‘The World as It Is’ Review: A Witness to Hope and Change - Note for a discussion, "E Pluribus Unum? What Keeps the United States United."

Martin Peretz, Wall Street Journal

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As Obama’s deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes was a White House myth shaper. His memoirs codify the myths for posterity. Martin Peretz reviews [Rhodes's] “The World as It Is”

Excerpt:

[C]hoosing Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton was not a falling-back; it was a genuine choice between opposing sets of values. When Americans chose Mr. Trump, they were accepting less economic certainty for more cultural cohesion, fewer benefits of internationalism for more national determination. This isn’t a new phenomenon, and it isn’t an exclusively rightist one.

The Democratic Party is currently tribalizing itself into identity groups, a tribalism that explains itself as a response to oppression but that also reflects a normal human need: to collect into categories that confer belonging and agency. But it’s hard to imagine Mr. Obama or Mr. Rhodes being interested in this: It’s a different conception of human beings and politics, one that calls into question premises of their own.