nonhumans . That is, to do what was only done previously in America by Democrats

Society is more divided now than at any time since the Civil War. People hate other people because of who they voted for. People are even choosing friends and breaking apart from family members based on who they supported in the last election. Beyond Facebook unfriending, relationships are impacted. It’s based on fear, disappointment, and hatred, and it seems to be all coming from one side.

Leftists said if Trump won, that there’d be violent mobs of hate, and intolerant fascists would try to silence those with whom they disagree. And they were right. It just was by a group of people from which they didn’t expect it: themselves.

What is happening, in the larger sense? Historians will study this election and our times as unique, but what seems to be unfolding in politics and America overall is stunning not only in its scope, but hypocrisy.

The “othering” of a group of people

They said that if Trump won, that groups of people would be identified and persecuted. And again, they were right. There is now a movement to identify anyone who supported the current president as an an extremist, which is kind of hard to do when he won the Electoral College by 70 votes, which means his support is hardly extreme and maybe, you know, mainstream.

That is, liberals believe that most of America is out-of-step with America.

Only the enlightened folks in the blue bubbly blotches are normal, and not extremist at all. They just happen to control Hollywood, the mainstream media, and Big Education.

The Man

Donald Trump was never called a racist or sexist or xenophobe for decades in business, working with Hollywood, or in the primaries. But once he was the roadblock in Hillary Clinton’s cakewalk to the coronation, he became all these things and more. A strategy was needed.

Early in the election, leftist Huffington Post had a disclaimer on every story mentioning Donald Trump: “Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.” Further, it made a conscious decision to feature stories about him in the Entertainment section, because the future president wasn’t a legitimate political story. Accuracy be damned, the othering had begun.

This isn’t to say that he wasn’t boorish or controversial; of course he was. But suddenly, for a late-night host to have Trump on as a guest was “normalizing” him, and a campaign had begun to shun those who didn’t shun Trump. In fact, it caused anger when a TV host touched Trump’s hair. Why? Because it made Trump seem almost like a normal human being. Outrage!

His Supporters

Soon, this othering outcasting spread beyond the man, to his supporters. See, you couldn’t possibly support Donald Trump because you were tired of the direction leftists like Obama took the country while excluding everyone outside his base (and Hillary promised to continue doing). No. The only possible reason to vote Republican in 2016 was because you hated minorities and women and foreigners, said the party of nuance with its sledgehammer of hate.

Thus, a justification was born for condemning everyone you disagreed with. Someone voted for Trump? Nazi. Someone voted against Hillary? Nazi. Someone doesn’t agree with same-sex marriage? 2008 Barack Obama. Oh, and Nazi.

Behold all the tolerance!

Yes, the party of enlightenment became “everyone that’s like me is smart and good-looking and smells like awesome, and everyone that doesn’t think like me is Adolph Hitler.”

Democrats wished for their general election opponent to be Trump. They then ran, in an outsider year, an out-of-touch unlikable DC insider with an FBI probe. Then, the most qualified candidate ever lost an election to a boorish political amateur with the worst negative approval ratings ever. Panicked in shock, Democrats scrambled to place the blame squarely where it belonged: on everywhere else but the candidate. First, they blamed the Electoral College, because it’s always rigged and unfair, except when it produces a result they approve of like in 2008. Then, they blamed Russian hackers, because Putin’s ground game in Madison knew Hillary was weak in Wisconsin, and he could brilliantly mastermind her winning the popular vote but losing the electoral one.

But eventually, blamethrowing gave way to violent tantrums. Because, as someone put it, they forgot to inform us that liberal ‘love trumping hate’ involved so much arson and broken glass. The leftists smashed their own towns, and then started tolerantly having free speech arson festivals at their own universities to stop free speech.

But the Party of Progress isn’t satisfied with property damage and destruction of cop-cars and coffee kiosks. The tolerance extended to the next phase: hypotheticals with the enlightened New York Times asking if violence against some people is justified. It’s ok, you see, because these people are Nazis. What makes a person a Nazi deserving of violence? Almost everything.

They say the reason for fear is all the violence at Trump rallies, which happened only because Democrats intentionally caused confrontations to get ugly headlines.

Plan protest at rally. Break stuff, start fires, and cause mayhem. Headline: “Rally Turns Ugly with Violence!” Blame rally.

This tactic has been used before.

This has led to at least one “fight club” on a college campus dedicated to teach socialists how to beat up Republicans and “Bash the Fash” (fascism, get it?). The “fascists” attendees learn to bash: Republicans, along with “other Nazis.” Of course, this is billed as self-defense, stoked by fake hoax reports, against all the imagined violence some on the right may commit. In sum, a group is openly debating about victimizing another group just because of their identity, and training to physically harm this group, all because the target is an imagined threat and might do something. Science!

And while polite Tea Party protesters were called violent racists, today’s glass-smashers and jaw-crushers are glamorized by gauzy appellations like “The Resistance.” You see, they’re not violent radicals destroying crap, they’re noble Victor Laszlo opposing today’s tyrannical totalitarian.

Putting it together

Historically, being a Nazi was a very specific thing with a very narrow ideology. It used to involve squelching dissent, breaking glass, and violence. And we can all agree that people who engage in such behaviors (cough) are bad. Very, very bad.

But today, when not shattering storefronts, the liberal left has diluted the idea of Nazism to include all their foes, cheapening history’s mass murder of millions of innocent people into something that includes the half of America it can’t stand. With that, enabled modern leftists can give themselves smug permission to justify punching anyone they don’t like or disagree with, and even openly holding “no GOP allowed” workshops to develop those violent skills.

And you know who else took millions of people, “othered” them as beneath contempt, and then justified violence against them.

Leftists have become the very thing they say they hate.