by Aurelius Grimm

The electoral stakes in Virginia this year are not existential in the sense of national survival. No one is claiming the Commonwealth is about to fall off the map. But the stakes are extraordinarily significant for one overriding reason: there is no moderating force left on the left.

When Democrats held total power in Richmond from 2018 through 2021, they didn’t hesitate. They didn’t govern cautiously or temper their agenda to win broad support. They ran through everything they could, with no guardrails, no brakes, and no concern for the damage left behind.

We saw it. They closed our schools. Governor Ralph Northam ordered churches shuttered while keeping the bars open. They tried to ban the most common sporting rifles in the United States. They opened the jail doors, and there are people dead today who would still be alive if not for the “early release” policies that Democrats rammed through.

And rather than focus on lowering power bills or ensuring reliable electricity, Democrats made it clear their number one priority is “fighting climate change.” Never mind that Virginia’s contribution to global emissions is minuscule, completely swamped by Communist China. They were—and still are—willing to make life more expensive and energy less reliable for working families in service of an agenda that accomplishes nothing measurable.

This is the core problem: there is no moderating voice left in their coalition. The activist base is in charge, and it will not leave people alone to live their own lives.

Biological Reality vs Manufactured Offense

Take the debate over women’s sports and private spaces. My daughter should be able to go into a gym locker room without seeing a male body. She should be able to compete in sports without competing against boys.

That’s not bigotry—that’s reality. Yet Democrats treat biological reality itself as if it were a violation of civil rights.

This reveals something deeper: immaturity.

A mature mind can encounter a perspective it doesn’t share, consider it seriously, and even disagree without demanding conformity. Immaturity, by contrast, insists that everyone must celebrate your choices, affirm your
beliefs, and fund your lifestyle—or else you’re a bigot. That’s where the left is today. Words are “violence.”

Actual violence is “protest.” There’s no common ground, because disagreement itself is treated as illegitimate. I wish Democrats still had a moderating force. If their leadership looked like it did in 1990, this wouldn’t feel existential. It would just be a matter of preference. But today’s left has lost its mind. Fail to bow at the altar of climate alarmism, or reject the latest gender ideology, and you’re cast out.

Living in a Bubble

Worse, they’ve sealed themselves into a cultural bubble. Many reporters who covered Charlie Kirk’s funeral didn’t even recognize what they were seeing at a Christian service. To them, faith, firearms, or family-centered life are alien—things to fear, not to understand. That’s epistemic closure: a total unwillingness to consider the reality outside your own worldview.

At its heart, this election comes down to something simple. Do we want government run by people who believe in responsibility, in cause and effect, in the hard truth that our choices shape our lives? Or do we want government run by those who encourage victimhood, excuse bad decisions, and insist that feelings are reality?

That is what’s at stake in Virginia. It may not be existential in the cosmic sense, but for the people who have to live with the results, it will matter more than anything else.

The Left’s Comfort Project

The left’s agenda isn’t about solving problems. It’s about normalizing what most people instinctively reject, because it makes activists feel righteous.
The right tends to see the world as composed of individuals who each have agency to make their own choices. The left tends to see the world as large groups defined by race, sexuality, or gender. In this view, individual responsibility dissolves into collective circumstance.

The young man who steals a gun and kills didn’t make bad choices, he was “pushed” into them by his environment, then further victimized by a criminal justice system that failed to understand he had no choice.

Consequences are cruelty in their eyes, because no one is truly responsible for their own actions. When riots happen, it’s not the person throwing the brick who is at fault, but the “system” that made him feel oppressed.

Personal Activism, Not Public Good

In many cases, the activism is deeply personal. Abortion activists, for example, are disproportionately women who’ve had abortions themselves. And unlike the sanitized version marketed by Planned Parenthood, regret is common. A woman’s decision to end the potential life inside her is fraught with emotion. Normalizing abortion — even late in pregnancy — provides a way for those who’ve made that decision to ease the conflict they live
with.

A similar impulse drives the push to inject sexuality into classrooms. The left demands virtually no limits on what can be placed in school libraries. Graphic depictions of sex, books about incest and rape, and material on sexual orientation for children as young as middle school are all treated as “normal” by activists.

Why? Because if elementary school students can be transgender, then it isn’t strange for an adult to be. If kids discuss sexual preferences as part of the curriculum, then no one can call an adult strange for doing the same.

They aren’t fighting for kids. They’re fighting to make themselves feel better about their own lives.

Shifting the Burden

At the core of all this activism lies one thought: “I’m not different — you’re different.” Those who are outside the mainstream don’t like being the odd ones out. So instead of changing themselves, they try to change the
mainstream to match their own hang-ups and preferences.

This is why a middle school library ends up stocking material parents can’t even preview. It’s why Democrats in Richmond fight for abortion without limits — even late in pregnancy. It’s why they push to loosen criminal
penalties until repeat offenders are back on the street.

Even if you disagree with me on each individual issue, you can see the pattern: erase limits, declare the old boundaries oppressive, and then work to make those erasures permanent.

The Maturity Divide

The right tends to view the world through the lens of individual responsibility. Each of us has agency, and while circumstances matter, they do not erase accountability. A kid born into poverty has a harder road, but he still faces choices. Study or skip school. Work or drift. Take responsibility or blame others.

The left, by contrast, sees people as groups without agency, shaped only by forces outside their control. In that worldview, no one is responsible for their failures, and consequences themselves are acts of oppression.

That’s why words must be policed, disagreement punished, and reality itself reshaped. It’s not just politics — it’s immaturity. It is the refusal to face the world as it is, preferring instead to demand that everyone else affirm the world as activists wish it to be.

The Choice Ahead

Virginia voters face a stark choice. Do we want leaders who believe in cause and effect, in the principle that choices matter and reality cannot be ignored? Or do we want leaders who blur those lines, excuse failure, and
elevate feelings over facts?

This year’s elections may not be existential, but they matter deeply. For the families paying higher power bills, for the women losing privacy in sports and locker rooms, for the victims of criminals who never should have been released, the stakes are as high as they come.

Virginia doesn’t need more immaturity in government. It needs grown-ups.

Aurelius Grimm is the pseudonym of a long-time observer of Virginia politics.