The Problem With (American) Politics

You don't have to go too far into this essay to find what the author wants to say.  This is the first graf:

Liberalism began as a political project that sought to curtail the role of religion in public life. Religious impulses haven’t proven easy to expel, however, even in secular societies. Contemporary secular liberalism aspires to be a universal project that supplants traditional religion and relegates it to the private sphere. Paradoxically, this process frustrates the spiritual desires of many modern secular people, who are unsatisfied with thin consumerism and wish to participate in something greater than themselves. Their mounting rejection of the liberal project has precipitated a crisis, one felt most acutely in the political realm. It has taken the form of a resurgent nationalism, an inchoate response to the suppression of faith that is inadequate and perhaps dangerous....

Umnnhhhhhh.....yup.  The secular project we live in is, perhaps, epitomized by Faceborg and its "mission" statement, to  “give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.”

The problem, of course, is this:  neither liberal democracy, nor Faceborg, nor any other secular project, will 'bring the world closer together,' and whatever 'community' they build will not succeed in the long term--and perhaps not in the short term, either.  That's because of that "spiritual" stuff mentioned above.

It's Augustine, friends, whose heart is restless until it rests in the Lord.

You may ponder awhile on how Donald Trump was the electoral beneficiary of Augustine's saying, and I'll get back to the essay later.