No doubt you have noticed this yourself, but it really is a sign of how culturally dominant the Left is in much of America.
Whenever politics comes up--as it ALWAYS does with liberals--they automatically assume that you are a liberal, too, unless you are wearing something like a MAGA hat or have a Southern accent. (They assume that Southerners are neanderthals who do little besides shoot guns and lynch black people.)
I will say, in some contexts, it is very, very fun to do the reverse just to see how they will respond
— Trey Goff (@thetreygoff) September 23, 2025
Notably, they get very angry and combative, something no conservative does in this situation, as noted in the example here
This is a phenomenon mostly limited to Blue urban areas--not urban cores, per se, but the entire metro regions in which most people live these days. One would expect this type of thing to be common in closed communities such as colleges and universities or NGOs, but it is now common in everyday life.
I experience this when grocery shopping, and when I took a break from politics and worked at a camera store, my colleagues would casually trash Trump and Republicans as if it were the most normal thing in the world and couldn't possibly offend any people worth considering.
New article for today, longer thoughts on a topic I've touched on many times before
— Kitten 💖🐈 (@kitten_beloved) September 23, 2025
Enjoyhttps://t.co/2zdrolxgzY
It is so common that one rarely thinks about it anymore.
In April of last year I was in the Austin area to watch the solar eclipse, relaxing in the shady back yard of the house we had rented for the occasion. We were hosting some local boomer relatives of one of the attendees to our eclipse party, and I was shooting the shit with an older gentleman, beers in hand, discussing how quickly one’s retinas might be damaged by foolishly looking at the sun unshielded. Surely it was fine to just take a peek real quick-like, I joked. His manner abruptly shifted. “You’d burn your eyes out like Great Leader did,” he snarled. It took me a moment to realize that he wasn’t talking about Kim Jung Un, but rather Trump, who had been photographed squinting up at an eclipse without eye protection during his first term in 2017.
This was an obscure non-story from seven years earlier, one of a countless sequence of similar “Experts Agree Orange Man Bad, Wrong” stories published during Trump’s first term. I only knew about it from “dudes rock” memes posted by right-wing jokers on Twitter. He must have been reminded about it by his own media bubble.
“You know, I really wish somebody would just blow his head off already,” he continued, not missing a beat. I made a non-committal noise in response, took a slug off my longneck, and changed the subject back to the eclipse.
This incident was weird, but not for the surface reason. The weird thing wasn’t this retiree I had met ten minutes earlier casually wishing death on a political figure supported by roughly half the country. No, the truly bizarre thing was how pedestrian this kind of occurrence had become in my own life, how inured to it I had become. It should be unusual for someone to make inflammatory political remarks to a fellow countryman after having known him only ten minutes. But it’s not. It happens thousands of times every day in professional middle-class circles like the ones I travel in.
As I have written before, the Network Contagion Research Institute has published alarming research about the growth of "assassination culture" on the left, but we all tend to think of Antifa and trans activists in that context. But some version of this, if less extreme, extends far into liberal culture.
While the casual mentions of violence may be more common and more jarring than we would like, most of us experience something more common and more pervasive in daily life: the assumption that all good people must agree with The Narrative™, and if you don't, you are automatically the Enemy.
As a result, most people with conservative inclinations find it more convenient to stay quiet and let casual comments disparaging us slide off their backs. The alternative is living with opprobrium and often facing professional consequences. It is a smaller version of what Christians face in Great Britain, where Muslims can openly declare their contempt for Christians and commitment to violence, and Christians can be arrested for silent prayer or discussing the Bible in public.
Christian or conservative speech is triggering and must be silenced; anti-Christian or anti-conservative speech is just considered normal and justified.
Frankly, I don't think that anybody should be subjected to political harangues while shopping or going to the water cooler at work, or when socializing with people. I don't long for a world where conservatives can drop anti-liberal comments while waiting in a line or watching an eclipse; I'd rather live in a world where such topics are discussed only when both parties choose to do so.
IN 2022, JOHNNY DEPP SAID “WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME AN ACTOR ASSASSINATED A PRESIDENT?”
— The Sacred Blue Tent (@SabrinaGal182) September 19, 2024
WILL FUTURE PROVE PAST? PREPARE YOURSELF. pic.twitter.com/679ud1n5Gd
But leftist politics are the air that liberals breathe, mostly because you can't open a newspaper, tune into a TV show, or go to the movies without being inundated with left-leaning messages. An actress gets an award, and we are treated to a lecture on Middle East politics from a 22-year-old whose main talent is emoting well on screen.
Tune into a late-night show and it's all politics, all the time. How could anybody marinated in that culture not assume that everybody who is normal thinks like that?
In these circles, being liberal is the default, and therefore all liberals are “out”: everyone knows that a lib is a lib, and they talk about their politics freely, indeed nearly non-stop in many cases. By contrast, even moderate conservatives in such circles are usually closeted. They keep their heads down and their mouths shut. If the liberals know that conservatives walk silently amongst them, they sure don’t see it as any reason to watch their mouths. On the contrary, they seem to sincerely believe that everyone around them believes more or less the same things they do. They therefore say the most nakedly partisan, divisive things in mixed company, serenely confident they are surrounded by fellow travelers, blissfully ignorant of who in their lives might disagree with them.
I don't think most liberals muse openly about assassinating Trump--only a bit more than half of Democrats have said that assassinating Trump would be justified, and only 25% will tell pollsters that they think violence, in general, is a good political tool--but I do wish that they would STFU about politics in polite and mixed company.
Say what you will at a party filled with fellow liberals--blowing off steam among friends is quite normal, and everybody does it--but it would be nice to go to the store without getting insulted all that time. Not that the people doing so intend it that way, because most do not. It's just that they have no filter because, for them, the Overton Window is naturally left-leaning, because nearly 100% of their cultural experience is.
Obviously, conservatives have to become more open about being so. Not to offend or to fight back. There is a place for political warfare, and daily life is not it.
Rather, we should be more open about our inclinations because most liberals would be ashamed to know they were casually insulting their neighbors. There really is a plurality, at least, of really good and decent liberals who don't seek to offend people. For them, dropping anti-conservative quips is equivalent to discussing one's football team. It is a good opener.
We can change that. And should.
Editor's Note: The mainstream media continues to deflect, gaslight, spin, and lie about President Trump, his administration, and conservatives.
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