A lot of the discussion you’ll hear about “identity politics” focuses on how immoral and destructive it is, and for good reason. Judging people on the basis of characteristics they can’t control is wrong.
Decent people understand that. But a lesser-known side effect of identity politics is that it leaves the people who believe in it — the daytime anchors of MSNBC, for example — completely bewildered by major political events. Identity politics makes its adherents significantly dumber; there’s no other way to put it.
Take the election of Donald Trump in 2016, for example. This was eight years ago, and by now, most of us have a pretty good idea why it happened. Trump, unlike Hillary Clinton, did not tell coal miners that he was going to put them out of business. He didn’t describe half the country as “deplorable,” or extol the virtues of free trade in towns where all…
