Sometimes watching people lose it on live TV is funny. Other times, it’s just deeply uncomfortable. You can decide which this is for you personally, but I’m leaning more toward the latter.

Cornel West debated Leo Terrell on Sean Hannity’s Fox News program last night. Things went off the rails quickly as disagreements over the protests and de-funding the police enflamed tensions. West not only started screaming and calling Terrell a “negro,” he also managed to start attacking the camera in a fashion you’d expect from a Saturday Night Live skit.

I was getting sleepy and wanting to call it a night, but I tuned into this and now I'm going to be wide awake until 4am pic.twitter.com/Hoo6Lse6kl

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) June 10, 2020

Terrell, who is former law enforcement but has spoken strongly against police misconduct, simply doesn’t agree that getting rid of police (or massively handicapping them) is a good idea. In saner times, this wouldn’t be controversial, but we don’t live in saner times. That leads to a back and forth about whether the two are “brothers” and West repeating “check yourself negro” over and over while throwing his face into the camera.

Our country is going nuts. Not everyone, but a large, vocal segment are angry, resentful, and unwilling to listen to reason at this point. Take the situation in New York City, where the mayor is pledging to re-direct police funding to social services and “young people.” While that may sound laudable to some, the reality is that the NYPD’s effectiveness is why that city has one of the lowest murder and crime rates of any major city in the country. It’s why they don’t look like Chicago or Baltimore. Some can argue the NYPD have overstepped with stop and frisk and other proactive measures, but every policy has trade-offs. How many thousands of lives, mostly black, have been saved because the NYPD have done their jobs in reducing crime?

And I’m not even demanding you take one side or the other on questions like that, only that a discussion be allowed. But the current environment is one of silencing, censorship, shaming, and even violence toward those who don’t propagate a certain, very specific narrative. Nuance has been banished.

None of this is going to get better. The far-left do not just give up on cultural battles like this. They only double down. The only real question left is will enough people stand up and say enough is enough.