identity politics is a different thing, really - it's the idea that you are not an individual, but a representative of an intersection of physical traits that define your experiences and ideas and feelings. as such, you are best represented by those that have the same intersection of physical traits. the history in critical race theory notwithstanding, i've argued previously that this largely comes out of the statistical reality of trying to analyze variables, and pull patterns out of the data, but it's an inversion of the process into pseudoscience: instead of looking at the data and trying to pull meaningful variables out of it, you start with a set of predetermined variables and then try to force reality into it. so, you're essentially breaking statistics by making it deductive instead of empirical. as you're operating on circular logic, your deductions follow trivially from your assumptions (they were picked for that reason). but, it's easy to see why the marketing people like this.

that's not actually what we're seeing in front of us, though, or at least not in the sense that it actually works.

i'll invite you to do your own research into how elections worked at the beginnings of the modern era, when the vote was extended past the landholding classes and first to white men without property, and then to white women without property (white women with property could always vote.), and then to a wide assortment of other groups that were initially excluded from the process. how did that work?

well, to begin with, you have to understand that the vast majority of these people, these white men without property, were unable to read. they had little understanding of who or what they were voting for, or why it would or would not be in their best interests. so, you had ridiculous things like candidates giving out free beer in exchange for votes, and you had to find ways to direct these people that you were giving free beer to to vote for you, because they couldn't read the names in the list. so, you'd give them detailed instructions: it's the third option from the top and looks like this symbol: (insert name). or, you'd tell them what colour to vote for.

so, while these people did not understand what they were voting for, they were able to participate in the process via a little bit of direction, a little bit of help.

i think what you're seeing in the media's forceful adoption of what people are calling "identity politics" has more to do with low information voters, and is essentially a continuation of this process that you saw in the nineteenth century. instead of instructions and colour codes, the media is trying to operate via identity, but it's not actually about identity so much as it's about training them to do what they're told.

the major flaw in the left's approach for years has been it's insistence on trying to use laws to restrict the power of money in politics, rather than to try and teach critical thinking so people can work it out on their own. and, we've essentially reverted to a more primitive era as a result of it. now, we're stuck scratching our heads wondering why people are so fucking stupid - but we should have seen it coming and tried to reverse it.