A good example at Esquire:

Esquire magazine’s resident Chekist, Matt Miller, whose official job title is Associate Culture Editor, is now engaged in a culture war against celebrities whose high crime is that they haven’t joined in the liberal hate fest against Donald Trump by openly denouncing him. Not only does he condemn them generally but Miller goes so far as to list their names along with their social media following. It doesn’t matter if these celebrities are silent even though they really support Hillary or they are just apolitical or if they secretly support Trump but don’t want to alienate a portion of their fan base. To Miller it is an outright Thought Crime if they don’t loudly become as openly psychotic over Trump as he is.

The liberal is fundamentally helpless, and deep down they know this. Once you accept being helpless, you are reduced to this. All this character can do is try to find a way to threaten people who have real power, to bend them to his will – and do it in a way that will involve as little risk to himself as possible.

Mostly these strategies involve threatening the target with some vague consequence inflicted by others, when the “others” find out. It is the grown up version of, “Do what I want, or I’m gonna tell, and then you are going to get it!”

What is the consequence? Who will inflict it? Why will they inflict it? It is all left to the imagination.

It is all like a scene I remember seeing often as child. As a Blue Jay would land on the birdfeeder, a little sparrow would raise its wings up and fluff out its feathers to look bigger, in the hopes the Blue Jay would be scared off by the display. Then the little sparrow could have all the seed in the birdfeeder, and not need to actually fight for it.

You see these displays in r-strategists in nature, where their opposition may just find it easier to flee to another field of free resources. But your competitive K-strategists, who face real shortage, tend to either fight or let it go.

Humans are no different.