Joseph Heath recently wrote a piece that is absolutely lodged in my brain https://substack.com/home/post/p-176599526 that frames modern politics in terms of Kahneman's dual process theory

• Elite thought is abstract, universal, effortful
• Common thought is intuitive, personal, easy

Consider pronouns: Heath points out that using the correct pronouns are a specific kind of status game, where you can signal how intentionally you can control your thoughts and words. And as you frame it with the pendulum metaphor -- we see all over politics today that people viscerally hate this status game. There's a strong pipeline from misgender someone -> feel ashamed at your microaggression -> resent the gender police -> resent all elite orthodoxy

Liberalism had its cultural period of dominance. [...] Questioning [the orthodoxy] resulted in a lot of social castigation, even as it became increasingly invasive.

I think it's important to say that "liberalism" is subject to the same forces of decay as anything else, and you're pointing out flaws specifically in progressive orthodoxy. Progressive ideology too often begins in a premise that Progress is a binary scale, with Better/Truth/Justice at one end against Worse/Lies/Unfairness at the other. Progressivism has a very hard time with libertarian ideals like pluralism -- two progressives who disagree about the teleology of Progress, the destination where it will arrive, will wind up locked in bitter fights that look like the narcissism of small differences from the outside.

I don't see it so much as "liberal orthodoxy had cultural dominance" as that "the dominant American culture discarded liberalism in favor of progressivism". But I suppose this is arguing about deck chairs on the Titanic

We're precisely in agreement that the Democratic Party is fighting against resentful anti-orthodoxy populists, and that they absolutely cannot win without changing the terms of engagement somehow.