Paranoid politics is not going away.

 

It's happened here and, as commentator Robert Tracinski describes below, it's happening over there. 

What do I mean? I mean the morphing of anti-Covid culture warriors into oddly conservative anti-everything zealots.

Tracinski outlines the trajectory.

Moms for Liberty, an activist organisation founded and led by conservative women, has emerged in the last two years to oppose, in the name of “parental rights,” what it sees as leftist indoctrination in public schools.
    There are worthwhile arguments to be had about contemporary gender ideology and about how to respond to the history and legacy of race in America— ... [and] there will be no shortage of controversial examples to be debated.
    But a thoughtful debate is not what Moms for Liberty has offered as its defining contribution. Instead, it has become the driving force behind a sweeping wave of book bans and politicised restrictions on teaching.
    It is a curious outcome for a group with such a libertarian-sounding name. How did Moms for Liberty come to be one of the nation’s chief censors? ...

Turns out it's in much the same way that NZ's 'Voices for Freedom' (anti-'globalist,' anti-mask, anti-vaccine, anti-trans, anti-science ... ) has always more about freedom from reality than any other kind, and more about keeping their anti-Covid ball rolling: "The origin of Moms for Liberty," explains Tracinski, "was not in the culture wars over race and gender but the Covid culture war." There you go, you see:

It began in Florida as a rebellion against rules requiring masks for public school students. ... It was the pandemic that provided Moms for Liberty with the opportunity to mobilise and radicalise conservative parents. Descovich explained, “If you miss this opportunity, when [parents] are really engaged … it’s going to be hard to engage them in the future.” When the debate shifted from masks to vaccines, Moms for Liberty appealed to anti-vaccine sentiment on the right. ...
    That’s the supposed meaning of “for liberty” in Moms for Liberty: the freedom to ignore mask and vaccine mandates. The group emerged from a combination of dogmatic rejection of any anti-pandemic measures and legitimate frustration with school closures, which in some areas dragged on for a year ...
    The anti-mask cause summoned a great deal of violent fury, but it was perhaps too small and temporary for a national movement that had ambitions to persist beyond the pandemic. Yet this issue established the kind of energy that has characterised Moms for Liberty ever since: an upwelling of anger, a distrust of experts, a volcanic hatred of “the establishment,” and a deep suspicion that the powers that be are out to destroy our way of life.

Sound familiar?

Paranoid politics is not going away.