The Left really does think they can harass people and call for political violence without any pushback whatsoever. It's the double standard they've grown accustomed to for decades. They haven't grasped that the rules of engagement have changed forever.
What's really going on here is the Left wants a monopoly on populism. They want the exclusive right to whip their supporters into a blind frenzy without being held accountable. If anyone gets hurt, they're laying the groundwork for blaming the victims.
Just about everything the Left does is populist, and the worst form of populism at that - deliberately stoking hatred and envy, emotional appeals in defiance of reason, a panicked rush to immediate action instead of calm deliberation, all dissent is pure evil.
Promising to shower people with Free Stuff financed with money seized from other people is the crudest form of populism there is, and one of the most effective. It relies upon hatred of the Other. Constituents must believe that state-sanctioned robbery is "justice."
The Left therefore requires on a constant atmosphere of anger, desperation, paranoia, and emotionalism. Their constituents cannot be given a chance to consider the ramifications of the policies they are supporting. Opponents must not be humanized or granted a shred of dignity.
Meanwhile, the Left invests a great deal of effort in frightening politicians of the Right away from populist appeals of any kind. The GOP establishment has been trained to view populism as sewage they must rise above, no matter how often they are defeated by left-wing populism.
Obama vs. Romney was a marvelous case study: binders full of women, vampire capitalism, dog on the roof, on and on. One emotional populist body blow after another, mixed with knees to the groin every time Romney caught his breath.
Intimidating Republicans away from populism deprives them of emotional weapons in their political armory. They've been taught to avoid emotional appeals, and to refrain from contesting Democrats when they do so.
This is especially obvious in the immigration debate. The Left expects an unlimited free-fire zone for populist outrage, even when their emotional appeals are stoked with outright lies and propaganda. Republicans are terrified of being called racists if they respond in kind.
Republicans have been systematically terrorized and bullied away from every emotionally-charged appeal they could possibly make, right down to telling taxpayers to reject the confiscation of their wealth and ask tough questions about how government spends their money.
So OF COURSE the Left thought they could whip up a frenzy with dishonest propaganda about immigration, memory-hole every inconvenient fact about the Obama years, and boil over into violent rage without any response except mild harrumphing from Republicans.
The Left did this because they're perfectly capable of reading polls - in fact, they're obsessed with them. It's no coincidence the big "kids in cages" hit was cooked up after polls showed the midterm elections tightening and Trump's approval rising.
It was a desperation play. The organizers must have known conservative media would point out that Obama put "kids in cages" too. (They underestimated how much coverage dissident media gave it back in the day because they don't actually read us, only blogs bitching about us.)
This carefully orchestrated media and political campaign didn't just collapse into street theater and calls for violence in a couple of days because it didn't succeed instantly. Hatred and violence were always part of the plan. This gambit only works if it goes over the top.
Remember, the Left knows that manufactured outrage has a short half-life, and the true target is always Republican politicians. The goal was to intimidate them and panic them into making concessions that would dispirit their base and depress turnout.
The secondary goal is to intimidate Republican voters, make them nervous about speaking up on issues or supporting the president. It's the only way to keep Trump from reaping the benefits of the economy, tax cuts, deregulation, foreign policy, etc. at the ballot box.
But the whole scheme falls apart if there is real blowback for the Left's tactics. That involves forthrightly calling them out. Of course, conservative media does that, but the president himself - especially this one - has a much louder megaphone than any of us.
So now we're into a new phase of the "kids in cages" freakout as the original push collapses - voters still don't want a flood of illegal aliens, they're asking too many questions about what Obama did, media caught pushing too many hoaxes and fake photos.
Now it's all about shielding the Democrats from blowback. You can see the terror gripping some of their thought leaders as they realize this risks energizing GOP voters even more than gun control did, while adding no votes for Dems and only incrementally jazzing their base.
So this week, expect a lot of HOW DARE YOU hysterical screeching at Republicans for accurately quoting Maxine Waters, and other tactics to intimidate them out of judo-flipping the Dems' big immigration push. They'll be sternly told not to use immigration as a "wedge issue." /end
