The Swirl at large

 The demise of democracy and identity politics

Peter Hartcher in The Age on Saturday (29.9.18) wrote under the heading 'Identity politics looming large'  He dwells on Fukuyama's book Identity: the 
Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, and claims that Trump is the high priest of the low order of angry right wing identity politics.  He agrees that Trump's right is a reaction against the excesses of the left.

John Gray in the current New Statesman on the same topic slices through Fukuyama, who has no explanation for the rise of populism and Appiah, whose 'nominalism' which Gray accepts, does not account for the intensity of the search for both identity and dignity. (Thymos - surely what slaves have always sought, with little success)

"The remedy for populism, then, is the anti-essentialist philosophy of nominalism, according to which ideas that split up the world into definite kinds of thing are simply tools we use to simplify our dealings with an environment actually composed of an infinity of particulars."

Paul Kelly in the OZ describes the demise of democracy - partly because of the digital revolution and social media, partly because of the rise of identity politics, which tends to atomise the polity.(which comes first?)  He points out that representative democracy depends on social cohesion and a politically aware public.   But what happens when these don't exist?    Thatcher said there was no such thing as society;  her statement is even more relevant now.

Atomisation, anomie, the loss of solid ground, bearings and certainties, show up in the personal Swirl and as factors in current world turbulence and violence. So there may be a legitimate analogy between the personal Swirl and another version seen in social and political movements.

Change is so rapid, digital communication so immediate. Events tumble over each other on the screen, such that there is no space or time for reflection, or even careful consideration.  As the personal Swirl is sudden and unbidden, so the 'social' Swirl is experienced without being understood.