There’s a lot to dislike about Donald Trump. Winning the election didn’t magically change him into a different person, so there’s a lot to dislike about now President-elect Trump. There will be a lot to dislike about President Trump too. However, most of the hysterical reactions to Trump’s election aren’t even really about Trump. They’re about having a Republican in the White House.

Any Republican.

Because so many believed Hillary was a shoo-in and because he is an obnoxious blowhard with a checkered past, Trump is an exceptionally easy target for this nonsense, but rest assured that we would be seeing similar hysteria had any other Republican been elected. If we now had a President-elect Cruz, Rubio, or Walker do you honestly think there wouldn’t be protests, paranoia, and calls to carelessly upend the Constitutionally prescribed way we as a federal republic elect our President?

The left have falsely accused Vice President-elect Mike Pence—a man wholly unlike Donald Trump in most respects—of horrific acts and human rights abuses. That in itself shows that the protest movement isn’t just about Trump but this video from George W. Bush’s inauguration clearly shows that there is nothing special about the left’s insane antics since the defeat of Hillary Clinton.

It’s called “poisoning the well” and it is standard operating procedure for the left. The intent is to weaken the newly elected President so that he has a more difficult time accomplishing his agenda. Getting lots of people to think Trump is literally the new Hitler will help Democrats win public relations face offs with the new Republican administration. The left never plays defense and now they are forcing even many of Trump’s critics on the right to defend him against their ridiculous charges.

There are some who are actually frightened that Trump is going to imprison or otherwise violate the human rights of anyone who isn’t a white, heterosexual, Christian. Politicians and media figures on the left are doing whatever they can to keep those people’s paranoid delusions fed and watered. Do you think Christiane Amanpour really believes freedom of the press is in unprecedented danger under Donald Trump? Of course she doesn’t, but it helps accomplish a leftist agenda if enough people believe her when she makes the assertion.

Some of the people who are most panicky right now are the participation trophy generation raised to believe first and foremost that they are entitled to high self esteem under any circumstances. They have been spoon fed ill conceived notions about how the world should work by well indoctrinated public school teachers and far left activist college professors. In their eyes, disagreeing with their ideas is tantamount to a hate crime; doing so out loud demands the loss of one’s livelihood or worse.

Most importantly, many of them have lived their entire (chronologically) adult lives with a left wing community organizer slash Alinskyite political agitator in the Oval Office and the popular culture has told them that he is literally the coolest American ever to put on mom jeans or “slow jam” the news. These are probably the most easily manipulated people on earth and the Democrat Party and their media accomplices are taking full advantage. The protesters believe that after fifty years of running Cuba like an island prison, Fidel Castro was a heroic revolutionary but they perceive Trump as history’s greatest monster before he has even taken the oath of office. But Trump isn’t special in this regard.

The baseline sanity level in America has dipped since the last time the left had an opportunity to orchestrate a freak out over a Republican winning the White House and it is not particularly difficult to generate enthusiastic hatred for a guy like Trump. As a result, the protests seem bigger, louder, and more vitriolic, but Trump being Trump isn’t the trigger for the outrage and hyperbole we’re seeing from the left. The real trigger is the left’s loss of political power they believe to be their birthright.