Offense-Defense

I have noted before that when people of the right protest or get violent, there is a defensive quality to it, while the people of the left go on the attack and get in people's faces. You might dispute whether the Bundys are actually right wing or just fringe and concerned with their own individual rights, but let's grant for the moment that they are sort of from the right.  They took over the headquarters of a national wildlife refuge as the season was winding down after twenty years of dispute with the federal government. They holed up and dared the gummint to come in after them.  This is very typical of the violence on the right that scares everyone in the national press so much.  Because they were armed, y'know.

You can think that is as wrong and stupid as you want, but it's wildly different from taking over a police station and some city blocks in Seattle. Generally, all groups tolerate the violent and threatening people on their own side because at heart, they believe they aren't going to be the ones in danger. The boyos, in Ireland or in Boston, might be violent terrorists but people make excuses for them because, well they're ours.

I don't think the nice people* of the left get it, even as the violent extremists come for others on the left, as they have in other times and places.  They may not come for you personally, not for a long time, and you may be able to train your wife and children to be clever enough to mostly stay clear of them, with a little luck.  But they have been coming for a lot of job-holders in media and entertainment the last few years, and it ramps up. Increasingly, it is beating people up and threatening them, as if taking someone's livelihood isn't enough. The left goes after people.  The right defends against people.  Entirely separate from the question of whose cause is the better one, and whether someone deserves going after  or being defended, this a a very different approach to politics.

Time provides proofs and examples for me.

*I mean that.  I'm not being sarcastic here.  They do not see what their actions mean if you press them just a bit farther.  Karen might be annoying, but you'd trust your kids with her for the afternoon.  Maybe not for a whole school year, but that's a different kind of danger. She is in one sense "nice."  Aggressively nice, actually, and wants to make sure everyone else is nice, too.