How Some Conservatives Are Portraying America

It seems that some, perhaps too many, conservatives have embraced one of things they detest the most: Identity Politics. When many people unite to oppose systemic racism in society, a significant number of conservatives complain about identity politics. And the same happens when members of the LGBT community speak out against the oppression they have faced. We can then all to easily guess how these same conservatives respond to intersectionality. In short, when a group of Americans have a grievance against the America of these conservatives' dreams, they complain about identity politics. For they say that such divides America over issues that sometimes they feel are either insignificant or nonexistent.

And yet, in giving a conservative view of the conflict between progressives and conservatives in America, Clifford Humphrey (click here for very brief bio) borrows from the same Identity Politics playbook that conservatives complain about when others employ it. 

In his article on the great divide between American progressives and conservatives (click here for the article), Humphrey says the following and we can almost here the ring announcer say, "In this corner":

If progressives are able to enact the regime-altering changes to the Constitution they are proposing (such as packing the Court and granting statehood to Puerto Rico and Washington D.C.), these relatively tiny islands of progressivism would be able to rule the rest of the country like feudal barons ruling over a countryside replete with serfs

and using quotes from William Smith, Humphrey said:

The "culturally radical and postmodernist narratives” of the Left are based on a Marxist model of pitting a supposedly oppressed class against a supposedly oppressor class in terms of race, class, and gender. According to this narrative, Western heritage and most of American history is described as “a great obstacle to the empowerment of oppressed minorities and the central driver of global crises.” The great antagonist in this narrative is of course “dead European white men

"In the other corner we have" Humphrey using William Smith again to say:

 Conversely, Smith mentions the competing narrative as “the true American civil religion,” though he does not say much about what that is. That story is the one that has been retold ever since America’s founding by its faithful statesmen, whether Washington, Webster, Lincoln, MLK Jr., and yes, even Donald Trump, who loves to tell “the story of America” as founded on “the spirit and the courage and the cause of July 4, 1776.

If Humphrey has any doubt as to why we have such a divide between progressives and conservatives, he would do well to read what he writes out loud. For he portrays progressives as predators who are distorting history, throwing shade on America's true self, and looking to exploit the suffering of others as a way to rule the nation. And Humphry claims that the last line of defense against these progressive hoards are the clean-cut, all-American conservatives, from what seems to be the 1950s, with their idealism and innocence. 

So let's unpack these quotes to see what flies and what doesn't. From the very 1st quote, Humphrey sees Progressives as looking to corrupt The Constitution in order seize power and rule over their more rural conservative fellow Americans.

We should first notice that while Humphrey claims that increasing the number of justices on the Supreme Court and granting Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. statehood changes The Constitution, it does no such thing. The Constitution clearly gives Congress the power to both determine the number of justices in the Supreme Court and grant statehood to whom it chooses. And we should note that both Puerto Rico and D.C. seek statehood so that they can be better represented in our federal government.  

So if The Constitution grants Congress the power to determine the number of Supreme Court justices and to grant statehood on territories that seek it, how can progressives be guilty of forcing 'regime-altering changes to The Constitution' by adding judges to the Supreme Court or by seeking to give statehood to Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C.? How can a person with a PHD in politics make such obvious mistakes? And if he misses such an obvious point, what how much credence can we give to the rest of that particular quote?

Humphrey's conservative beliefs are on clear display in the follow part of the 2nd quote listed above. For there he writes the following:

The "culturally radical and postmodernist narratives” of the Left are based on a Marxist model of pitting a supposedly oppressed class against a supposedly oppressor class in terms of race, class, and gender.

 From that quote, Humphrey seems to be saying that there was no discernible conflict between Americans of different races, economic classes, and genders until the Marxist model was employed. Is that what history and current events teach us. Does Humphrey expect us to believe that Whites embraced Blacks as equals while they enslaved them and regarded them as property? Is Humphrey saying that there was neither conflict nor oppression during Jim Crow? Can Humphrey not see the systemic racism that still exists in society today?

And does Humphrey deny that women too were oppressed for the greater part of American history? That women were the last voting block to be recognized as having the right to vote in America. That the position that women had in American society up through the beginning of the sexual revolution was not only far below men, it made a great number of women dependent on men as if they were children. How is Humphrey blind to the history of women in this nation? And even now, on a more informal basis, women have been often held down in parts of society well after the sexual revolution.

As for economic class conflicts, perhaps Humphrey is not aware of the decades-old, almost uninterrupted increase in both wealth and income disparities between the economic classes--also between the races. And those growing wealth and income disparities have now been followed by a political disparity that sees our elected officials paying far more attention to the interests of the wealthy over the interests others (click here for the news release version and there for the more technical version of the report).

As we look at how Humphrey describes the conservative challengers to the progressive bullies, he portrays them as recognizing the true America, the America of courage and cause. He lists Martin Luther King Jr. as one of those who is standing in the conservative corner probably because King talked about America's promissory note. 

And yet, much of King's words and actions serve as a basis for Critical Race Theory. King harshly criticized many parts of America in his speech against the Vietnam War in which he called the American government the 'greatest purveyor of violence in the world today' (click here for a source). King also spoke of two Americas in which those who were oppressed consisted of the 'other America' (click here for a source).

We could go on with other faults in Humphrey's article, but sufficient challenges to Humphrey's overall view have been made. We should note that Humphrey does a good job in commenting on whether the Civil War or Europe's religious wars serve as the proper comparison to the great divide that we see in American society today. And what we have today is a cold version of a religious civil war.

The beginnings of that war started well before Trump came to power. It really started with conservative talk radio. It started with conservative pundits giving their black-white worldviews of conservative Americans, who were constantly called great patriots, as the good guys and evil liberals, who sought to destroy what our nation is all about, as the bad guys. In other words, Trump wasn't the first to use flattery, fear, and falsehoods to make conservative arrogant and self-righteous while instilling them with a dread of the liberal threat. And we see that Humphrey is simply promoting that black-white world view, which is a key driver to the great divide in our nation, while complaining about that divide as well.

And what is even sadder is that we have bevy of conservative religious leaders who promote the ideas that Humphrey promotes here to the extent that one wonders if they are political pundits posing as conservative Christian leaders or vice-versa. Their message is that that past was overall good, despite some problems, for all Americans, not just the privileged. 

And it isn't that conservatives like Humphrey are the only ones contributing to the internal wars being seen in the US, liberals and leftists are now picking up the same attitude toward conservatives which conservatives have of them.

What drives the great divide in America is a sense of moral superiority accompanied by the demonization of the other side with falsehoods being told to fan the flames of each viewpoint. 

Humphrey's article is an illustration of identity politics since it portrays Humphrey's conservatives as potential victims of the of progressives to rule over them while promoting an 'exclusive' political view.