In hindsight I should have known better, but sometimes a conversation that seems harmless at the time lingers long after it is over.Last November I was in San Sebastian in Northern Spain enjoying food and a beer at a local bar. As I was finishing my food, I overheard a young American woman a few feet from me speaking with her friend explaining, "You know he's going to run again. He's definitely running again."It was clear she was talking about Donald Trump,and for better or worse, mycervezaovertook my discretion, and I said to her, "I'm sorry, but he's not running again, he can't do it." She appeared stunned, and told me that Trump was going to change the Constitution and was absolutely running again. After some back and forth, she asked whether I wore a "red hat or a blue hat." She didn't like my answer, and then proceeded to tell me that I was a "horrible person with horrible values."I wasn't angry, but there was not much I could do; I simply finished my beer, said "muchisimas gracias," and left the bar. I was amused at the time, because from my perspective, the woman had been coopted by a distorted set of facts. Butseven months out, that conversation is a perfect example of our current political divide, and forced me to ask how we arrived at this point.
I enjoyed the benefit of a first-rate education - a prep school in Brooklyn, a private college in Pennsylvania, and law school in our nation's capital. For the majority of my personal and professional life,I have walked hallways and corridors with liberals and progressives. Many of my friends - both growing up and into adulthood - were Democrats, and I have listened to their ideas and worldview most of my life. My first vote for president was in 1976, and I responded as many college students at that time and voted for Jimmy Carter. I was taken by what I perceived to be Carter's fundamental decency as a person, but looking back, I had little understanding of either conservatism or the ideological differences between the two parties. More importantly,I had no historical understanding of the failures of progressivism. And while I always intellectually understood the arguments from my Democratic friends,there was always a part of me that found liberalism difficult to embrace- too many ideas just didn't make sense. I stopped readingThe New York Timesmore than 25 years ago, a talking point that causes great consternation among my remaining friends on the left to this day.Over the past ten years, I have been called a traitor to my class, confused, and God knows how many other things. I have been excommunicated from a golf foursome for my political views, removed from guest lists, and lost more than one friend along the way. But I am at peace with my worldview, and I offer no apology for being willing to express my thoughts and ideas.
I have voted Republican for the majority of my adult life, never voted for Obama or Clinton, and voted for Trump in 2020 and 2024.I abstained from the presidential vote in 2016 because I believed that Trump's personality was too abrasive and stories about his past too disconcerting to think that he was an appropriate individual to occupy the White House. What happened in 2017 and beyond, however, was both alarming and eye-opening.I agreed with many of the policies that Trump tried to implement during his first term,and then watched asDemocrats embraced a newfound craziness on an almost daily basis. It started with wearing pink hats and condoning violent protests on the streets of DC on Inauguration Day. Madonna shared her fantasy about burning down the White House, and Johnny Depp speculated about killing a president. Kathy Griffin displayed a severed head of a Donald Trump figure, and an actor dressed as Trump in a Central Park Shakespeare production was stabbed in the back. But that was just a preamble.What we have seen in the ensuing decade is the descent of Democrats from a political party that did not like Trump to a party that has sought to destroy all vestiges of conservatism- originally through protest and intimidation and now through violence as a political strategy. Bill Ayres would be proud.At first, we were exposed to behavior that most on the right thought was simply irrational.Progressives started to impose their agenda by removing names such as Abraham Lincoln and George Washington from schools, and removing statues of Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt from their rightful places in New York City. Conservatives of all stripes were being doxed, censored, and fired from their employment for not agreeing with leftist precepts. Iwas criticized routinely for questioning leftist ideology, but understood my universe well enough never to discuss politics in my workplace, save for a few exceptions. One was condemned if you dared to question BLM, or worse, critiqued Critical Race Theory or the anti-racist literature from Robin D'Angelo and Ibrahim X. Kendi. One thought carefully before saying systemic racism was an overhyped metaphor, and if you did not thinkHamiltonwas the greatest play produced in the history of mankind, it was proof that you were an outright bigot.Under Biden, the left fully embraced the idea that "equity" was a fundamental principle to which everyone needed to conform.The new intellectuals discovered new pronouns,The 1619 Projectwas offered as legitimate history, and we were admonished that gender differences in athletics were simply an artificial construct. Intolerance became the order of the day.
What is happening now, and why this is such a compelling moment in our history, is thatthere are two convergent forces working together to rewrite our country's future. One force comes from traditional Democrats, and the second from far-left radicals and the Progressive/Socialist wing of the Democratic Party. They are unified in interest because they are jointly motivated by their hatred of Donald Trump - a hate that sadly has evolved into an unhinged pathology never witnessed in American history.That hatred has erupted into a universe of irrational fears and false assumptions by the left, and is now offered as rationalization for acts of retribution on conservatives throughout the country. The hatred of all things related to Trump has engulfed the thought processes of both traditional Democrats and their far-left allies, and both are committed to employing all means necessary to achieve their respective goals.Traditional Democrats want power, and their objective is to reshape our governing institutions so as to cement changes into our institutions that will be permanent. They have made clear that they want to end the Senate filibuster and add the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico as states. Andto control the legislative process, the Democrats will seek to increase the number of justices on the Supreme Court to thirteen.Once that is accomplished, there may be a movement toabolish the Electoral College, although this would be a multi-year process requiring changes to the Constitution. Democrats rely on one strategic maneuver -if they can't win by traditional rules, they will just change the rules, while simultaneously making disingenuous protestations about the status quo as a threat to democracy. If successful, the Democrats will create a new power structure with one-party rule that they will never surrender.
The far-left, however, want more. They don't want political power as much as they want to replace capitalism with socialism, and they harbor no pretense.We see socialist mayors in Seattle and New York City, and complete ineptitude in mayor's offices in Chicago and Los Angeles. We have socialists in Congress, billionaires have become evil, and "tax the rich" has become a talking point among progressives throughout the country. Antisemitism under the label "Free Palestine" is now in vogue. Democrats are heading towards a full embrace of Mamdani's campaign theme of socialism under the guise of affordability, while ignoring the fact that billionaires contribute a greater percentage of revenue to state and local governments than their numbers suggest, and dismissing the fact that increasing taxes on the wealthy does not reduce the wealth gap.Neither the child-like Mr. Mamdani nor the historically illiterate Ms. Cortez have a serious understanding of economics,but they do understand the power of rhetoric and social media. In the process, they have convinced a generation of young Americans that the capitalist system is flawed and must be changed.Unfortunately, socialists are unfamiliar with the work of economist Thomas Sowell, who has describedThe Communist Manifestoas a masterpiece of propaganda with "absolutely no contact with actual economic reality."
What has changed, however, is thatDemocrats and their radical allies understand that they cannot obtain their objectives through traditional democratic means, so instead have chosen intimidation and violence as their new weapons of choice. Democrats for a decade have called Trump supporters and conservatives deplorable, fascists, and Nazis, and all too often have employed a Hitler analogy, which is both obscene on its face and ignorant of history. Politicians on the left have encouraged supporters to get in the face of Republicans, and the last president gave a speech in Philadelphia before the entire nation in which he essentially called half the country racist.Earlier this year, Susan Rice pledged retribution against Republicans who supported Trump if Democrats take back power,and asserted that all such individuals would be held accountable for their behavior. "It will not end well" for Republican-leaning corporations was one of her threats. In April, Hakeem Jeffries declared that "we are on a state of maximum war" when discussing the ongoing redistricting battles. James Carville assured followers that Democrats will launch investigations into President Trump and his family if the party retakes Congress in the midterms, warning that the political fallout will feel like getting "punched in the mouth by Mike Tyson." Senator Booker has expressed his desire to punch President Trump in the face, and Nancy Pelosi famously commented, "people are going to do what they're going to do" when questioned about violence during the George Floyd riots.
Butto this day, the left ignores that when you dehumanize and threaten a group of individuals, you leave the offended group no option but to take note.Worse, by constantly invoking the Hitler analogy, you convince unstable individuals that it is rational to commit acts of violence upon those whom you are calling Hitler. Logic dictates that it is appropriate to use any means necessary to kill someone as bad as Hitler, but when you embrace that rationale as part of your political rhetoric, mentally unbalanced people feel justified in taking matters into their own hands. Charlie Kirk would be alive today but for this logic.
Far-left activists have become the modern-day equivalent of the Jacobins of the French Revolution. This is not hyperbole; the language of revolution resonates throughout history, and repeats itself today. From Robespierre and the French Revolution:"The revolutionary government owes to the good citizen all the protection of the nation; it owes nothing to the Enemies of the People but death."Mao Zedong viewed violence as a way to destroy the Nationalists and build a new socialist society, and noted as far back as 1927 that"political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."Che Guevara embraced hatred as a core element of his power struggle, and argued that to vanquish a"brutal enemy,"revolutionaries must transform into violent killing machines. And from today, we have the Democratic social media influencer Hasan Piker, who offers strikingly similar rhetoric. Piker recently wrote:"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable."Piker, an Antifa supporter who has more influence today within the Democratic Party than John Fetterman, has also said that America"deserved 9/11."Most ominous perhaps is the warning from Elon Musk, speaking about Democrats in the aftermath of the most recent attempt on Donald Trump's life:"If they're willing to die to assassinate, imagine what they will do if they gain political power."
In the past few years, we have seen three efforts to assassinate President Trump,one assassination attempt on a Supreme Court justice, and the assassination of a conservative thought leader. Following the George Floyd riots, 25 people were killed and over two billion dollars in property damage incurred nationwide in the name of a better world.There were violent protests with no legitimate justification in Ferguson, Missouri, following the death of a young male who had tried to rob a liquor store,and protestors in New York on behalf of Black Lives Matter expressed their desire to "fry cops like bacon." During 2025, there were approximately 238 assaults on ICE officers in the country including 68 assaults committed by individuals driving vehicles.St. John's church near the White House was set on fire during the George Floyd riots, and Tesla dealerships were burned in 2025 as a way of protesting budgetary constraints proposed by Elon Musk. There has been violence from the right - witness the 2025 murders of two Minnesota state representatives and the chaos of January 6. But the overall picture is not one of equivalence, and those who insist that it is are either poorly informed or willfully ignorant. Journalists such as Nick Shirley, who did nothing more than expose financial corruption in Minnesota, have received multiple death threats. None of this comes from the conservative echo chamber -it is purely a Democratic playbook run amuck.And to top things off, we have seen an appalling uptick in overt antisemitism in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks in Israel - according to the Anti-Defamation League over 7,300 reported incidents of antisemitism in 2024 and more than 6,700 in 2025. And while there are certainly antisemites on the far right who would engage in antisemitic violence if they had the opportunity, the current iteration of the anti-Israeli movement appears to come largely from the far-left progressives and the Free Palestine movement born on college campuses. Consider that in 2024 the Democratic Party debated whether a Jewish governor from Pennsylvania could be its nominee for vice president, and that the Democratic Party of Maine has chosen as its candidate for U.S. Senate a man who wore a Nazi tattoo on his chest. As a parallel, consider that Republicans in Florida are in the process of electing a black male as governor.The far left embraces its ideology more than it loves history, and is unconcerned that earlier historical tragedies could repeat themselves. Recent polling data make clear that members of Gen Z see political violence as a rational means by which to achieve their political ends, which in a normal world, would cause great concern across the political spectrum.
As we embrace our nation's 250th birthday, we need to remember that we are a good country, not a perfect one.We were born of a revolution, and protest is baked into our national DNA; protest is both legitimate and consistent with our history. However, what is happening now is not normal - what we are witnessing is a violence born of an irrational hatred of one individual that in some ways rivals the socialist uprisings of the early twentieth century or tracks the divisions that led to the Civil War. Donald Trump may have many personality traits that have stretched the bounds of presidential behavior, but none of what the left has done has either healed the nation or enhanced the cause of traditional Democrats. The traditional Democrats have remained silent in the face of the ongoing violence, and have formed a toxic relationship with the lunatic wing of their party that neither side is willing to break.
Source: ZeroHedge News
