The New American Political Ghettos

It seems there is an established political ghetto for everyone in America today. And the problem with this is…

Everything.

Everyone in Their Appropriate Box

Last week’s tragedy in Las Vegas was the most recent example. CNN reporter Jeff Zeleny felt it necessary to aver that many country music fans shot and killed were likely President Trump supporters. Enter the Trump ghetto. Then there was CBS executive, Haley Geftman-Gold who tweeted, “I’m actually not even sympathetic bc country music fans often are republican gun-toters.” Enter the GOP ghetto.

And we can’t leave out Penn State-Brandywine professor Angela Putman, who advanced the idea that the “work ethic” is an example of “whiteness ideology.” Thus, as LN Author Jeff Charles explains, “In her estimation, the belief in personal responsibility is something that is exclusive to white Americans.” Here’s the White ghetto.

For months now, women have been told that if they shop at stores where Ivanka Trump-wear is sold, they are a traitor to their sex – the Gender ghetto. Far-left publication The Nation wrote that those who voted for Trump are racists and xenophobes. Trump ghetto again.

Those who shoot firearms for sport are all Republicans. Don’t tell that to Henry Cuellar (D-TX) who is off the ghetto grid because he “doesn’t believe in gun control.”  Recently, during an interview for a position at Liberty Nation, I asked if the person was comfortable working for a conservative/libertarian/independent website. The answer was startling. “Well, I actually have good friends who are gay, so I don’t feel that comfortable working with conservatives.” The supposition, therefore, is that all conservative/libertarian/independent people are homophobes. The gay ghetto.

Some People Just Don’t Fit In

Political ghettos also cause a great deal of difficulty for blacks and Hispanics who don’t tow the party line. Black conservatives are all Uncle Tom’s paying homage to The Man. Hispanics and other legal immigrants who want immigration reform are traitors to their people.

And then there is perhaps the most persecuted group of all – Christians. The Christian ghetto is a big one: carry a Bible, believe in Jesus, and you automatically not only hate gay people, but you carry firearms in your pick-up truck with a Dixie flag in the window.  The most heinous of the Christian group seems to be the Roman Catholic sub-set. The entertainment industry, for instance, finds hammering Catholics a most lucrative business.  This year there is The Little Hours that highlights a convent full of sick and twisted nuns. Holy Hell depicts a sexually-deviant Priest. No need to continue. You get the picture.

The Danger of Collectivism

Everyone has a label. There is only black and white. Shades of gray no longer exist in American political culture. We live in a time and place that sees everyone in one dimension – not three – and they must be assigned to a political ghetto.  Once inside that ghetto, we can remove them from our consciousness. No point in mourning over the shooting of Steve Scalise (R-LA) since he’s a Republican. And those folks in Vegas – well everybody knows country music fans are a bunch of yahoos and hayseeds, so screw them for getting shot.

See how this works? This type of political matrix removes something essential to our culture – it removes our humanity. No longer do we see people as complex human beings with nuance, or even as individuals.

America has long been held up as a nation that reveres individualism, but we can no longer make that claim if everyone is assigned a political ghetto. Individualism requires an element of self-reliance and personal responsibility. Innovation is often the result of individualism. In letting a thousand flowers bloom, America has become a beacon of prosperity for the rest of the world. We’re not perfect, but we have always been the entrepreneurs, the originalists, the impresarios of what can be done when given room to breathe and create.

Collectivism, on the other hand, promotes the group over the individual.  It has a masterful ability to stifle and smother the human mind.  Just ask the people in North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela. Ultimately this is the primary purpose of all this political ghettoization – to collectivize people and group them so they can be manipulated effortlessly.

But life in the ghetto is not a pretty picture. It is violent, threatening, dangerous, and often repulsive. It is not a place where people want to live and certainly not what they desire for their children. So I say it’s time for the folks to rise up, say no to life in the ghetto, no to the labels and boxes and no to these collectivists – no matter what they cal