Authoritarianism Knocking
The Trump administration is emboldening the extremists on the far right who are as hostile to the middle as those on the far left. It's not going over well with normal Americans.
The voice on the other end of the line was firm but reassuring. I was doing the right thing, she said. It didn’t feel that way at first, or rather, I kept asking myself if perhaps I was overreacting. After all, this was the first time I had received a threat that seemed serious enough to contact multiple law enforcement agencies.
The lady I was speaking with on the phone worked for the local FBI field office.
“You’re doing exactly what someone in your position should do,” she repeated as I went over the details again. Someone on the far right had made threats against me after I called for cooler heads to prevail in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s killing. This was late last year.
Then it happened again, more recently, after I wrote that the shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis by an ICE agent was unjustified, a position held by most Americans.
The average person recoiled in horror at the sight of Kirk and Good being shot, regardless of their politics. The sadism from the far left and far right in response to these incidents does not reflect the values of the middle and, in fact, both hate the middle equally and for the same reasons, which I will get to.
The problem now is that the new right feels little reason to restrain itself after winning a close election, which it has interpreted as a mandate to impose an unpopular agenda on Americans by force, if necessary.
