One thing I keep having to repeat about a generational crisis is that it’s no small thing.
In the face of such an Armageddon, one of the first things to happen is that the people within the ruling coalition go a little bit mad. We saw this 40 years ago, when many liberals became extremists of one kind or another. We saw it in the Depression, where some Republicans insisted on Smoot-Hawley, while others simply abandoned the party. We saw it in the 1890s with the Populists, a true third party movement (for those who think it can’t happen here). And, of course, we saw it in the late 1850s, when Filibusters committed acts of real murder.
No small thing, any of this. Why do liberals think it would be any different now?
You ask yourself, how do they justify themselves? The same way the Filibusters did, through projection. They’re going to take your slaves away. They’re going to make you marry one. All this while white Southerners were in Bloody Kansas murdering and raping those who felt differently from them. That’s how.
So when the White House and Republican Congress shout “treason” at The New York Times we should rejoice a little. It means their end is near.
More signs of the coming crack-up. A Fox commentator calls for stringing-up the editor of The Times , incites Fox followers to riot and murder, yet she is not reprimanded. She would also be welcome on other channels, because talk of murder by the right is no longer considered, crazy, but mainstream.
Question: at what point does cable become complicit? If you are a conservative, Fox News viewer,at what point do you become complicit? Will you wait until after the murder before you answer? Yes, you probably will. And at that point, some of you will feel the blood lust rise within you, while others will walk away, appalled.
That’s the crack-up. That’s when the crisis really starts. Because in
every crack-up there is a chance, a real chance, that this time
American democracy will not survive, that the defeated will not go
quietly, that they will consider their cause more worthy than the
nation’s existance, and bring the temple down on all our heads.
The crisis has just begun. 
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