Identity politics beget identity politics, and it's always bad, period. The amount of comments in this thread alone talking about what "white people" are and ar

Identity politics beget identity politics, and it's always bad, period. The amount of comments in this thread alone talking about what "white people" are and aren't entitled to feel based off of their own privileges is representative of the wider left's own brand of identity politics, and quite frankly, racism. If you're a white person hearing day in an day out about your inherent power in society, and how much you've benefited from "your people's" exploitation of others, the first thing I can guarantee is that you're much more likely to be defensively thinking along these terms of group identity. Regardless of whether or not those perceptions of privilege hold true for your specific situation, a part of you gains awareness that a non-negligible faction is making these categorizations on your behalf. Where the identitarian reaction kicks in fully, though, is among the people for whom these tales of privilege and power quite clearly do not hold true. If you're born to two alcoholic parents who beat you and got you working in the coal mines as soon as you possibly could, it's not difficult to see why the prevailing narrative doesn't sound appealing. The absolute baseline human response to feeling attacked along these hard group lines is an identitarian outcry taking various forms, the mildest of which could be classified as "rising anxiety." I'm not saying that this is a good thing, I think it's a terrible thing, I just also happen to think it is an obvious result of the economic and political climate. Trump and his supporters are not a disease, they're an ill-conceived, but expected reactionary symptom.