Here is a half-formed thought.
The thing that’s genuinely new in our culture in the last half-century, and that has caused the seemingly out-of-control spiral on both the left (“wokism”) and the right (“trumpism”), is the near-universal approbation of vigilantism. This new acceptance of vigilantism has been emergent for many decades (from Dirty Harry through Batman through Blacklist), but I think it must have reached some kind of consensus-level acceptance in the popular culture within the last decade – in a similar process to the acceptance of gay marriage, though much more insidious. Once vigilantism becomes morally acceptable, even preferred, then everyone becomes an enforcer for their particular moral code.
