I often say “the Left has gone crazy.” But what this amounts to may be just this:

  1. the left has purged itself of almost all good ideas
  2. the left has become more cultic and tribal
  3. the left has tribalized itself into a corner, by which I mean it can no longer engage with ideas outside its own ideological bent, and
  4. is now panicking at the realization that huge swaths of the American public no longer cede leftists a high moral ground, now readily plying arguments against leftism that leftists have great difficulty addressing.

The left is not liberal any longer, so all leftists are left with is collectivist garbage — that is the first point.

Being more cultic and tribal means that they behave like I, in my youth, thought defined conservatives, by exclusion and marginalization, the constant and hysterical defensiveness — that is the second point.

But it gets worse, for in point 3, above, we witness leftists retreating so deep into their protective bubbles that they no longer even understand arguments that do not move them. They cannot, generally, explain their opponents’ notions without mangling them. This means they are constantly burning straw men. And are impossible to debate rationally, for rationality has left them. All they have left is rationalization.

And their panic at their own possible, likely future irrelevance — or merely at their newfound lack of impregnability — has driven them into a deep madness, as can be seen in their ideological support of lockdowns and now riots.

This is not to say that the right is irresistible, immune to the political psychosis. Right-wingers find it difficult not to go overboard for order, and lash out fecklessly when attacked. But they are not the ones left intellectually vacuous, ready for a grand implosion.

To witness leftists rushing towards their humiliation is to witness a horde under the guidance of the Imp of the Perverse.

twv

Arthur Rackham illustration of the Poe story, “The Imp of the Perverse.”