"The Culture War Gives Life Shape and Meaning"

"Twenty-first-century communalism is a peculiar kind of communalism. For starters, it's very socially conscious and political. Whether you're on the MAGA right or the social-justice left, you define your identity by how you stand against what you perceive to be the dominant structures of society. Groups on each side of the political divide are held together less by common affections than by a common sense of threat, an experience of collective oppression.  Today's communal culture is based on a shared belief that society is broken, systems are rotten, the game is rigged, injustice prevails, the venal elites are out to get us; we find solidarity and meaning in resisting their oppression together. Again, there is a right-wing version (Donald Trump's 'I am your retribution') and a left-wing version (the intersectional community of oppressed groups), but what they share is an us-versus-them Manichaeism." 

David Brooks at The Atlantic warns that "[d]oomsaying can become a self-fulfilling prophecy."