Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment

by Francis Fukuyama

The political strategy of building a left out of a coalition of disparate identity groups is problematic as well, as Mark Lilla has explained.13 The current dysfunction and decay of the American political system is related to the extreme and ever-growing polarization of American politics, which has made routine governing an exercise in brinkmanship and threatens to politicize all of the country’s institutions. The blame for this polarization is not equally shared between left and right. As Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein have argued, the Republican Party has moved much more rapidly toward the extremist views represented by its Tea Party wing than has the Democratic Party to its left.14 But the left has moved further to the left as well. In doing so, both parties are responding to the incentives that a two-party electoral system and popular primaries give to politically conscious activists. The activists most concerned with identity issues are seldom broadly representative of the electorate as a whole; indeed, their concerns have often alienated mainstream voters. Moreover, the very nature of modern identity with its emphasis on lived experiences creates conflicts within the liberal coalition. For example, controversies over “cultural appropriation” have set progressive blacks and whites against one another.15