For authoritarian progressives, people are as guilty as the principles behind the accusations

Comment published on New York Times online blog, in response to opinion essay by Prof. Randall Kennedy, “Harvard betrays a law professor, and itself,” May 15, 2019:

At root, there are two basic principles of right: will (and affect via desire) and reason/thinking.  Our political system allows for reason only as accidental, as it is assumed that people think rationally about how to get what they want.  Our legal system aims to bridge the two: each adversarial side uses reasoned argument to win.  

Our society has seen a triumph of authoritarianism everywhere, across the spectrum.  Reasoned argument may be weakly present, but basically people are driven not by curiosity but desire to win.  But one still must win by being or seeming right.  Sure that they are, people fight bitterly.  They can no more be persuaded than they can persuade.  Clearly the implicit idea is recourse to force.  

Affects are mobilized as arguments.  If you state your opinion in my presence, you make me uncomfortable, and I have a right to be comfortable which equates to believing my beliefs infallible.  Otherwise, your speech is "trauma-inducing" for me.  Incredible: A Harvard Law student said that!  Or if "she" feels uncomfortable with "him," he is threatening her, and she knows this because she "feels that" she is threatened.  If people at the nation's best law school belief that defendants are proven wrong by the plaintiff's emotions, we are in trouble.   

Our ad hominem culture is a form of this, substituting persons for reasons.  "Believe victims": The accused person is guilty because the accusations are of real crimes painful to be subjected to.  Differently put, you are guilty because the crime you are accused of is indeed a crime.