Earlier this week, Bill Kristol retweeted CNN’s Kristen Holmes (@Kristenhcnn) tweet of a clip of angry baseball fans hollering “CNN sucks!” with this charming caption:

“Yes they’re frustrated by government & elites & social trends. But they’re behaving like jackasses–& sometimes a jackass is just a jackass.”

Yes they're frustrated by government & elites & social trends. But they're behaving like jackasses–& sometimes a jackass is just a jackass. https://t.co/UrUgjvgz4y — Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) October 25, 2016

Jackasses. That’s what Bill Kristol thinks of ordinary men and women who are “frustrated” by liberalism’s soul-deadening encroachments. Centralized power, crony capitalism, the sale of offices, perpetual war, religious intolerance, and the assault on the free press that comes from . . . wait for it. . . the press notwithstanding, let’s not get excited. Evan McMullin.

“He comes, he comes, the Hero comes, Sound, sound your trumpets, beat your drums. From port to port let cannon roar Howe’s welcome to this Western shore.” — Tory poet Joseph Stansbury.

During the American Revolution, American Royalists would signal their loyalty to the crown by painting their chimneys white with black rings. This secret sign preserved their homes from the depredations of red coats and British mercenaries.

Today, #NeverTrump signals with such tweets its loyalty to the reigning orthodoxies of globalism, open borders, and identity and their contempt for the rabble that dares challenge it.

Just as American Tories called themselves American but not revolutionary, so #NeverTrump votaries call themselves conservative but owe their fealty to liberalism because it holds the bien pensant high ground of every political battlefield.

“You know, I don’t think think this American Revolution thing is entirely NOT justified” goes purported comment from one loyalist colonist to another. We can add on behalf of #NeverTrump, “But it’s no cause to act like a jackass.”