When the lambs is lost in the mountain, he said. They is cry. Sometime come the mother. Sometime the wolf.
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West
Democrats, please: Do not respond by doubling down on identity politics. That is poison in a multi-ethnic democracy.
— Jonathan Haidt (@JonHaidt) November 9, 2016
It’s a nice thought, but the lambs have been lost in the mountains and crying about identity politics for over fifty years now. Even with the wolf closing in, they can’t imagine doing anything differently. There has been plenty of theorizing about what Trump will mean for the philosophical reorientation of the GOP. It remains to be seen whether the left will be capable of anything more than perfunctory self-criticism, and I am certainly pessimistic in that regard, but the need for a conceptual overhaul is no less dire in their case.