Nearly everyone is afraid of dying, and atheists may be more vulnerable than traditional people.  When we get older, the end of life can become something of an obsession, and despairing people can attribute their own fears to some popular scapegoat.  Trump Derangement Syndrome is a perfect example of scapegoating, and that over-the-top screeching from the left is so unusual in American life that it needs some explanation.

The Dems are now so bizarre that I can think of only a couple of explanations.  One is uncontrolled death anxiety, and another one is the possibility of guilty secrets that might get out if Trump survives all the onslaughts and is elected as a normal American president in a normal election.

We all know that this will be hard to pull off, because the left keeps confusing Trump with Satan.

Scapegoating is a regressive defense mechanism that  belongs in childhood, before we become mature adults.  Denial of reality is another regressive defense, where humans actually cancel out reality and scream in rage at being reminded of unwanted truths.

Mob activity is so ancient that it was described by Plato and Shakespeare, centuries ago.  Socrates was ordered to kill himself at the orders of a maddened Athenian assembly.  If we believe the Christian Bible, Jesus was also executed to satisfy a mob.  Plato wrote that “mobocracy” was the worst kind of government, and he saw mobs in the streets of Athens many times in his life.

The U.S. Constitution was written to restrain that mob tendency in humans, and the Democrats used to understand that.  Harry Truman was not a mob leader, but recent Democrats sound more mob-like than any U.S. political movement since the McCarthy era.

It is obvious that Joe Biden and his cohort are deliberately whipping up anger and resentment between “identity groups,” which is how you split up a healthy society and make it weak and self-destructive.

Because China saw raging mobs during the Mao era, it is possible that this is being manipulated by Chinese front groups.  But Iran and Russia have also seen out-of-control mobs burning, killing, and looting in the last century.  Vladimir Lenin openly encouraged mob lynching of Ukrainian peasants, a trauma that shapes the war in Ukraine today.  Radical jihadists routinely engage in mob politics, which is why so many Muslim societies have been frozen in the past.

The U.S. Constitution emerged in the time of the French Revolution, which saw mobs running wild in the streets of Paris.  The Brits, living close to Paris across the Channel, were shocked by the breakdown of French society.  Traditional Americans knew all this if they read the news from abroad, which was often full of violent revolutions, coups, and assassinations.  The checks and balances of the Constitution were designed precisely to ward off mob frenzies.

That political taboo has now been broken by the radical left in collusion with Islamist jihad.  Democrat politicians and media routinely encourage chaos in a sly and deniable way.

If there are any adults left in U.S. politics, they should finally stand up and unite to control the maniacs on campus and in the streets.  What we are seeing is no accident.  The hard left has a long, long history of whipping up mobs, and healthy countries have often  acted to keep mob agitators down.

Death fears, regressive behavior, and mob scapegoating are all of a piece.  They are the ancient mark of societal breakdown.  Our enemies know that, and they keep stirring up turmoil.  It is time for adults to unite, stand up, and stop it.

Image: Hernan Fednan via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.