Hanson writes as if this may be a tactic of the left.

I don’t believe it’s a tactic.

I believe this is real: They are literally insane. They are in the spasms of an untreated 8-year-old nervous breakdown.

I really want someone to analyze the phenomenon of an entire social order having an ongoing nervous breakdown for eight years straight, but never seeking treatment for it, because all of their social peers and political allies — all other occupants of The Bubble — tell them that it’s not crazy to be crazy 24/7/365, but in fact insanity is the right response to Trump, Covid, and a drug-dealing thug having a heart failure due to the prodigious amounts of fentanyl and amphetamines he had swallowed.

[It’s hard to parse out whether this is a tactic or a condition. I think conservatives are better grounded at most times, but that’s in part because we’re inclined to “conserve” order (which is why we sometimes err on the side of authoritarianism). Progressives are already ideologically oriented to change the status quo because it’s unsuitable, so they are more prone to seize on evidence to support their thesis — which is why they err on the side of mob power. But I think VDH is right that the real power elites on the Left use and manipulate these hysterias for the purpose of seizing power. — Ed]