Since the mid-2010s, cultural progressivism has been the dominant moral force in American life. In what felt like a blink, a crude and ill-considered ideology that divided the populace into “oppressor” and “oppressed” captured every major nonreligious institution in the U.S., including the news media, the entertainment industry, corporations, K-12 education and academia, professional sports leagues, and even the military. Suddenly, these cultural power centers began to speak in the same jargonistic dialect and react to breaking news in ideological lockstep. The result was a culture of uniformity unseen in the U.S. since the hyper-traditionalist 1950s.

But in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in southern Israel and the ensuing military conflict in Gaza, cracks have begun to appear in the progressive cultural monolith.

The discord can be seen in corporate America, where companies that have long capitalized on cultural progressivism through “woke” marketing have begun to fire workers for posting anti-Israel content on social media. It's been reported that both Apple and Citigroup have terminated workers for antisemitic behavior, while Starbucks, McDonald’s, and Google have all faced down internal revolts over their corporate response to the attacks. Even Coca-Cola, once thought to be a lynchpin of Woke Inc., has quietly scrubbed references of financial support for Black Lives Matter from its website due to the organization’s reprehensible use of the paraglider icon online and other statements of support for Hamas.

The same dynamic holds at universities, where progressive student activists have run afoul of university donors and future employers for their often brazen support for the terrorist attacks. While some signatories of the now infamous Harvard student group statement have attempted to walk back their participation in the protests following threats of being “blacklisted” by high-profile law firms, others appear to have doubled down. Last week, Ibrahim Bharmal, editor of the Harvard Law Review, was seen attacking a Jewish student on campus in full view of cameras. (The American campus is a safe space, it turns out — for rank antisemites.)

There also appears to be significant discord within the legacy news media concerning the proper moral framing of the conflict. For instance, the New York Times’s decision to rehire a videographer who’d been previously dismissed for publicly expressing admiration for Adolf Hitler drew sustained criticism from within the liberal media sphere. And MSNBC’s decision to bench three high-profile Arab anchors during Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza was lambasted by progressives online. More than at any time in recent memory, the mainstream press appears incapable of placating the entirety of its increasingly fragmented audience.

Not even liberal Hollywood has navigated the episode intact. The Writers Guild of America’s decision not to condemn the attacks rankled its many Jewish members, prompting some to withhold dues. And while the on-screen talent has been largely quiet, superstar actress and former Israeli soldier Gal Gadot has engaged in a near-constant pro-Israel campaign on her Instagram account, which has caused thousands of fans and even a few fellow celebrities to “unfollow” the Wonder Woman star.

With so much dissension in the ranks, it’s no surprise to see a significant weakening in President Joe Biden’s polling numbers. Despite being a faithful steward of the progressive cultural monolith over the course of three terms in the executive branch, Biden can only watch as the course of history splinters the fragile coalition upon which his power rests. The sudden outpouring of calls for Biden to reconsider his decision to seek a second term misunderstands the political moment: Yes, Biden is unpopular and seen as a failure, but that is a tiny political problem when compared to the dissolution of his base.

Just this week, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) accused Biden of being an active participant in genocide. Does anyone in his reelection campaign really believe that the sizable bloc of progressives who agree with Tlaib are simply going to return to the fold?

But these are perhaps the just deserts of exploiting a defective moral framework for political gain.

Peter Laffin is a contributor at the Washington Examiner. His work has also appeared in RealClearPolitics, the Catholic Thing, and the National Catholic Register.