousand dollars and five thousand dollars it it varies it's not all it's not all the same but nevertheless I know everyone here in Canada can pat themselves on the back and say tuition is not as expensive in Canada as it is in the United States I just had an email from an old friend and colleague in New Zealand and I commented to her well look the price of tuition in New Zealand is way too high it cost University and her immediate response was it's not as bad in New Zealand as it is in Australia well and I believe her it's the same kind of thing it's very easy to make these excuses when you're not quite as bad as the the country next door it's dealt with true I've been on the streets of Los Angeles I've been on the streets of you know Seattle as well as Vancouver and Victoria it's easy to reassure yourself that the drug epidemic the drug problem is not as bad as in Canada as is in United States and of course that the illegal immigration problem is not as bad as geographically you know there are reasons why you'd have more illegal immigrants seeking out opportunities in California than in Canada it's also warmer down there and so on but across the board if you just put together what are your what are your basic demands and so on actually do you think that this problem is going to be very similar in in Canada versus the United States there was a time when political parties were incredibly powerful in what's called a party machine above all else because they provided people with paid employment I hate to tell you if you go back to the 1930s that's ultimately what it was they commanded tremendous fealty and they were just tremendously efficient and organizing people because they employed people and today you know many things have pushed and pulled that and transformed the quote unquote party machine how political parties actually work but today most political parties are really just a Facebook page they're a passive digital nexus for the dissemination of information and to a lesser extent collecting information and collecting donations from party inherence and party members and that's made everyone lazy now the old fashioned model of the party system from the 1930s it didn't make people lazy but it did make people corrupt parties were deeply involved in getting someone a job as a garbage man they were deeply involved in relocating the post office to benefit one part of town versus another if you really study political science that used to be the lifeblood of the party machine that massively motivated public participation at many levels in in many ways and there's no doubt in my mind that the most fundamental progress Bernie Sanders represents is actually his YouTube channel is the fact that Bernie Sanders now makes little short youtube videos that expresses what his concerns are what his policy goals are how he wants to get there and just this process of conversation and dissemination has already had amazing real-world outcomes I was just told that Disneyland of California they have resolved to increase their minimum wage within the company because of the criticism from Bernie Sanders the heads of Amazon Corporation have set a new minimum wage within their corporation just because of the critiques again that I've seen on YouTube to some extent they're also of course in lectures and written article form coming from from Bernie Sanders like never before there seems to be the potential for civil society to take over the role of the of the mass media to participate in you know what we what we now call social media and for civil society and formal party politics to work together to share information express their aspirations and then get organized to achieve real-world outcomes the problem is money I'm concerned about you know indigenous people in Canada I'm concerned about prison conditions use two examples if I actually want to go to northern Manitoba and you know let's say I have my my camera with me is use my cell phone camera and go and interview some people and look at political conditions and look at quality of life and government policy and what's been going on in northern Manitoba I could get into why I'm thinking of other Manitoba there's there's no point for this this video and I want to report back to that the potential for me to do that now thanks to YouTube in the 21st century and for me to actually draw attention to a problem and get government action or get government policy to change or better intervention or get the government to stop doing something that's not working start putting the money in a sign that will be working the potential for that is greater than ever before if I were to just go to a river and take a sample of the water and film myself taking the sample and put the water in a laboratory and pay them to do the analysis and then I start talking about water pollution in that River and where it comes from and film myself walking to the factory and film this spigot that's putting the pollution into that River from the factory you know YouTube empowers us to make a difference this way like never before and it's not YouTube in isolation and it's not just the interaction between YouTube and the audience it's ultimately an inevitably YouTube and Parliament or YouTube in the house of Congress it still does involve elected representatives having people in government that are going to go to bat for you at least in voicing those concerns that's a tremendously positive thing as never before however there is an absolute scarcity of money in that system nobody is gonna pay you to go up to northern Manitoba or remote part of Northern Ontario like a de la Paz cat no one's gonna pay you to go to James Bay and make that film and talk to those people and engage in that activism no one is going to pay you for going to the river and taking that sample and and running those tests whatever the particular issue is you decided to take a stand on and try to get involved in and the cost in the barriers to entry and the dependence of the whole system on donations means that the formal Party politics side remains utterly hopelessly in the clutches of retired people its retired people who donate the money and have the time and even location to be sitting at and dominating those meetings and forming the party agenda you know so what we're dealing with here is not so much a class analysis and not so much a difference in political identity it is really a generational clash or a generational crisis and this is one of the very few conclusions about political science in the 21st century that I can say is true of practically the whole of Western Europe North America Australia the shall we say the European parliamentary world and is therefore it's there anything positive I could say at the end of this video no I think that the powerlessness my generation still feels in its 40s the powerlessness I mean even felt by Bernie Sanders and Jimmy Dore and the Justice Democrats and all of the you know people militating for reform within the system I think that powerlessness is is very real and the contrast between that and the the false sense of power and community and camaraderie that you get from the internet from social media I think that's only going to incentivize people to disengage from the real world of politics and pour their time into frankly a simulated world of pseudo politics here on YouTube here on the internet and to disengage from political party system that seemingly has no interest in basically serving the public