Cultivated Rage

AP Photo/Mark Stockwell

I have yet to read his book, and I really should, but I have been following Jonathan Turley's X feed, where he discusses the perils of living in an "Age of Rage." 

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Turley is an indispensable read, but in this essay, I am only stealing his coining of the term, not reviewing his book. "Age of Rage" really IS a good description of our times, 

But why? Why now? 

The answer is simple: the rage is cultivated, and while it is not exclusively seen on the left, the quantity and intensity of the politics of rage most certainly is, despite the constant repetition that violence is a right-wing phenomenon. As leftists riot, celebrate assassins, call for "vengeance," and, in extreme cases, go on mass killing sprees, we are subjected to lectures about right-wing extremism. 

The fact is, though, that cultivating rage is the left's political strategy, and has been since the French Revolution. 

Even supposed moderates like Abigail Spanberger (and boy did she lie about that!) embraced rage as a political tool, because lefties need to drive a larger turnout of a shrinking base. 

But nowhere is the politics of rage so obvious as in the alphabet movement. 

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Trans violence has reached crisis proportions. Not because it represents a majority of murders in the country, which are and always have been driven by personal disputes and/or criminal activity, but because POLITICAL violence is now very much driven by alphabet issues. 

As I wrote earlier today, it is no coincidence that we have an acceleration of violence among transgender activists. Over the past eight years, transgender people have committed mass murder at a rate 20x that of the general population, and while it is difficult to get more granular, the numbers are likely much higher the closer you get to the present time. 

Supporters of the alphabet movement are bending over backwards to hide this fact. After a decade or more of promoting and normalizing the transgender movement, the devastation is becoming obvious even for the most oblivious. 

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With two hideous public shooting sprees in the space of a week, the media is doing backflips trying to figure out how to hide the obvious fact that medicalizing and normalizing mental illness has been a disaster. They certainly will do everything they can to hide the fact that the rage is a result of the very ideology they have been promoting, along with the drugs they have been insisting are "life-saving."

Jimmy Kimmel insisted that Tyler Robinson was a Trump supporter, as did commentators on CNN and MSNBC. 

That accusation, too, was aimed at generating even more rage on the left by implying that MAGA puts people's lives at risk. Democratic politicians talk about taking their grievances to the streets, celebrate riots, and embrace "vengeance." 


The symbolism is violent. Alphabet magazines push gun training to trans people, and even Graham Platner, the Democrat running for Senate in Maine, trains Antifa activists in gun assault techniques. 

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Rage is now a political strategy. Nurses and teachers are calling for the assassination of politicians and law enforcement. They openly speculate about poisoning patients, while teachers celebrated the murder of conservatives. 

Leftists know what they are doing. You don't casually call federal law enforcement officers the Gestapo and constantly label your political opponents "Nazis" without knowing that people will become radicalized. 

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After all, weren't liberals the ones who taught us about "stochastic terrorism?" 

It's a political strategy. They are cultivating an insurgency. I'm not sure that it will get them what they want, as radicalized people don't tend to turn to people like Chuck Schumer for leadership, but politicians have made mistakes like this before. Revolutions eat their own, and people keep inspiring them anyway. 

More people are going to die, and I fear a repeat of the late 60s and 70s, which were much more violent than most people remember. 

Thanks, Democrats. 

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Mitch Berg 4:00 PM | February 17, 2026
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