OPINION:
I am done with hearing political pundits reflexively characterizing the Trump presidency as “polarizing,” oblivious of the far greater destructive polarization of identity politics — a political strategy the president instinctively rejects but which liberal Democrats, including Barack Obama and Joe Biden, fully embrace.
We never hear pundits characterizing Mr. Biden’s embrace of identity politics as polarizing. (Nor will we ever hear him asked whether he regrets saying to a largely Black audience, in reference to Mitt Romney, “He is going to put y’all back in chains.”)
The Democratic Party uses identity politics to build electoral majorities by dividing the body politic into competing, demographically defined “victim” and “oppressor” groups, based on race, gender identity and economic class. It then champions the “victims” and demonizes the “oppressors,” polarizing society by engendering envy, suspicion and resentment between the two.
Identity politics, while a political strategy of the Democratic party, is also the foundational strategy of the left’s culture wars, the narratives of which we hear expressed every day in schools, the mainstream media, academia and popular entertainment: People of color are oppressed by institutional racism, “White privilege” and “White supremacy.” Women are oppressed by a paternalistic rape culture which imbues men with “toxic masculinity.” The middle class is oppressed by the greed of “unrestrained” capitalism and the wealthy.
Just look at the rage and hate consuming those who are burning and looting and attacking law enforcement in cities dominated by the polarizing politics of identity. They learn it not only from the Democratic Party, but from their schools and mass media, which are grooming them to believe America is an unjust and oppressive nation.
It is not Donald Trump, but the Democratic Party, that owns the profound cultural polarization shaking America to its very foundation.
KEN BECKERT
Abingdon, Md.
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