Recently I came across a Taylor Lorenz post that encapsulates the liberal worldview nicely:

“We’re living in a late stage capitalist hellscape during an ongoing deadly pandemic w record wealth inequality, 0 social safety net/job security, as climate change cooks the world.”

A state of endless emergency has been an essential feature of the leftist attitude for a long time, and this mindset only seems to have intensified over time. At universities, professors cancelled classes after Trump won the election, as if the event were a traumatic experience that everyone would need time to process. I spoke with a friend of mine personally who is attending a liberal graduate program right now and, while their program didn’t go so far as to cancel classes, they confirmed that everyone was visibly upset in their classes with some people crying openly.

We’ve gotten the expected meltdowns and outbursts all across social media as well. One particularly amusing trend is the tendency of liberal women to proclaim their intent to abstain from having sex with men as some kind of revenge for electing Trump. What’s that you say, fornication is off the table now that Madame Brat went down in flames? Well gee, as a conservative Christian, don’t threaten me with such a good time. Jesus would be proud of your zeal in casting off the temptations of the flesh!

Clearly, leftists are really upset about politics, and their behavior suggests that they feel threatened in a serious way by the fact that they lose elections sometimes. My question has always been: What are they so scared of? Sure, losing an election sucks, but that’s democracy, right? Remember “Our Democracy”™, the greatest holiest most sacred thing of all time? Well, in a democracy, you’re going to lose elections sometimes. In fact, that’s a core feature of the system! There are some countries where the same guy wins the election every time with 100% predictability, and we don’t call those places “democracies.” Examples of such countries include Russia and North Korea.

So why are libs constantly freaking out so much over the prospect of Republicans actually having any power? Well, maybe Republicans are going to pass policies that will affect the libs personally, that will make their lives worse or interfere with them in a tangible way. Listening to the liberal freakouts, you’d certainly think that’s the case—this year there’s a particular focus on the idea that “women’s rights” are under some kind of big threat now that Blumpft is back, leading to the aforementioned “sex strike” being declared by many liberal women.

When people say stuff like this, abortion is probably at the forefront of their minds. Is Trump actually threatening liberals’ abortions, though? Pro-life hardliners were upset with him for moderating on the issue during the campaign, saying directly that he wouldn’t sign a hypothetical “national abortion ban” that Democrats pretend to be so afraid of. I know that no one actually reads the party platforms, but if you look at Trump’s official 2024 platform and compare the abortion section to 2016, the difference is night and day. In 2016 his platform had a big long spiel about the sanctity of life repeating many familiar pro-life narratives, whereas in 2024 it’s just a single short paragraph saying that abortion is up to the states now.

That reflects the way that the GOP has changed after 8 years of Trump. In 2016, when Trump was the new kid on the block, they pretty much carried over the same platform from 2012. By 2024, Trump is King, and that abortion change reflects his preferences by comparison to the party of Mitt Romney.

Perhaps most importantly, Trump’s personal history suggests that his behavior on the issue is entirely strategic. Donald Trump has never been known as a religious man or one given over to moral crusades, and was openly liberal on social issues right up until he became a Republican president. He’s still more liberal on these things than any previous Republican president. The notion that he’s coming for your precious abortions simply doesn’t pass a sniff test. It’s a state issue and will be for the foreseeable future.

With abortion out of the way, well, what else is there? Maybe the reason liberals talk about abortion so much is that their hysteria has nothing else to latch on to even a little bit. What other “women’s rights” is Donald Trump going to end? No-fault divorce? The 19^th Amendment? The right to have pointless casual sex? What are we even talking about here? Women have had full legal equality for generations and Trump has never even hinted at a desire to change that. Women might find him personally repulsive due to behavior and mannerisms, but this is a fundamentally different thing than the notion that he’s somehow going to bring about the Handmaid’s Tale.

Upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that liberal hysteria is like this on every issue. What issue positions were most salient in this last presidential campaign, and where did Trump stand on them? He ran on ending DEI and transgender insanity, enforcing immigration laws and deporting illegals, and actually putting criminals in jail instead of letting them run free like they have been in Democrat-run cities. On the economy he favors tariffs and lower taxes, but unlike previous Republicans, he has openly stated that he’s not even interested in touching entitlement spending!

So what is it that Donald Trump is going to do that scares liberals so much on a personal level? Sure, you might disagree with all of his policies and think they’re the wrong approach, but none of these things are going to directly affect the average person’s day-to-day life. Well, unless you’re a beneficiary of DEI, or a criminal, or an illegal immigrant (but I repeat myself)… perhaps a Trump presidency does present more of a personal threat to you then, but I’m not sure if that makes the point in quite the way that liberals intend.

Perhaps this is why leftists engage in Trump Derangement Syndrome. They must focus on his personal flaws because if they focused on his policies, it would be all too obvious that the levels of terror and outrage they display are completely out of proportion with reality. I think one of the best displays of this delusion can be found in this absolutely insane campaign ad (if you can even call it that) from some liberal group called Seed the Vote.

In this ad, Donald Trump dies while in office, leading to JD Vance becoming the God-Emperor of a dystopian America where Elon Musk becomes immortal through AI. I’m not kidding, that’s actually in the ad, it’s like a piece of bad fanfiction. Just like the obsession with The Handmaid’s Tale, here we see liberals reaching far off into realms of absurd fantasy in order to confabulate a world in which Trump has somehow hurt them.

They can’t just run a simple, straightforward ad saying “Trump is going to do X real-life policy change that you don’t like,” as opposed to the Trump campaign which ran highly impactful ads attacking transgender lunacy. That’s the difference: The Handmaid’s Tale is fiction. God-Emperor JD Vance and AI Immortal Elon Musk are fictional. This shit isn’t real. Men really are overtaking women in women’s sports, though. Men really are being allowed access to girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms. That really is happening and Democrats are in favor of it.

This brings me to my closing point, which is that if we were to ask ourselves what political issue has had the biggest impact on everyone’s daily lives, the answer is clear and unambiguous: The COVID-19 pandemic. Nothing in our lifetimes has been more disruptive to society than this single black swan event. I know people have a short memory these days, but I remember 2020, and I remember who it was that said I wasn’t allowed to leave my house, then said I wasn’t allowed to walk outside my front door without a mask on, then said I wasn’t allowed to have a job without taking a vaccine that I didn’t want or need. I remember who it was, and it wasn’t Donald Trump.