Liberals: This Christmas, Stop Being Afraid

"Politics today can sound like a thriller novel in which democratic institutions collapse spectacularly in Chapter 1. Every headline not supporting your own beliefs becomes evidence that "democracy is in danger." Watch especially for the ones that use the word "existential." Every deployment becomes an "occupation," and every move, including something as unimportant as building a new wing on the White House, is read as confirmation of a hardening dictatorship. Every decision becomes something that harks back to the Weimar Republic's fall."

"The Democratic Party and the media that orbit it learned that powerful narratives get attention and motivate voters and donors. They had some early help; the "Obama is a Muslim" meme and kerfuffle over his birth certificate were crude forerunners of this style of politics, emotional overstatement masquerading as vigilance. Those early efforts failed because they had no throughline; each crazy idea has to be quickly topped with something crazier."

"So a celebrity cancellation or social media scandal has to be quickly replaced with desecration of the People's House; if the news cycle did not produce something fast enough after that, then it was OK to fall back on the old tropes of Trump being a Russian intelligence asset or an actual pedophile, because what cannot be confirmed can at least be repeated."

Many Democrats allow fear to drive political choices, enabling demagogues who exploit anxieties. Political coverage frequently dramatizes routine events into existential threats, labeling deployments as occupations and institutional changes as signs of dictatorship. Powerful narratives attract attention and mobilize voters and donors, with early conspiracies serving as prototypes for emotional overstatement. When outrages become cyclical, each scandal is replaced or escalated by a more extreme claim, often repeated despite lack of confirmation. Fear-based narratives arise on both left and right, reducing complex developments to slogans and producing a constant, toxic cycle of panic.

Read at The American Conservative