The Update to Say There Will Be No Updates

. . . at least, not from me.

It finally occurred to me that so many people were requesting invites NOT because I am a marvelous writer whose archives are full of delight and wonder, but because they thought I'd keep updating, only, privately. Exclusively. A VIP lounge blog! That is incorrect, however, and it's my fault for not making that more clear. I'm sorry.

Speaking of incorrect, a lot's been said about me and the positions I hold lately for which "incorrect" can only be a whopping understatement. I thought of addressing some of that, but my immediate reaction upon contemplating that activity was to feel exhausted. Remember: Your opponents online will win most of their victories not because you're wrong and they're right, but because you let them just plain wear you out. I see much better now what bloggers mean when they talk about being careful to whom they give their energy. And from the other side of it, consider that when someone doesn't seem eager to engage you, it might just be because you're trying to engage them on a topic they've already hashed out with forty other people recently.

And that brings me to the one thing I can't leave alone, because even my friends have suggested it--kindly, but nonetheless erroneously: With regards to so-called "identity politics," the fervor with which I make certain arguments has nothing to do with "convert's zeal."

I love you, lefty friends, but you seem to have forgotten that just a few short years ago I was having these arguments as a Republican with other Republicans, because if you happened to have been one of those sucker Republicans who supported same-sex marriage and was pro-choice, as I had been, such arguments are inevitable. Maybe it is possible to argue in favor of same-sex marriage or reproductive rights without relying on at least some notion of group identity for your support, but if there is, I never found it.

In other words, I may have come late to the term "identity politics," but not to the concept. It ain't a matter of having the zeal of the converted; it's a matter of feeling enormously frustrated to find myself having the exact same arguments on the left as I did on the right.

And mark my words, they are exactly the same. Lefty guys hate to hear this, and they love to self-righteously proclaim that it's different because they do not condone TORTURE. Do they get a cookie for that? Sure! Is it a very big or particularly delicious cookie? Not really, because how do you think Republicans got around to condoning torture? Do you think it might have begun when they defined "human experience" as "white heterosexual Christian able-bodied middle-class experience," promptly vowed never to acknowledge their own group identity but simply to term it "human experience," and started assigning gradations of humanity to everyone else? The history of the United States doesn't follow without that starting point, never even mind what's going on in Iraq.

To oppress others you must begin from the notion that they are not as human as you are, so it's okay. To keep track of humanity, humanity, who's got the humanity, it is helpful to sort humanity into groups.

But wait! If you sort them into groups, and vary your methods of oppression slightly by group, you run the risk that members of a group might begin using their shared experiences as organizing and unifying principles. Then they might organize and unify against you! And then they might fight back.

To prevent this disaster, you must do all you can to undermine the validity of group identities, even as those very identities (that, remember, your work created in the first place) are helping you keep track of which group(s) is/are the most threatening to established, "real" human beings like yourself.

These are not such loony or radical concepts, for one. For two, get over the fucking sandwich business already. Get therapy if you have to, but seriously: It's time to let that one go. This is just like that time Je55 G01dst31n kept referencing me at least once a month as a perfect example of Why Identity Politics Are Going to Get Us All Blown up by Muslims (and Interfere with the Ability of My Wife to Fix Me a Nice Frittata Besides).

Anyway, there's my convert's zeal for you: I am sick and tired of having this argument. And I'm sick and tired of blogging, too. The problem is, when I think of all the things I could be doing in a day, "blogging" simply doesn't rate. LAUNDRY is more fun than blogging to me right now. Until or unless that changes, then, this is it.

Thanks, everybody. It honestly has been fun; it's just not anymore.