In a podcast I did with Andrew Sullivan, he asked me about the experience of “liquid modernity.” And I said that there was a kind of cruel trap in it. We are told that we can “be whatever we want to be” and we are told to make our own identities, hopefully advantageous ones. And yet, because there is this freedom to reject and ignore, the project of self-creation ends with subjects who know themselves subjectively. Invited to create meaning for ourselves, we find that nobody is obliged to recognize what we see in ourselves. Nor do we live up to our own self-image, at least not in a satisfying way. This existential dread, I think, is what’s leaking out into our society and seeking expression and repair via identity politics. An endless array of kinks, genders, and novel sexual identities — otherkins, femcels, non-binary, and trans-Koreans — all seek some kind of validation. For Oli London, being Korean literally is having a different skin tone, a different shape of eye. This would predictably lead to derisive comments from our leading progressives, who could dismiss this all as an expensive attempt at “appropriation.” But, crucially, London added something that makes this claim more credible to progressives. “I was actually born in the wrong body!” he said. London understands what’s been at work in identity politics. There is a desire for spiritual renewal, for being born again, at work.