In George Orwell's masterful novel 1984 the government enforces a daily session during which the citizens of the country scream and shout their loathing at a video screen on which the image of their alleged enemy is broadcast. The session lasts two minutes and is called the Two Minutes Hate:
The behavior of today's left, is an unwitting replica of Orwell's vision of how a lobotomized people can be conditioned to act. Consider some recent well-publicized examples:
The Brett Kavanaugh hearings were punctuated by disturbed souls screaming their disdain at Kavanaugh for reasons many of them, if asked, could scarcely articulate.
Television host Tucker Carlson's wife, home alone at night, was verbally assaulted by a group of leftists who surrounded the house, shouted threats, spray painted graffiti on the driveway and banged loudly on the door while screaming their standard epithets at whomever was inside. It was understandably frightening for Mrs. Carlson who was thankful her children weren't home.
This same sort of behavior is occurring regularly now on campuses, in restaurants, on the streets, anywhere leftists can find someone affiliated with politics or politicians they despise. People are being beaten for wearing MAGA hats, speakers on university campuses are shouted down, ordinary citizens are being terrified, and that's exactly what the left-wing thugs hope to accomplish.
The irony is that among the mindless accusations that are hurled at the victims of these deplorable encounters is that they're haters and bigots, when in fact all that these virulent, snarling zombies are doing is attempting to camouflage their own bottomless hatreds by directing the accusation at their target.
The tactic is designed to wrap the shouter in the mantle of righteousness while vilifying the victim. There's never any attempt at dialogue because the screamers know that they could never prevail in a calm, rational airing of ideas. Indeed, they have no ideas. None of this is about ideas. It's about exercising power and intimidating and silencing those with more brains than themselves who, because of their superior intelligence and education, are seen as threats.
Anyone who disagrees with the left is labelled an "extremist" or a "fascist," though few of those who invoke the term could explain what a fascist actually is. If they could define it they might recognize that it's they who are employing the methods of classical European fascism. They call themselves "anti-fascist," but the only substantive difference between them and neo-nazis is that the "antifa" don't sport swastikas.
By branding the opposition as extremists the left seeks to marginalize and discredit them, to exclude them from the public square, notwithstanding that their opponents' ideological, political or philosophical positions might be profoundly compelling. Actually, it's because their opponents' ideas would be seen by fair-minded people as rational and persuasive that those opponents must be shut up.
Another tactic the left likes to employ is to accuse those who disagree with them as being "phobes" of one sort or another. This has the effect of making their opponents seem subject to irrational prejudices and hatreds, to be unbalanced and neurotic, in any case not anyone worth listening to and perhaps not even to be permitted shelter under the umbrella of free speech.
These people would only be irritating naifs, immature emotional adolescents to be dismissed with the advice to come back after they've read some history of the horrors of the leftist revolutions of 1789 or 1917, say, or accounts of the hideous cruelties of the left found in Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago or Valladare's Against All Hope, or novels like Koestler's Darkness at Noon, or Orwell's Animal Farm or 1984, were it not for the fact that historically the left has always opted for violence, repression and tyranny as their power and influence waxed stronger.
Violent, unhinged rhetoric leads ineluctably to violent, unhinged behavior. So far, we've witnessed only isolated cases of extreme, violent derangement, like the shooting of Steve Scalise and others at the GOP baseball practice in June of last year, but as the suppurating infection of left-wing psychosis continues to fester, the violence is likely to become more frequent and more widespread.
We can expect recurrent assaults, insults and attempts at intimidation by the left in the months and years ahead, but hopefully the thugs won't be successful at cowing the rest of society into submission or bending our institutions to their will. If they are successful, though, well, go back and watch that video again.