What the alt-right is actually decrying is not a loss of liberty but a loss of privilege. What they fear is not censorship but the levelling of a playing field that is a natural partner to the progression of Western society — an event that same society actively yearns for with its voice and its wallet. If they see progressives as the cultural equivalent to a nanny state leaning against economic progress, then they should see themselves as the cultural equivalent of a corporation overfed by subsidies and propped up by archaic and outdated institutions.

The problem you see is those whose views you don’t care for are getting political traction.

But what about the steady, systematic trashing of Republicans in general — not just the “alt-right” but all the right — by prominent Democrats and those in the news media who vote for them (over eighty percent in some studies)?

Bluntly, you and your friends helped create this mess by leaving half of America feeling lied about in the press, and feeling they can’t trust what they read in the papers or online, or see on television news. Alienated people go to those who validate their concerns, and there Trump was.

Congratulations. Your parochial worldview created an opposition bloc worse than you would have faced had you dealt with your political opposition as other Americans and not the “alt-right”. You deal in the politics of demonization.