Atlantic contributor and author Caitlin Flanagan is out with a new piece wherein she both sympathizes with presidential aspirant Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and vilifies her DNA-test antics. The fault primarily lies with President Donald Trump, according to Flanagan, because his “bullying so unnerved the senator that she resorted to a bizarre and tone-deaf move.” For example: “For years he has told the world that Warren is a liar, meaning that her parents were liars and that her entire life has been a kind of lie.”

Trump’s supposed provocation led Flanagan to then compose this follow-up remark: “Imagine what it would be like to be the subject of one of Trump’s bullying campaigns, to have the most powerful man in the world ridicule you day after day, in his crude, below-the-belt way. What would you do about it?” Well, telling the truth would be a good start. Warren, who is perhaps 1/1,024 indigenous based upon a DNA test, wouldn’t be in this position had she not concocted a sham. As John Sexton reminds us:

Yes, [Trump] did mock her alleged heritage quite a few times in the past two years but he isn’t the one who told Harvard to list Warren as Native American in government-mandated EEOC reports. She did that. He isn’t the one who contributed recipes to a Native cookbook. Warren did that. He isn’t the one who bragged about having a Native American professor on staff. Harvard did that. Warren has said she never benefitted from her self-identification, but there’s no doubt Harvard tried to do so. And Trump isn’t the one who stuck to very specific heritage claims after genealogical investigations found no evidence of any Native American ancestor. Warren did that too.

That is the point in all of this, which Flanagan appears to dismiss or at least diminished its importance. However, she does make a roundabout point regarding the Left’s obsession with and exploitation of identity politics. She continues, “Putting one’s genetic information into the public conversation about one’s fitness for office is a bizarre idea. Moreover, her insistence that it would offer definitive proof of something her supporters believe in was tone-deaf.” In conclusion, Flanagan says: “The poison that has been trying to seep into our groundwater these past few years would tell us … that race is everything, the only thing. Genetic tests are filled with truths that are irrefutable and oftentimes terrible — how many people have learned from one of these reports that the man who raised them is not their father? That is their right place: the private sphere of the individual life.”

The Left has hijacked identity and turned it a double-edged sword. And on which side of the sword you fall will depend upon the racial history of your identity group. This is, of course, entirely antithetical to the teachings of someone who experienced real prejudice. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” His objective was equality before the law. Warren and Co.‘s objective is privileged opportunity. For this reason, identity politics is of the noxious variety.