Modern Age * Winter 2018 Against Identity Politics Aurelian Craiutu The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics By Mark Lilla (HarperCollins, 2017) A new specter is haunting America: the specter of "coming apart." Almost six years ago, when Charles Murray published his book with this title, two other keen interpreters of the American scene-Thomas E. Mann and Norman Ornstein-warned us that "it's even worse than it looks." The seeds of partisan polarization, they claimed, are deeper and had been planted much earlier than we think. They presented the Republican Party as ideologically extreme, scornful of compromise, and skeptical of scientific facts. Things may seem to them a little better on the other side of the political divide, but even there the situation is far from perfect. Revelations since the 2016 election point to a Democratic Party without compass and whose internal procedures appeared to have been rigged to favor one particular presidential candidate in the 2016 primaries. The electoral triumph of Donald Trump signaled what seems to be the end of a long political cycle. Although it took many by sur126 modernagejournal.comhttp://www.modernagejournal.com