By 2017, these fundamental transformations were clear. Americans now scrambled to find their proper tribe (and on occasion gender), either for careerist advantage or for perceived protection, from the government. And the very rich had found a way to be the very cool, by virtue signaling their superficial embrace of tribalism, just as in private they continued to live their mostly apartheid existences. Shouting from the rooftops that one “celebrates diversity” meant that behind the enclave wall he didn’t need to.

The agenda of balkanizing America into tribes, and white/nonwhite binaries, and galvanizing the rich and poor against the middle class was Obama’s only real legacy. But it is a legacy that nonetheless fundamentally transformed America.