The Plot to Change America

Gonzalezs The Plot to Change America offers a slim reference to Marxist ideas only to ultimately effectively say, Dear White America, dont embrace your identity; a true American would not allow their cultural identity to matter. Well, cultural identity very clearly does matter, and its people like Mike Gonzalez that have been coaxing White america to give up their racial and ethnic identities under the guise of being somehow more or truly American. If youre a right-wing readeror are merely interested in expanding your understanding of the left-wing/Marxist ideas that have been aimed at destroying American culturethis book only offers the controlled-opposition neoconservative position that is actually intended to misdirect the average American right-wing reader and keep them from understanding the clear and effective path towards a true defense of traditional American interests. To better understand left wing and Marxist positions and their affect on destroying traditional America read books like: Fools, Frauds, and Firebrands (Scruton), Explaining Postmodernism (Hicks), The Culture of Critique (MacDonald), and books by Marxist thinkers themselves.

Gonzalez is absolutely correct that \”Identity politics is all around us.\” In fact, it\’s been around us since the founding of America. When white male landowners were the only ones allowed to vote, when enslavement of Blacks was preserved in the new republic, when Native Americans were slaughtered and pushed off their land–that was identity politics. Later, when monuments to the Confederacy were erected on public lands and US military bases were named for Southern officers and students across America were taught in schools that Secession was not really about preserving slavery and Reconstruction was a corrupt Northern exercise is brutal oppression — that was identity politics. When Blacks even today are pulled over and arrested and killed by police officers at per capita rates far higher than Whites, and polling places are closed down in predominantly poor and minority communities resulting in hours-long waits to vote — that\’s identity politics. The author is clearly not happy that folks with a different identity are getting fed up with identity politics as it has been practiced in this country for 250 years, and are demanding some changes. Too bad.

Here\’s a sample sentence fairly typical of what you\’ll encounter: \”Marx and Engels, as disciples of Hegel, appropriated his concept of the dialectica thesis confronted by an antithesis, reconciled in a synthesisinto their dialectical materialism, which they employed to critique economic forces.\” If you\’re like me and struggle with that type of writing, you might find this book more trouble than it\’s worth. Alternatively, if you\’ve got the brainpower to process that type of prose without difficulty, then have at it!

Identity politics is all around us. So begins Mike Gonzalezs trenchant new book. Anyone who was in doubt of the proposition has certainly seen otherwise over the past few months, as protests and polemics following the killing of George Floyd surged beyond combating racial injustice to question the legitimacy of the United States as a nation. Indeed, in recent years the concepts of objectivity, perfectionism, a sense of urgency and worship of the written word have been condemned as pernicious aspects of white-supremacy culture. (See Chapter 7.) How did we get here? Gonzalez answers the question by tracing the creation of multiple categories of racial and gender identity (Part I), a process enacted by and through the federal government, in particular via the census. He also plumbs the ideological roots of the new thinking, discussing critical race theory and various varieties of ethnic studies, as well exploring the institutional dominance of identity politics in the government, the universities, and, increasingly, the schools (Part II). What is to be done? Nothing, the attentive reader is tempted to answer. Gonzalez, a refugee from Fidel Castros Cuba, will have no truck with such pessimism. In his last chapter, he argues for cutting off the federal governments doling out of funding on the basis fo race and identity; to require findings of discrimination to be based on disparate treatment rather than disparate impact; and to change the public school curriculum away from its current focus on ethnic, racial, and gender-based division. He acknowledges that the task is enormous; but why is it so large? In part because the new ideologies are so well-funded, at every level of society. And here is where one might question the book: does it do full justice to the power of money? Today large corporations, the big banks, the major sports leagues are almost all vying for places in the vanguard of what is half-mockingly called woke capitalism. Its not just the federal (and state) governments, the universities, and the education system Gonzalez is up against; increasingly its the big corporations and the super-rich as well.

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