The Storm Before The Storm, by Rod Dreher.
The rising Left is bound and determined to crush or at least permanently sideline people it deems heretics — in particular, whites, males, orthodox Christians, and skeptics of the LGBT project. It does not want a pluralistic modus vivendi; it wants total domination. The establishment Left lacks the will to stop them. Its members are terrified of appearing un-woke. …
The establishment Right lacks the will to stop them either, for fear of being called bigots. And it lacks the will or the imagination to stand in any way against corporate interests. …
The real glue holding the dynamic Left together is hatred of the Other. … For them, the culture war is of such paramount importance that it precludes economic-based alliances.
The real glue holding the dynamic Right together is hatred of the Other. … [They] would like to suspend the culture war and make common cause with the economic Left, but the Left is not interested. …
Christianity, in whatever diluted form, was for most of America’s history the ties that bound us together (whether or not we were Christians). Those days are gone. Liberalism, in the broadest historical sense, is secularized Christianity, and as such is parasitic on Christianity. When Christianity disappears, as it has largely done in Europe and is well on its way to doing in the United States, it takes with it the basis on which liberalism operates. Laws and procedures alone do not hold a people together. …
Bottom line: Identity politics will dissolve the traditional bonds that have held Americans together, and re-bind forces of the Left and forces on the Right to each other. Absent Christianity as a meaningful force in American life, liberalism will continue to fade into exhaustion and senescence. Illiberalism of the Left and of the Right is not yet fully mainstream, but that day is coming.
The thing is, you don’t get Hitler because of Hitler — there are always potential Hitlers out there. You get Hitler because of Weimar, and you get Weimar because the liberals are too corrupt and incompetent to maintain a liberal polity.
