“Identity Politics”

Christopher Lasch and Michel Foucault told a similar story about the modern obsession with identity—and its dangers.

Christopher Lasch and Michel Foucault are rarely read side by side. Yet the two thinkers praised each other’s work, recognizing themselves as involved in a common project. Both assessed, on the one hand, the ways elites use networks of expertise and injunctions to moral “liberation” to strengthen their domination—and, on the other, the ways that modern people have come to look for knowledge of themselves from such experts. They shared a sense that beneath progressive policies for public welfare, demands for sexual freedom and identity-based affirmation, and therapeutic practices of self-discovery lies a dangerous potential for authoritarianism and alienation.

Beware the racial bean counters, nothing good comes of their efforts.

I refer to an Oct. 4 column on The Atlantic website, ominously titled “America Is Losing Its Black Police Officers.” In the piece, Atlantic staff writer David A. Graham laments what he perceives as the vanishing diversity in the ranks of America’s police departments. “[S]ome of America’s largest police forces are suddenly—and quickly—getting less diverse,” he writes, “as two trends converge: A wave of Black officers is reaching retirement age, and recruitment efforts to replace them are sputtering.”

This week, a bipartisan group of Senators came to an agreement over a new infrastructure bill that totals $550 billion, offering some hope to Americans that excessive partisanship won’t doom the legislation America needs to repair ailing roads, bridges, and other key infrastructure.