Key Points:
- Polarization deepens, leading to radicalization of both sides.
- Establishment politicians are seen as “socialist” or “radical” by the right.
- Escalation breeds counter-escalation, leading to political violence.
Once again, I will warn people—the center does not hold.
That’s not a prophecy, but rather a recognition of a political pattern we’ve seen before in history, and are now seeing play out again in real time. As polarization deepens and the norms of liberal democracy are dismantled by a radicalized Republican Party, the eventual consequence was never going to be moderation or consensus-building from the left.
It was always going to escalate. The more the right abandons democratic norms, the more likely it is that the left, too, will radicalize in response.
This isn’t an endorsement of that reality but rather a warning – and we’re already starting to see it play out.
Many Americans, particularly independents and centrists, don’t love figures like Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, or Gavin Newsom. They often seem too scripted, too establishment, too willing to compromise. But that is precisely the point. These are traditional liberal politicians—people who operate within the framework of democratic norms and institutional constraints. They are not revolutionaries. They are not even particularly ideological in the grand scheme of political history.
Yet those on the right often attack them as though they are Marxist insurgents. It’s become routine to see Republican figures denounce Biden as a socialist, Harris as a radical, and Newsom as a threat to America. The absurdity of these accusations might be laughable—if they weren’t helping to pave the way for something far more dangerous: the actual rise of radical left politics that no longer feels beholden to democratic guardrails.
When you push a system hard enough, it begins to break. And when the center collapses, the extremes flourish.
History offers us a stark lesson here. In 1932 Germany, the majority of voters didn’t back parties that supported democracy. They backed the Nazis and the Communists—polarized factions who both sought to upend the fragile institutions of the Weimar Republic. It was only a minority of Germans who supported pro-democracy centrist parties. The result was predictable, and catastrophic.
In the United States today, we may not have Nazi and Communist parties vying for control, but we are hurtling down a path where the political system itself is being hollowed out—first by the radical right, and increasingly by an emergent radical left. The consequence of the right’s authoritarian lurch—through voter suppression, attacks on the judiciary, erosion of press freedoms, and the embrace of political violence—will not be a swing back to the center. It will be answered, eventually, by a counterforce.
We’re already seeing the first signs.
On July 7, news broke that a gunman had ambushed Border Patrol agents outside a federal office in McAllen, Texas. He was killed at the scene. Authorities have not released details about motive, but the incident occurred in a climate of heightened tension. It followed weeks of high-profile, televised immigration raids and expanded deportation crackdowns authorized by the Trump administration—raids designed not just for enforcement but for spectacle. The atmosphere is one of state-perpetrated intimidation.
One of our commenters asked, “What did you expect? A one-sided escalation?” That question—rhetorical and cynical—carries a brutal truth. When you militarize immigration enforcement, when you terrify immigrant communities for political gain, when you put armored vehicles on suburban streets to serve administrative warrants, it should not come as a surprise that some people will respond not with submission, but with violence.
None of this is to justify political violence. But we must understand it. Repression breeds resistance. Escalation invites counter-escalation. And a society that drifts into authoritarianism rarely does so without awakening fierce and sometimes uncontrollable opposition.
This is why what we’re witnessing in American politics isn’t just dysfunction—it’s unraveling.
Even establishment Democrats are being pulled into the vortex. Consider Governor Gavin Newsom’s increasingly sharp tone on social media. On Thursday, he fired off a blunt response to the far-right Libs of TikTok account after being accused of condoning violence: “Of course I condemn any assault on law enforcement, you shit poster.” Crude? Yes. But it was also a sign that even political figures typically cautious about optics are feeling the strain—and responding in kind.
Newsom’s brashness may have seemed like a momentary loss of composure, but in context, it signals something deeper. The normal boundaries of political discourse are being tested—by those who traffic in bad faith accusations and disinformation, and now, increasingly, by those pushed into a corner.
Meanwhile, historians and scholars are sounding the alarm.
Anne Applebaum, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and expert on authoritarianism, recently joined Charlie Sykes on his podcast to discuss the mounting signs of democratic decay in the U.S. Applebaum, who once identified as a conservative, described what’s happening as a terrifying convergence: the Trump administration’s embrace of spectacle, the collapse of institutional guardrails, and the quiet construction of something once thought impossible in America—a centralized federal police force with sweeping, undefined powers.
Applebaum pointed out that one of the things that used to set the United States apart from fragile democracies was our federalist structure. Power was distributed among states. No national police force existed with authority to operate above or against local leaders. But now, she warns, that is changing.
“What really worries me,” Applebaum said, “is this new militarized customs police, which is in effect the first federal police force we’ve ever had with broad and undefined powers.”
The culture of this force, she noted, is not rooted in constitutional accountability or rule of law. It’s rooted in loyalty to an executive vision of power. It functions less like an institution of justice and more like a “brute squad”—a political weapon in uniform.
This transformation has enormous implications. It undermines the balance of power between the federal government and the states. It threatens civil liberties. And it opens the door for abuses we’ve seen in other countries where strongmen use federal forces to punish enemies, silence dissent, and suppress opposition.
It also changes the rules of the game. If federal agents can override local resistance—if governors, mayors, and state courts are no longer meaningful checks—then what remains of the system? What prevents further slide into authoritarian rule?
And in that environment, what happens to the left?
Do we expect activists to respond with polite appeals and legislative proposals while families are dragged from homes and civil liberties are suspended? Do we expect communities under siege to simply wait for the courts, when the courts themselves are being packed with ideologues who show little interest in curbing executive abuse?
No democracy survives such pressures without consequences.
When the center cannot hold, it’s not just political moderation that disappears. It’s the entire framework of peaceful democratic conflict resolution. And once that collapses, we enter uncharted and dangerous territory.
It is easy to pretend we’re still operating in a normal political environment. But we’re not. The warning signs are everywhere: the delegitimization of elections, the criminalization of dissent, the use of state violence as political theater.
The question is no longer whether we’re heading toward a crisis. The question is how we will respond when that crisis arrives—and whether we will still have the tools, the institutions, and the civic courage to hold the line.
Because when the center collapses, history has a way of rushing in to fill the vacuum.
And it rarely ends well.
