Well worth a read:
"In contemporary progressive culture, psychological vulnerability carries moral weight. To speak in the language of harm is not merely to describe an internal state, but to stake a claim to legitimacy. Pain confers authority. Emotional injury establishes innocence. Politics increasingly borrows from the vocabulary of therapy.
Terms such as trauma, safety, triggering and harm now function as political tools. As these concepts migrate out of the therapy room and into ideology, the definition of injury expands. Ordinary stress becomes damage. Disagreement becomes threat. Discomfort is reframed as injustice. In such an environment, even extreme emotional reactions are treated as not just legitimate, but actively encouraged.
Institutions reinforce this pattern. Universities, media organisations, and workplaces increasingly normalise self-diagnosis. Emotional pain is met with validation, accommodation, and moral standing. This does not mean the distress is fabricated. But it does mean it is amplified and woven into identity. Suffering becomes something to be displayed rather than worked through."
We see this played out so often, not just in the USA but here in the UK (I have seen it a lot with so called ’trans rights’ activists for example).
"On the Left, political identity can often become inseparable from selfhood. When politics is experienced as an all-encompassing struggle between good and evil, emotional intensity escalates. Opponents are no longer merely wrong, but dangerous. Disagreement becomes existential threat. Loss becomes catastrophe”.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/0d8da94de5421111