America has an addiction problem.

I’m not referring to the usual suspects such as opiates, alcohol, or tobacco, but rather to a far more sinister narcotic that drastically impacts the lives of millions of Americans every day.

It’s known on the street as “the struggle,” but white collar analysts refer to it clinically as “identity politics.”

Merriam-Webster defines it thus: “politics in which groups of people having a particular racial, religious, ethnic, social, or cultural identity tend to promote their own specific interests or concerns without regard to the interests or concerns of any larger political group.”

In other words it’s good old-fashioned tribalism, albeit one deeply rooted in the idea of victimhood.

The high, in which addicts experience the illusion of fighting some perceived injustice, is certainly a rush. The comedown, however, in which institutions and communities are ripped apart by the false narratives of social just profiteers, is disastrous.

Nowhere are the dangers of this drug more obvious than in America’s universities and urban centers, where red-eyed zombies intent on devouring those that may not look or think as they do wreak havoc on the social fabric.

Despite decades of progress, college campuses are once again becoming segregated, though this time by choice, and the cost of college tuition, already stratospheric, is propelled further skyward by administrative priorities that favor social division over actual education. And America’s cities, once living, thriving proof of her multicultural gamble, have likewise become besieged by segregationists intent on maintaining singularly ethnic communities.

While identity politics are nothing new—in essence they are as old as politics itself—their prominence on the American political scene and in American culture has increased alongside progressives’ quest to woo classes of disaffected voters by convincing them that they are, in some way or another, oppressed.

The results have been disastrous, as the Democratic Party’s pushers have divided America to the point that many pundits are openly discussing the possibility of a second Civil War.

Americans witnessed first hand the horrors of of the identity politic epidemic as Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court devolved into an absurdist drama in which the solidarity of women and sexual assault survivors eclipsed any basic sense of justice. The liberal female mob predictably rallied around Dr. Christine Ford, evidence be damned, due to their allegiance to their sexual and political demographics. Allegiance to the truth, it seems, is as taboo as cannibalism.

Of course, sexual assault is not to be taken lightly. But sharing a gender should never serve as an excuse to turn a blind eye to the facts, and while survivors should indeed be heard, they should never allow their trauma to traumatize the innocent; one person’s pain is simply not transferable to an entire segment of society simply because they share a similar skin color or world view.

This once-obvious notion is now considered heresy among American leftists, whose increasing control over our institutions is producing a seemingly infinite chain of victims and oppressors. Our schools, entertainers, politicians, and pundits are actively preaching victimhood over personal responsibility, a dangerous doctrine that ensures the further fragmentation of society into warring ethnic, sexual, and other-as-yet-unimagined factions.

Consider the recent clash between feminists and transgender activists who claim to be women (yes, this is actually a thing). While the feminist movement was itself built on the (at one time very real) idea of male oppression, today’s women greatly outnumber the trans population and have long participated in a society far too traditional and patriarchal to properly sympathize with the trans movement. Their refusal to recognize those born as men as one of their own makes them, in the eyes of the trans community, no better than the chauvinists of yesteryear, and therefore a power structure to be vanquished.

It’s a vicious cycle with no end in sight, as inevitably a smaller subset of the population will emerge to challenge their trans oppressors, and on and on we’ll dance until we are surrounded by ruins.

While Caucasians, and particularly white males, are the oppressor du jour, no one is safe—eventually every class of society is left holding the whip, and therefore must be toppled, whether they know it or not.

The existing cracks in America’s cultural foundation will widen, and a nation renowned for its “melting pot” mentality will have reverted back to its most primal, tribal origins. What made America “America” will have been but a whisper on the winds of history.

Sadly the carnage will produce little in the way of actual results, as society’s most vulnerable will only continue to suffer.

By being repeatedly scolded that they are “owed” something and mobilized to demand it, they will be beholden to the charity of others and, even worse, the state, neither of which are sufficient for true self-sufficiency. As these groups fail to take back what they see as rightfully theirs the cracks will expand, and legislative conflict will accrue the potential to become physical, as was witnessed in the 2016 murders of police officers in Dallas, Texas and the recent rash of violence at the hands of far-left agitators Antifa.

Simply put, the divisions inherent in identity politics are incompatible with nationhood, and countries as culturally calico as America are particularly inclined to fracture.

These lessons are nothing new, of course. Two millennia ago Jesus told the Pharisees: “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand.”

These days, however, conventional wisdom and common sense are but relics of a patriarchal power structure that must be overthrown at all costs, and unity wholly antithetical to the division necessary for identity politics to succeed.

And while it many ways they already have, every addict can be rehabilitated. For no drug is as powerful as the realization that though we all control our own destinies, we are likewise all in this together.