"This" started with Republicans, no question, Conservatives are still so much further along the fanatical path – liberals and progressives and socialists and anarchists and whomever else, after all, didn’t elect Trump; but just as the comment section of every article written since 2000 feels packed with conservative trolls who probably own 10 guns each, I defy anyone to gape into the twitterverse and not see a million piggy eyes of left-zealotry staring back. There is no way for so many thousands of people to exist in a fever pitch of rage with the exact same take about the exact same issues without it eventually occurring to them all that the most extreme measures anybody can think of are the best way to enact the futures they wish to see. The social order of a previous age is coming down, and for me at least, it’s impossible to see the future without seeing a kind renewal of the mass turbulence that used to exist between Protestants and Catholics. One side is absolutely committed to equality – equality for all races and genders and orientations and communities, and if they eventually go far left enough, equality of wealth distribution, one side is absolutely committed to liberty – liberty from government, taxes, and all forms of community responsibility. One side abhors political correctness, the other abhors political civility. Whichever set of beliefs one believes to be correct, if you believe in them passionately enough, there is nothing in their name that you cannot justify. Whatever the cosmetic appearance, at bottom, the pathology is always the same.
From year to year, one 'side' is always ahead in the race to extremism, and from 1945 to 1990, there was absolutely no question in the world that the hard left was ahead of the hard right. The hard right is clearly far ahead in our age, but from decade to decade, it ultimately doesn't matter which side it is, they're both our enemy.
And they're both my enemy.
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