what with the rise of hard-right politics and xenophobia in the mainstream sphere, and the associated severe weakening of women's rights, trans rights, Black and minority rights etc.
The other side to this is the aggressive focus of a growing proportion of the left (that has strayed from classic liberalism) on group identity, perceived grivances and "corrective" policies. Emphasizing differences and even elvating certain groups does have the opposite effect of judging people by the "content of their character". It creates tension and fules discord. This has played itself out throughout history and is well document in more recent events like the Rwandan genocide.
It has been normal for many years now in elite colleges in the US to have new students sort themselves by race and other personal identity at the first day of college and discuss their situation (read Coleman Huges for more on this). This is not how you create social cohesiveness. A culture of victimhood has been created and proliferated. And because there is no way for a white kid to be black (a high status "victim") many created an LGBT identity for themselves, leading to currently more than 22% of Gen-Zers in the US identifying as LGBTQ+ (which surely mostly does not reflect actual sexual preference).
Next, social media has put this subculture into contact with people far removed from it, who in turn feel their identity threatened. There is a lot of poverty and disadvantage in white America, especially rural. As a young man, growing up dirt poor in rural America, with bad prospects of having a job to feed your family and many of your friends dying of drug overdoes, what would be your reaction if you were asked to "check your privilege"?
So how can the problems be fixed?
Abandon identity politics
Change policies to help disadvantaged people by objective metrics instead of focussing on race, gender, identity etc.
Fix bad laws and policies, probably only possible by changing the ill-adapted US political system first, as as Maxwell Stearns suggests:
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1. Double the size of the House of Representatives, with half continuing to be elected by district, a new cohort elected by party, and the entire chamber based on proportional representation. This reform will allow us to end the two-party duopoly and create space for thriving third-, fourth- and fifth-parties that better align with voters’ values/worldviews.
2. Transform how we choose the president and vice president. Power to choose the president will shift from individual votes processed through the Electoral College to party coalitions within the House of Representatives. They will select the president and vice president from party slates by inviting up to five party leaders, in descending order of representation, to negotiate a majority coalition.
3. Provide a new mechanism for ending a failing presidency. The House can remove the president with a 60 percent no confidence vote based on “maladministration.” This standard is lower than the requirements for impeachment, and the amendments leave the impeachment clause intact. These reforms infuse parliamentary selection, proportional representation, and coalition building into the U.S. constitutional system while retaining and preserving our most essential institutional structures. The proposal would end the two-party system, create space for multiple parties, end partisan gerrymandering, moderate the most extreme ideologies, reduce polarization, and incentivize negotiation and compromise.
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