The left's inability to deal with its white guilt has undermined our national solidarity.

How did we come to be such a divided nation?  Mark Zuckerberg recently apologized for his social media's role.  Many blame the news media, some the economy.  The division is usually referred to as "ideological."  These are secondary factors.  The basic driver of the enmity is the convoluted means by which the left deals with its self-imposed white guilt.

The left tends to view people not as individuals, but as members of groups.  Leftists embrace identity politics, which lends itself to manipulation of ethnic, racial, and gender-specific groups like so many men on a chessboard.  This artificial construct of society creates an ideal infrastructure for the assignment of guilt.  The leftist elite group of secular, educated, affluent whites, cheerleaders of the new left, has been indoctrinated into believing that white privilege and white supremacist groups are the root cause of all social injustices.  These people wallow in group white guilt.  They are the ugly Americans, bearing the guilt of a racist nation, a land discovered by a racist, claimed by genocide, founded by slave-owners, built on slavery, and steeped in segregation.  America is guilty of imperialistic greed and globally usurps people of color.  "The system" is a chauvinistic old white males' club.  They need to show to themselves and others that they are innocent of and reject such bigotry.  They are the good people – civilized, enlightened, tolerant, and morally superior.

They identify with those groups they designate as being victimized and oppressed by their prodigal white supremacist brethren – blacks, Hispanics, native Americans, LGBTQs, women, illegal aliens – marching in solidarity with them so as to shed their white guilt by demonstrating their empathy and compassion.  The systemic failure of liberal leadership, most notably that of the Obama administration, to alleviate black urban blight; the selectiveness of their identity politics; and the sexual escapades of Clinton, Weinstein, Weiner, Franken, O'Neill, etc. serve to illuminate the hollowness of their concern for the "victimized."

They create social divisiveness by transferring and assigning their guilt to the oppressors – their unenlightened fellow whites who dwell on the dark side, driven by bigotry, self-indulgence, and hate, attaining their goals by subjugating others.  These people are guilty of not feeling guilty.  And just as evil are those of like mind who, although perhaps lesser achievers, are equally guilty: the deplorables.  The oppressors and the deplorables, the conservative group, need to be scolded, ostracized, and silenced.  That does not sit well with the accused, who ostensibly must go to their rooms and repent, emerging only to plead forgiveness and kneel at the altar of progressive self-flagellation.  They, of course, do not.  Divisiveness results. T he oppressed are dragged into the conflict, riding the coattails of the white anti-white establishment activists, pressing their own separate agendas.

Our divided nation is the fruit of this noble, morally superior left-wing guilt trip.