Trump’s moment is probably fading, but his little balloon ride is disturbing nonetheless. It’s evidence that political intemperance is not limited to the Left.

Thanks to the execrable leadership of the Democratic party and its allies in the press, we have witnessed several years of stoked race hatred in America. From the Trayvon Martin episode and Michael Brown’s death, to the tragic cases of Eric Garner and the Charleston massacre, the country has been bathed in mendacious incitement. Opinion leaders insist that it’s still Selma in 1965. “Black lives matter” has become a movement — as if any decent person disagreed; as if the country had not spent half a century sedulously scrubbing racism from our polity; as if affirmative action were not a feature of educational, corporate, and government policy; as if we hadn’t elected and reelected a black president. Democratic candidates for president have been reduced to apologizing simply for saying “All lives matter.”

The civil pieties that were once taken for granted in the political sphere — “all men are created equal” — are now controversial. The triumph of identity politics is complete on the left.