This week, the troubled state of American democracy was on display in the reactions to the mass shootings in Texas and Ohio. To the establishment Left, led by the New York Times, the El Paso shooter operated as if he were a white nationalist acting on orders from Donald Trump. Some on the right, meantime, linked the Dayton shooter’s actions to Antifa. In a healthy political environment, Americans, regardless of political views, would consider these tragedies the heinous actions of disturbed people, motivated mostly by a dangerous combination of madness and ideology. But in our warped political climate, everyone assumes that their enemies want to kill them.

Our political polarization reflects a decline in the notion of American identity. Tribalism on the left has supplanted foundational ideals of citizenship. Representative Ayanna Pressley recently insisted that blacks, Hispanics, gays, and members of other minority groups must promote identity-first politics over any notion of the common good; failure to do so, she suggested, is a betrayal of the group. In addition, progressive Democrats have effectively championed open borders, advocating the removal of criminal penalties for border-crossers, who also would get free health care not readily available to most American citizens. Such views represent the triumph of identity politics over the civic ideal of E Pluribus Unum.

The Left’s positions, according to Jeh Johnson, Homeland Security secretary under Barack Obama, are “unworkable, unwise,” and lack support of “a majority of American people or the Congress.” And yet our press, cultural institutions, and universities—all controlled by progressives—amplify those views each day, shaping an angry younger generation with little use for citizenship, free speech, open dialogue, democracy, or capitalism. Some 40 percent of millennials, for example, favor limiting speech deemed offensive to minorities—well above the 27 percent that prevails among Gen Xers, 24 percent among baby boomers, and just 12 percent among the oldest cohorts. Many millennials also dismiss basic constitutional civil rights and support socialism over free markets.

While progressives seek to impose their agenda, some populist conservatives are understandably resentful at being told by 1 percenters like Beto O’Rourke that they are beneficiaries of “white privilege” and are members of the “male patriarchy.” Most Republicans, according to Pew, worry that foreigners are remaking and undermining the country’s identity. Considering the country’s demographic trajectory, this politics has a limited shelf life. A return to 1950s America is no more likely than the mass expulsion of Trump’s white “deplorables.”