The Big Answer

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The Amazon blurb says that America has always been committed to the idea that citizens can work together to build a common world. Today, three afflictions keep us from pursuing that noble ideal. The first and most obvious affliction is identity politics, which seeks to transform America by turning politics into a religious venue of sacrificial offering. For now, the sacrificial scapegoat is the white, heterosexual, man. After he is humiliated and purged, who will be the object of cathartic rage? White women? Black men? Identity politics is the anti-egalitarian spiritual eugenics of our age. It demands that pure and innocent groups ascend, and the stained transgressor groups be purged.

For now, the sacrificial scapegoat is the white, heterosexual, man. After he is humiliated and purged, who will be the next object of cathartic rage?

The second affliction is that citizens oscillate back and forth, in bipolar fashion, at one moment feeling invincible on their social media platforms and, the next, feeling impotent to face the everyday problems of life without the guidance of experts and global managers. Third, Americans are afflicted by a disease that cannot quite be named, characterized by an addictive hope that they can find cheap shortcuts that bypass the difficult labors of everyday life. Instead of real friendship, we seek social media “friends.” [See Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?]

Instead of meals at home, we order 'fast food'

Instead of meals at home, we order “fast food.” Instead of real shopping, we “shop” online. Instead of counting on our families and neighbors to address our problems, we look to the state to take care of us. In its many forms, this disease promises release from our labors, yet impoverishes us all. American Awakening: Identity Politics and Other Afflictions of Our Time chronicles all of these problems, yet gives us hope for the future.

Mitchell says that "Americans have not lost their religion. Americans have relocated their religion to the realm of politics. The institutional separation of church and state may be largely intact, but the separation between religion and politics has largely collapsed.

Americans have not lost their religion. Americans have relocated their religion to the realm of politics—the new religion is political correctness with identity politics

"More precisely, with respect to the matter of presumption of guilt and innocence, they have traded places. Once, because of the doctrine of original sin, there was a presumption of guilt in the churches, and because of our legal history, a presumption of innocence in the realm of politics. Today, the abandonment of the doctrine of original sin has had the curious effect of lifting the burden of guilt in the churches— and of shifting it to politics. Whatever the law may say about our innocence, the presumption of identity politics is that man—or rather the white, heterosexual man—is guilty. This is a dangerous reversal of legal norms that in the Anglo-American world took centuries to develop and take hold.

One minute they make plans to “change the world” or “save the planet.” The next minute they are overwhelmed by a world so frightening and difficult to negotiate that they text message their friends rather than call them

"An entire generation of young Americans has grown up oscillating back and forth between feelings of extraordinary grandeur and utter impotence. One minute they make plans to “change the world” or “save the planet.” The next minute they are overwhelmed by a world so frightening and difficult to negotiate that they text message their friends rather than call them—in fear that an unscheduled call will be too much for either party to endure. This bipolar arrangement, increasingly lived out by the young and old alike, can be ameliorated only by face-to-face, real-time relations between citizens and the institutions of society." See Why Do We Need Communities?, The Forest Through The Trees, and The Responsive Communitarian Platform.

Mao's Cultural Revolution used Red Guards to beat citizens into conformance with his revolution; here he gets citizens to plant crops, after which he plants the citizens themselves

Mao's Cultural Revolution used the Little Red Book for propaganda

Identity politics is a form of secularized Puritanism, as surely as the ritualized hunt for racists at American universities is a farcical reenactment of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692

"Joshua Mitchell, a professor of government at Georgetown University, presents a cogent diagnosis of America’s dark night of the soul in a remarkable new book that should be required reading for anyone who wants to make sense of today’s United States. A Chinese acquaintance quips, “Now you are having your own Cultural Revolution.” In fact, the criticism and self-criticism sessions imposed on corporate employees and school personnel to root out hidden racism recall Mao’s Red Guards. But America is not China, and this is not a Cultural Revolution; it is an eruption of Christian religious feeling channeled into secular obsessions. . . . Mitchell’s accomplishment in American Awakening is to show that American self-loathing arises from a uniquely Christian sensibility of sin and redemptive suffering, transplanted into a perverse secular ideology. Identity politics is a form of secularized Puritanism, as surely as the ritualized hunt for racists at American universities is a farcical reenactment of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, which the Puritan leaders of Massachusetts first supported and later regretted. . . . The loneliness of American democracy drives us to embrace identity politics, Mitchell argues. Uniquely among American political writers, Mitchell perceives that it is the atomization of American society that drives the search for identity." (Source: When America’s religion goes wrong, Spengler, Asia Times)

Identity politics is a form of secularized Puritanism, as surely as the ritualized hunt for racists at American universities is a farcical reenactment of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692

"On the political left, explains Mitchell, the “woke” lift from Christianity critical teachings related to guilt and innocence, and in particular original sin and the need for atonement, and apply them to secular and temporal ends. But unlike what the Christian Gospel offers, the woke left offers no reconciliation, peace, or joy. The fruits of wokeism are perpetual penance, excommunication (cancellation), and humiliation. To be sure, Mitchell’s sharp rebukes are not reserved only for the lefty end of the political spectrum. He has sharp words for the Alt-Right as well, a group that he says seeks “nothing less than to return man to an aristocratic world, which is to say, a non-Christian world.” It, like what plagues the political left, cannot improve let alone save the American regime. Yet it is far less powerful than the identity politics that wokeism brought us. . . . So if we, as a people, finally rid ourselves of the stranglehold of identity politics, what should we replace it with, or perhaps return to? A competence-based, self-interested (properly understood!), liberal citizenship where we cooperatively face-to-face build our world together." (Source: A Retort against Woke Identity Politics: Review of Joshua Mitchell’s American Awakening, Rebeccah L. Heinrichs, Hudson Institute)

What ails America is the “three separable but ultimately related ailments” of identity politics, bipolarity, and addiction

"In American Awakening, Joshua Mitchell argues that identity politics is ultimately a relocation of religion to the realm of politics. Through an analysis that is theological, philosophical, and psychological, he offers a penetrative diagnosis of just what ails America: the “three separable but ultimately related ailments” of identity politics, bipolarity, and addiction. While mainline Protestant churches are deteriorating, identity politics wokesters have hijacked the Christian concepts of guilt and innocence, and stain and purity. This is taking place alongside a denunciation of both Western inheritance and the idea of liberal competence. . . . While vast improvements are constantly being made in the material economy, an “invisible economy” looms over us which measures transgression and innocence. Identity politics comprehends this economy “in terms of the relationship between visible groups.” Rather than focusing on who we are as individuals, identity politics is concerned with the “stain and purity associated with who we are as members of a group.”" (Source: America’s Identity Crisis: A Review of Joshua Mitchell’s American Awakening, Alexandra Nieuwsma, Providence Magazine)

As Dinesh D'Souza says, Feudal societies, like monarchies, 'worked' for many centuries before their eventual demise. None of this can be said about socialism. It is an utterly discredited system of ideas, like slavery, and it was discredited in a much shorter period. Slavery lasted for centuries—even millennia—before it was recognized as a thoroughly wicked and tyrannical regime of human exploitation. Socialism, which dates back to 1917, when Lenin founded the world's first socialist state, has had a much shorter shelf life—the USSR died in 1991 but at no time in its life could it be considered to be "working" effectively.

Feudal societies, like monarchies, 'worked' for many centuries before their eventual demise. None of this can be said about socialism

Today’s Socialists claim to model themselves on the “Socialism that works” in Scandinavia, but the truth is they're opting for the ugly Venezuelan Socialism model. The end result of socialist experiments is always failure, often as fascism, Marxism or communism. See Leftist Fascism.

The ruling elites in the United States of Socialism plan to be the leaders in the elite, not one of the feudal slaves. They want power out of one side of their face, equality for the sheeple out of the other

The ruling elites in the United States of Socialism want power out of one side of their face, equality for the sheeple out of the other

The simplist way to understand the leftists' view of United States of Socialism, where “identity socialism,” a marriage between classic socialism and identity politics, rules the left's roost, is to see the liberal elites as droolingly greedy—they want power at any cost. So they check all the right, politically correct, boxes in speeches proposing a socialistic utopia of complete equality. Once idiots on the left are lulled into complacency, sure that they will be TAKEN CARE OF by the liberal elites running for office, they vote for them. It is easier to vote for a greedy, lying ass clown who wants to erase your rights and your history than it is to study the issues, do the research, and vote intelligently.

Liberal elites want power for themselves, and their words about equality and taking care of the citizens are simply the words of hypnotists who know how to manipulate citizens via politics

When Harris speaks through her lying sock puppet Biden, he/she/they are usually lying through their hypocritical teeth

The trouble is, the elites are lying through their hypocritical teeth. They want power for themselves, and their words about equality and taking care of the citizens are simply the words of hypnotists who know how to get citizens to do as they wish them to do. Putting liberal elites in power is the goal, and all the pretty words are simply manipulations. The country the elites envision is to be a utopia of socialistic equality, with the tiny exception of the elites running it—who will slowly evolve into an aristocrisy of the powerful elites lording it over the sheeple. It will be the new Feudalism—serfs carrying royalty. Royalty who will quickly opt for totalitarianism once the sheeple start rebelling against the sham of slavery with an "equality" label on it.

This palace is where the Venezuelan leaders live, while the common people starve in slums, enduring hyperinflation (53,798,500% between 2016 and April 2019), escalating hunger, disease, crime and mortality rates, and mass emigration

• The Plot to Change America: How Identity Politics is Dividing the Land of the Free
• Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment
• Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt: Toward a Secular Theocracy
• The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics
• The Victims' Revolution: The Rise of Identity Studies and the Closing of the Liberal Mind
• Why We're Polarized
• The Smallest Minority: Independent Thinking in the Age of Mob Politics
• Death of a Nation: Plantation Politics and the Making of the Democratic Party
• The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism (The Politically Incorrect Guides)
• Identity Politics in the United States