Alan Jacobs


political twins

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Some of the more aggressive leftist student protestors — these people, for instance, or these — have three things in common with the more aggressive Trump supporters:

  1. A belief that American society has profoundly victimized them;
  2. A belief that error has no rights;
  3. A  political strategy that embraces anger, threats, and attempts to bully opponents into submission.
The problem for both groups is that that don't have the numerical support to match their approach. They are small minorities acting as though they are vast majorities. I don't expect either group to go away any time soon, but each has chosen a strategy — or been driven by uncontrolled emotion into a strategy — that ensures political failure. Each group has gone out of its way to alienate every potential ally. They won't get what they want, but they're likely to be boils on the arse of the body politic for quite some time.