If you wanted to radicalize an entire segment of society, how would you go about it? I’ve identified twelve steps:

1. Blame them for economic distress and lower quality of life.
2. Condone attacks on their places of residence.
3. Subvert their artistic, musical and literary expression.
4. Boycott and condone attacks on their places of business.
5. Suppress freedom of speech by colluding with print, electronic and social media to silence their voice.
6. Systematically eradicate their monuments to history.
7. Defame, dismiss and marginalize their very identity as people.
8. Tell them they are ignorant, unenlightened, uneducated, “deplorable” and stupid.
9. Accuse them of being racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, homophobic bigots.
10. Tell them their ideological values pose an existential threat to society.
11. Declare their entire religious belief system—a belief system shared by three billion humans currently living on the planet, dating back thousands of years—an existential threat to society.
12. Tell them it would be better for all concerned if they would simply…stop…breathing.

If you do…this people group will rise up in resentment and fury and begin to radically push back. Fearing reprisals, they may lie to your face about their true beliefs, or lie on polls just to mess things up. But, they will network. They will organize. They will bide their time. Then, out of nowhere, they may even elect the most unlikely of candidates as president…because he was willing to fight for them.

Hyperbole? I think not. The Obama administration ran roughshod over conservatives for eight, long years, shoving progressive policy after progressive policy down their collective throats with only a glib, “We won. Get over it,” in response to a vast chorus of complaint. And they resented the hell out of it. The coastal, Hollywood and media elites seem clueless regarding the depth of frustration and resentment that continues to boil throughout middle America as a result of these heavy-handed tactics.

You know what’s scary about that list up there? With one or two exceptions, it is eerily similar to methods employed by Hitler when he needed to turn Germany against the Jewish population. I’d pay attention to that if I were you. While the left accuses Trump of fascist tactics, the entire conservative population of the US is actually experiencing fascist tactics.

I leave you with this quote from George R.R. Martin, “When you tear out a man’s tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you’re only telling the world that you fear what he might say.” RG…out!