What needs to happen to heal DU's unnecessary "social issues vs. economic issues" divide?

[Prism]

66. People need to stop being jerks

There are a few dimensions involved, and I doubt it would ever be "healed" (some people are actually invested in the division because it's a useful cudgel), but some of the broader strokes.

1. Economic justice will never be reached without social justice. Even if income inequality were vastly curtailed tomorrow, you'd still have women and minorities getting paid less with less opportunities for education and advancement. Until the social attitudes and institutional prejudices change, the windfall of economic justice will not reach all people equitably. This is a simple reality of the world we live in. While I agree that class issues are important and are at the heart of what is wrong with vast swaths of our society, it is not merely class that keeps people disadvantages. It is institutions, it is our political system, it is the lopsided and discriminatory application of our electoral system. Economic justice is important, but it is not a panacea for all the issues that plague our more vulnerable communities.

2. Part of it is mere identity politics. Very boring. Bernie is an old white guy. Hillary is a woman. Hillary relates better somehow. This is identity politic ideology being applied uncritically. Power and influence trump identity in most real world instances. Someone ask those two gay guys who had Ted Cruz for dinner how much they deeply cared about the LGBT community. There is unfortunately an unassailable idea in some areas of social justice (unassailable because it is a sacred belief and can never be challenged without someone declaring an -ism), that mere identity imparts knowledge, empathy, and wisdom. Hillary is a woman and therefore must know much better what women need, or minorities, or the poor. This is silly on its face, but it's a thought that pops up again and again, and it undergirds a lot of the social vs economic fighting on the board. Fortunately, some people just state this sort of thing outright, so you don't have to spend a lot of time wading through subtext to divine it. And let's be honest, some people want to call Bernie Sanders a racist or a sexist so bad they can taste it, but his record prevents that. So, instead, we get a lot of bullshit mutterings.

3. Some people just don't like progressives. They're not hard to pick out. Been around for years. Since economic populism is a thing, that's what they're now against. Same shit, different year, different candidate. But since being against economic populism would be weird, they dress it up in social justice. It's transparent and boring. This is why we get all these White Vermont posts and whatnot. It's supposed to paint one of the most liberal senators of the modern age as somehow indifferent to anyone not white and male. It would be dumb if it also weren't so anti-liberal and insidious. There's a population on this board that are more or less, "If progressives are for it, I'm against it!" It's fine. I feel that way about ideologues sometimes, too.

4. Some progressives don't understand their privilege, and so don't understand that social justice means a lot more than class. They're too insulated from the experiences of minorities and women. They just plum don't get that it isn't merely a lack of job or income that is holding people back. That somehow, money raining from a sky seeded with the charred remains of the billionaire class will lead to a kumbaya moment, and all the old divisions will be washed away. This is naively idealistic thinking, more appropriate for a college freshman than a mature political class. I would hope what we're seeing the police and minority communities in this country would wipe out this naïveté once and for all, but it persists. I think it originates from a privileged tunnel vision.

So, basically we have a lot of people talking past one another. But we also have a lot of people who are actually invested in this division because they think it promotes their ideology or candidate. It's thinly veiled, and the insincerity comes whistling past from forty yards out.

A lot of silliness from silly people. DU, in other words =)