The left's fear of Kanye West

Michael Goodwin:

In the beginning, it was safe to ignore Kanye West and his growing bromance with President Trump. After all, West is a performer, which makes it easy to discount his political talk, and he is married to a Kardashian, which, well, enough said.

But recent events demand attention. First came West’s Sept. 29 appearance on “Saturday Night Live,” where he rapped in his red Make America Great Again hat and praised Trump in a speech, most of which NBC cut from its telecast.

Then there was Thursday’s spectacle in the Oval Office. Once again, his stream-of-consciousness commentary veered from nonsense to common sense and included references to the 13th Amendment, which forbids slavery, and his feeling of being “programmed” as a black man to support only liberal politicians.

There was no denying those events were intriguing and entertaining, but I still didn’t regard any of it as politically significant — until the left-wing media went absolutely bonkers on him.

Their extraordinarily venomous and personal attacks on West reminded me of the left’s unhinged smears of Brett Kavanaugh and Trump.

Some sunk to citing West’s documented mental-health issues and many invoked his race in pejorative terms, making them especially outrageous.
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The first thing to notice are the double standards. If conservatives criticized a black liberal in those words, the liberal media would let loose a chorus of “racism” and ­demand that every Republican ­denounce the commentators.

But this time, it was the liberal ­media itself making the offensive comments, so Democratic politicians were not required to take a stand. Naturally, none did.

Yet it was the sheer volume of the hatred, and the uniformity of it, that really got my attention. What’s this really about?

My conclusion is that the outpouring of wrath suggests the answer. To wit, if Kanye West is important enough to be targeted by so many in the media for character assassination, he must also be dangerous.

And if he’s dangerous, it’s in the same way that conservative speakers are dangerous to college snowflakes. Any dissent from the ruling coercive liberalism might be contagious, and therefore must be silenced. Diversity of thought cannot be permitted.  (Emphasis added.)

So we can assume the left fears West could be a leading indicator that Trump’s appeal to the working and middle classes is cutting across racial barriers.
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Liberals do seem to want to shut down any speaker with views inconsistent with their own.  It is especially the case where the speaker might be a member of a group they identify as one with allegiance to them.  Identity politics has corrupted their thought processes and makes it difficult for them to handle rejection of their narrative.