RICHARD FERNANDEZ: The Left Sees the Rise of a Rival Consciousness and is Becoming Afraid.

Tony Blair, for one, has stopped regarding what the press terms the “populist revolt” as a mere aberration and come to see it as a actual, threatening historical development. Little by little the Left is starting to realize that a global reaction to it is not a freak confluence of rogue waves but driven by systemic factors — and an awareness that it has not been seen for a long time.

It is that self-awareness that is so frightening to the Left. It does not mind fighting foes that have no mind. What was formerly described as conservativism was as a nuisance but never a real a threat to the left because it had no counterprogram beyond caution. They were regarded as frightened rabbits who never reached for the steering wheel of history only pleaded on occasion for a touch of the brakes to still their shattered nerves.

They were therefore safe because despite the occasional setback the Left held the Western monopoly on ideological direction-giving, and were never seriously challenged. . . .

What is emerging, if anything is, may not be the Left’s foe in the way the Left would be its own foe. But it is conscious and therefore they are afraid: because they know what the Left would do and they do not want done to them what they would do to others.

Well, yes. Flashback: When rulers despise the ruled.