"It is impossible to exaggerate how terrifying liberalism must find it that in its very heart there is an ineradicable alterity (to speak in the postmodern argot of a onetime high-low articulation). Further middlizing your demonstrations, which is to say making them more law and authority abiding, will be more, not less terrifying to liberalism. But this may be an ineffable terror, difficult to articulate and act on, and so maybe easier to alleviate, assuming one is ready to accept some slings and arrows—even more, assuming one can read those slings and arrows back to those firing them as desperate cries for a sustainable authoritative structure." Read them back so as to belittle the desperate cries, or to grudgingly acknowledge the need for authority, both? I'm trying to think through how often this "ineffable terror" is felt by liberals, or to what degree it is your construction of what they should feel, though i concur they must at times feel it (like those on Stalin's death row
At certain points they must recognize that they are dependent upon the very people they vilify and send their minions again. And not only the people--the norms those people represent and defend. All of your examples have a "that's not what I meant" flavor to them--we did;t mean to kill the sacred body of the progressive reporter, we didn't mean to bring in terrorists, I didn't mean that you should attack *me*, etc. On a certain level, they do think it's all not really that serious, because the middle will always be there--but if the middle will always be there, what is the meaning of what they're doing?
You have a point, though-- maybe it's more of an uneasiness than a "terror." They get anxious, and sometimes hysterical, though, over rather simple declarations, like "we need borders," or "some people should be in jail." They can't exactly deny such statements, but they also can't let themselves get caught agreeing with them. So, they have to attack those who make them as intentionally introducing some unreasonable divisiveness and "politicization" into whatever the situation is. Yes, I'm reading that as a kind of terror, but maybe it's something else.