(When) Will the Right Lose Its Mind?

Seems to me that the parties tend to periodically swap the lead in the crazy race. The right seemed to me to be in the lead most of my life--but, then, I was too young to understand what was going on in the late '60s-early '70s. The "religious right" of the early-mid '80s--led by Jerry Falwell and the "Moral Majority"--were the main kooks of the time, it seemed to me. Then, pretty much as soon as I entered grad school, the political correctness fad exploded...but mostly stayed on campus. It did spread into journalism a bit...but it seemed to fade out IIRC by the late '90s...or maybe it just seemed that way because I was on the standard academic arc, leaving my prominent grad program for a much-less-prestigious university. And then came 9/11 and the neo-cons, shifting the epicenter of crazy back to the right. Next major trend I noticed, I suppose was the ascendancy of Woketarianism around the time of GamerGate, ca. 2013-14... And the left has been far out in the lead, crazy-wise, ever since...despite the rise of Donald Trump... Now...the left's gotta be pretty bad if the election of Donald Trump barely moves the needle, crazy-wise...but here we are...

   I've pretty much always thought that the Pendulum Of Crazy would swing back the other way...but the cult of Woketarianism has had a death grip on culture pretty much this whole time--with the madness radically intensifying in 2020. Then came the awful Biden Years... But the pushback seemed to start have some effect, what, around '22 or so? Younkin was elected in the OD, and we started seeing some progress. Trump's re-election, and the forces of Wokeness started being pushed back in earnest...

   But now...I'm getting concerned that the right might lose it over the Kirk assassination. I might not blame them much if they do... But I had hoped that the left might start coming to its senses before the right started going in a bad direction for real. And, who knows? Given Kirk's advocacy of dialog and free speech, maybe it won't happen...but I'm very concerned about some of the things we're hearing from the administration. And, if anything, we're hearing even crazier crazy from the left--something I would have thought impossible. The right's reaction to Kirk's assassination has--thus far--been controlled, righteous outrage...whereas many of the left are just flat-out losing their shit. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen anything like it before in American public discussions. I really don't think I've ever heard such vile, hateful, stupid, appalling hysteria before in American public discussions. One wants to hope that it's just the lunatic fringe...but the left's problem for a decade is that there's not much difference between the orthodox and the lunatic fringe...

   Well, it's early. Kirk's murder was only about a week ago.

   Aside from the administration, I've thought conservatives have handled this all pretty well. And more mainstream blue-teamers have, unsurprisingly, handled things better than the fringe...not generally well...but better, anyway.

   The first paragraph above is at least close to being right. Not so sure about what comes after that. It's impressionistic stuff.