"If there is a hard truth for American liberals to swallow, and swallow it they must, it is that their party allowed this to happen as much as the GOP made it happen" Well put Alan.
However, I'd go further and suggest progressive "liberals" in the US have not only allowed an intolerant religious sentiment to gain steam, but have played a key role in driving it forward because of unchecked excesses on their own turf. I lived in US in 2015 and 2016 in the run up to Trump's win, travelled 38 of the lower 48 states, and firsthand saw the Woke wave start to come in hard. We know what happened in the years since.
Apart from functioning as an insanely damaging distraction from addressing deeper and more complex socioeconomic and political issues, the inevitability of reciprocal radicalization by the furthest edges of the right in response to the left is one of the main gripes I have had with the absurdly destructive Diversity-Equity-Inclusion zealotry (male athletes are cool in women's sports, "Latinx", "defund the police", "All white people are racist", claiming "mostly peaceful protests" while surrounded by burning buildings, "looting is OK because of Jim Crow/red lining", "biological sex is a social construct and stereotyping gender norms is bad but gender identity is so real children need hormones and surgery if they have the wrong biological body" etc etc etc).
Woke madness and its sanctioning by those in power in Dems & progressive media have provided more weaponizable content to foster reciprocal radicalization than intolerant religious fundamentalists could have dreamed of generating themselves.
American Godhead
"If there is a hard truth for American liberals to swallow, and swallow it they must, it is that their party allowed this to happen as much as the GOP made it happen" Well put Alan.
However, I'd go further and suggest progressive "liberals" in the US have not only allowed an intolerant religious sentiment to gain steam, but have played a key role in driving it forward because of unchecked excesses on their own turf. I lived in US in 2015 and 2016 in the run up to Trump's win, travelled 38 of the lower 48 states, and firsthand saw the Woke wave start to come in hard. We know what happened in the years since.
Apart from functioning as an insanely damaging distraction from addressing deeper and more complex socioeconomic and political issues, the inevitability of reciprocal radicalization by the furthest edges of the right in response to the left is one of the main gripes I have had with the absurdly destructive Diversity-Equity-Inclusion zealotry (male athletes are cool in women's sports, "Latinx", "defund the police", "All white people are racist", claiming "mostly peaceful protests" while surrounded by burning buildings, "looting is OK because of Jim Crow/red lining", "biological sex is a social construct and stereotyping gender norms is bad but gender identity is so real children need hormones and surgery if they have the wrong biological body" etc etc etc).
Woke madness and its sanctioning by those in power in Dems & progressive media have provided more weaponizable content to foster reciprocal radicalization than intolerant religious fundamentalists could have dreamed of generating themselves.
Andrew Sullivan (a gay Catholic) discussed this danger of Wokeness summoning a reactionary demon into existence with Bari Weiss (a gay Jew) recently. Great chat: https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/bari-weiss-on-saving-liberalism-from
Thank you for your interesting thoughts. We are rapidly approaching the end. Seek God and repent. Look around, time is running out.