Politico: “In a world where polarization driven by social media has equipped every smartphone-wielding American with a hammer, every political dispute looks like a nail. A year into the Covid-19 pandemic, viral videos of mask burnings and other forms of lockdown protest proliferate. The arch-conservative, troll-friendly webmagazine The Federalist more than doubles its traffic each year. Pro-Trump students are bending reformicon-minded College Republican groups to their will. In certain parts of the country, modified pickup trucks ‘roll coal,’ spewing jet-black exhaust fumes into the air as a middle finger to environmentalists. Popular bootleg Trump campaign merchandise read simply: ‘Fuck your feelings.'”

“‘It’s a spirit of rebellion against what people see as liberals who are overly sensitive, or are capable of being triggered, or hypocritical,’ says Marshall Kosloff, co-host of the podcast ‘The Realignment,’ which analyzes the shifting allegiances of and rise of populist politics. ‘It basically offers the party a way of resolving the contradictions within a realigning party, that increasingly is appealing to down-market white voters and certain working-class Black and Hispanic voters, but that also has a pretty plutocratic agenda at the policy level.’ In other words: Owning the libs offers bread and circuses for the pro-Trump right while Republicans quietly pursue a traditional program of deregulation and tax cuts at the policy level. To supercharge those distractions, however, was the great innovation of Donald Trump’s presidency: He used the highest platform in the land to play shock jock 24/7, trading the radio booth for his Twitter account – thrilling his supporters by dismaying his foes. And despite Trump’s defeat in the 2020 presidential election – and the Republican Party’s loss of control of both the House and the Senate under Trump’s leadership – the GOP has largely chosen to take his strategy and run with it, betting on a hard-charging, antagonistic rhetorical approach to deliver it back into power in Washington.”