You: What do you think of the Gaza situation?
Me: That’s the problem.
You: What do you mean? I asked for your view on the situation.
Me: My view is that the question you asked is the problem. The problem is that we are asking questions about Gaza. If we were not asking those questions, there would be no problem.
You: Please explain.
Me: You asked me about Gaza because your mind is infected with “identity politics virus”. If you are a leftist, it takes the form of oppressor (Israel) — oppressed (Palestinians). If you are a rightist, it takes the form of civilization (Israelis) — barbarism (Palestinians). Either way it’s bad. Identity politics is the cause of the crisis. The model for a successful world is Switzerland, which is (mostly) free of both right and left identity politics, at least compared to most other places. The German, French and Italian speakers mostly get along fine.
You: But why can’t I ask you for your views on Gaza?
Me: Because you should be asking me about more important conflicts, such as Sudan, Ukraine, Yemen, Burma, etc. The Arab-Israeli conflict has been going on for my whole life. It’s tragic, but nothing new. It’s boring, and relatively small. The fact that you asked me about Gaza shows that your view of what’s important has been distorted by identity politics, which is exactly the same factor that causes the problem. Hence your question is itself part of the problem.
It’s easy for Americans to look at a country like India, and say, “Tsk, tsk, the caste system is obviously bad, why don’t they get rid of it and treat everyone equally?” But Americans fail to see the problem in their own country. Indeed, we are constructing our own caste system, which is just as evil as the Indian system.
White, black, Hispanic, Asian, male, female, gay, straight, trans, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, etc. People are people. Stop viewing them as part of a group. No Muslim travel bans and no affirmative action for Muslims. And no shaming of people for switching race, gender, religion, etc.
Laissez-faire.