ANNALS OF OIKAOPHOBIA: Neo looks at a 41-year old novelist and mother of two who claims a fear of red hats — aka “Rufuspetasumphobia” — and notes, “The trajectory is clear, and it goes like this:”

(1) People who wear MAGA hats are evil bigots.
(2) I am a sensitive person, one of the most sensitive around.
(3) MAGA hats trigger me, as they might you if you’re a kind, unbigoted, sensitive person as well.
(4) I am so very sensitive that even innocuous, non-MAGA red caps trigger me.
(5) So please don’t wear a red cap, in order to prove your own kindness, sensitivity, normalcy, and lack of bigotry.

Is Makkai sincere and is she really triggered by something as mild as a red cap at this point? Maybe. Some (not all) of the liberals I know seem to have a constant need to assert their Trump-hatred at regular intervals and inject anti-Trump remarks of various kinds into ordinary non-political conversations.

It’s a cliche to say we have become increasingly polarized in recent decades. But it’s crystal clear that we have, and that much of it has been promoted on the left as a tactic for winning elections. Fear is contagious, as well. Is the fear real, or is it fake and just a way to prove who’s the wokest of them all? I don’t know, and it hardly matters, because the poison is out there, eating away at the fabric of our society.

Since the late 1990s or so, for the identity politics-obsessed left, the will to power derives from victimhood. This can’t be a healthy way to go through life.