Identity politics is not a recent infection, as I read it. Identity has always organized the U.S. party system. What changed is visibility and polarization. The Democratic coalition gathers minority status, city life, higher education, and cosmopolitan values, held together by a shared self-image of inclusion. The Republican coalition gathers cultural continuity, national belonging, religion, and a felt loss of status, with appeals to “real Americans” and “traditional values” as its markers. Partisan sorting has squeezed many identities into one label, so disagreement lands as personal offense. Social media pours gasoline on this by rewarding outrage and certainty and punishing nuance. The mechanism is in the monetization model.
U.S. politics is identity-first, with policy reasoned out afterward. Parties sell moral stories to different kinds of people. Voters buy the one that flatters their self-image and their fears. Once identity is engaged, reason becomes a lawyer, not a judge. My impression of Donald Trump’s supporters, not survey data, is that they want rid of what they see harming the country, fear immigration and the loss of their rights, and see the opposition as entirely corrupt. That caricature has consequences. The exit is a centrist coalition that rejects tribal loyalty as a virtue, borrows working ideas from both sides, and treats disagreement as information rather than heresy. As an individual, opt out. Refuse to signal, caricature, or dehumanize, since every act of performative outrage feeds a machine that is paid to keep the temperature up.