The person at the center of all this, suddenly finding themselves diminished in status, as well as friendless or close to it, becomes understandably resentful of certain contemporary left-of-center beliefs and mores. At the same time, he is flooded with support from conservatives and woke-skeptical liberals. The pull must be irresistible — if during this dark moment, one group despises you and tries to destroy you, and another group defends you, who are you going to want to interact with?

This can lead people down a dark path, though. It’s not a good idea to make anti-anything the center of your identity. Among the most ardent anti-wokesters I’ve noticed an obsessive fixation that causes the rest of the world to fade into an indistinct background fuzz. For example: radical lefty professors are annoying. Sometimes they do bad things, such as leading campaigns to get their colleagues fired or calling everything — everything — “fascist.” But they are not, in fact, one of America’s hundred most pressing problems. Yet if you followed the most brain-melted anti-wokesters, you would think that professors have more power than any other group in America.

Elsewhere there are anti-wokesters who in one breath decry the illiberal nature of “wokeness,” and who in the next declare their support for… Donald Trump. This is a crazy position! If liberalism is an important part of your identity, it should be impossible to support Trump, full stop. That doesn’t require you to embrace the frequently dislikable Democratic Party with every fiber of your being or anything, but please: a little common sense.