Now trumps all:

This is extremely bad news for America because it is very hard to have an effective democracy without compromise. But rising cross-partisan hostility means that Americans increasingly see the other side not just as wrong but as evil, as a threat to the very existence of the nation, according to Pew Research. Americans can expect rising polarization, nastiness, paralysis, and governmental dysfunction for a long time to come.

This is a warning for the rest of the world because some of the trends that have driven America to this point are occurring in many other countries, including: rising education and individualism (which make people more ideological), rising immigration and ethnic diversity (which reduces social capital and trust), and stagnant economic growth (which puts people into a zero-sum mindset).

This is extremely bad news for science and universities because universities are usually associated with the left. In the United States, universities have moved rapidly left since 1990, when the left-right ratio of professors across all departments was less than two to one. By 2004, the left-right ratio was roughly five to one, and it is still climbing. In the social sciences and humanities it is far higher. Because this political purification is happening at a time of rising cross-partisan hostility, we can expect increasing hostility from Republican legislators toward universities and the things they desire, including research funding and freedom from federal and state control.

They’ve made their bed.

Will 2016 be the year of the defeat of the Social Justice Warriors?

Had progressives wanted to stem the tide of cultural libertarianism, the time to do it was a year ago. They could have edged back, been reasonable and won us all over. But instead they doubled down. Fine: now they get to lose. Let’s defend culture and free expression and push these odious halfwits back into their dreary studio apartments filled with cat-piss and alt rock records and let them know that we’ve decided to opt out of the soft bigotry of San Francisco-style nonsense. We possess a working sense of humour and we’re going to use it whether they like it or not.

Let’s hope. He’s a good general to lead the charge.