Milkshakes and worse are being pelted at conservatives and right-wingers. When President Trump was in London, elderly men were physically attacked by leftists while the police stood watching.
Across the Atlantic, an 81-year-old war veteran was similarly assaulted during European parliamentary elections. Why? For daring to express his support for the Brexit Party.
Trump supporters are being brutalized in public.
It is easy to reduce such incidents to statistics, Pew Research Center findings, and opinion poll numbers.
We often have to see the grisly images ourselves to recognize the levels of liberal intolerance engulfing the West.
Trump supporters are being brutalized in public. Right-leaning personalities targeted on social media. People are struggling to make ends meet because of liberal intolerance.
‘When you act like that, you act like Donald Trump’
An elderly supporter of the US president is pushed to the ground during anti-Trump protests in London https://t.co/hDO99JOJ8h pic.twitter.com/nSWADhQEto
— ITV News (@itvnews) June 4, 2019
Ideological bigotry of this kind was evident to me before I came across it online. It started within my own home.
I come from a house divided. Not only by political ideology and affiliation, but by generation. Both my grandparents – who have raised me since birth – are proud, card-carrying Democrats.
For the past five years I have watched as my relationship with my grandparents deteriorated. Bonds, of which I believed to be life-long, have faded for no reason other than my politics.
For five years I have made a name for myself as a proponent of conservatism and a supporter of President Trump. Perhaps more than anything, as an anomaly. A young, black male with a set of principles that count as a rarity within the community from which I hail.
From the outside looking in, it may seem like life couldn’t be better. I’ve held court with President Trump, bear-hugged Vice President Pence, and received a number of accolades for my advocacy.
But for all that has been gained — from opportunity to notoriety — it has not come without a hefty price.
The single biggest casualty is my relationship with two people who I love more than anything: my grandparents.
Since my foray into conservative politics, the relationship has been fraught with conflict.
I can vividly recount each time my grandfather tore into me for voicing an opinion with which he disagreed, labeling me ignorant or misguided.
I can vividly remember each time he accused me of “kissing the white man’s ass,” dismissing my activism as unimportant and meaningless. Putting me down without any sense or feeling of remorse.
I can vividly remember each time, due to his intolerance, I was reduced to tears.
It wasn’t the words that stung. Do what I do and you grow accustomed to rhetoric. It was the fact that that he was the source of the words; that he allowed politics to destroy the long-standing bond between us.
Meanwhile, my grandmother looked on.
Regardless how independent or how defiant adolescents may seem, nothing matters more to us during these formative years than the support of those we love. For years, politics and partisanship has robbed me of that support. It has robbed of me that love.
In spite of this, we continue on. And I have no plans to stop.
It is not the betrayal of one’s values that will remedy the political divide that plagues the West. It is more tolerance of disagreement and debate.
I disagree with New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s politics, but I wouldn’t allow that to forbid us from sitting across the table from one another, or perhaps even getting along.
This is what the left wants, and is enshrining in a new generation of intolerant activists.
Take “GayWonk” Carlos Maza as an example.
On May 21, Maza demanded his 111,000 followers “Milkshake them all,” referring to right wingers.
He insisted conservatives should be humiliated “at every turn” and that we should “dread public organizing.”
Fast forward and just just two weeks later, Maza had whipped up another intolerance campaign against Steven Crowder for hurting his feelings on the internet. He sought to have life both ways.
To be intolerant, but never to be assailed.
To be physically aggressive to those with whom he disagrees, but never to be the subject of criticism (or ridicule) himself).
My grandparents grew up in a time in which blackness inherently meant liberalism, or leftism. A time when the color of their skin dictated their politics.
We no longer live in such a time.
I refuse to allow the box that society put them in to hold me captive as well.
And just as I will not given up my activism, I will also never give up on my grandparents.
CJ Pearson (@TheCJPearson) is a conservative personality who has amassed more than 370,000 likes on Facebook, more than 250,000 followers on Twitter, and more than 100 million views on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter combined. A lifelong Georgian raised by Democrats, CJ became a conservative in 2nd grade.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.