Politics is not religion, it’s tribalism. Partisans from both sides of the spectrum can be faulted for effectively recasting politics in general as shorthand for “identity politics.” But these identities often have less to do with the content of the ideas and principles at stake as they do with a gratifying form of self-confirming signals about the differences between us and them. Lazy politicians (and an army of consultants) who aren’t interested in challenging anyone’s ideas in general, and certainly not internally (for fear of offending their base) resort to baiting the other guy and trying to pass that off as asking the hard questions.
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