Have we just gone ‘too far’ in promoting our agendas?

“Toofar” is not a viral hashtag — yet — but it is the prevailing ethos of the moment, the sentiment animating our politics and our culture, the sense that is propelling a massive backlash across the political spectrum.

For the right, the summer of protests, Black Lives Matter and “woke culture” went too far by toppling Confederate monuments, working to create “autonomous zones” in cities like Seattle and pushing to defund the police.

Conservatives responded by waging a campaign against the 1619 Project and critical race theory, passing dozens of laws designed to clamp down on protests, and hammering the Democrats as soft on crime.

The latter has been so potent and effective, particularly as some crimes have increased, that it has made Democrats — some not fully committed to police reform in the first place — tuck their tails and run. Even the most liberal of cities have retreated from reforms.

Perhaps no city exemplifies this trend better than San Francisco.

In February of last year, London Breed, the first Black woman to be elected mayor of the city, announced plans to redirect $120 million from law enforcement budgets to the Black community. This is, without question, a move that fit squarely with the spirit of “Defund the Police.”

Ten months later, after some crimes rose, she directed a surge of police officers in some neighborhoods. “It is time that the reign of criminals who are destroying our city,” she said, comes “to an end. And it comes to an end when we take the steps to be more aggressive with law enforcement, more aggressive with the changes in our policies and less tolerant of all the [expletive] that has destroyed our city.”

The White House applauded her for the turnabout.

Now, the San Francisco district attorney, Chesa Boudin, a crusader for criminal justice reform, may well lose his office in a recall election. His opponents have lambasted him as soft on crime. If he is recalled, it will be a major blow to criminal justice reform efforts in the city.

Many in that liberal city have also succumbed to the Too Far ideology.

But police reform and criminal justice are only a few of the areas in which this ideology is pervasive. Some see the inclusion of trans girls in sports — and the normalizing of trans-ness in general — as a bridge too far in LGBTQ rights. Because of it, we have seen unrelenting attacks on trans women, with everything from bathroom bills to laws barring trans kids from playing on sports teams.

Even the #Metoo movement now seems to be battered by allegations that it, too, has gone “Too Far.” It’s not just that Johnny Depp won his defamation suit against his former wife Amber Heard. Even before that, Heard was being ripped to shreds on social media.

In a statement released after the verdict, Heard wrote that the disappointment she felt was “beyond words,” but that “I’m even more disappointed with what this verdict means for other women.” She continued: “It sets back the clock to a time when a woman who spoke out could be publicly shamed and humiliated.”

Across the political spectrum — depending on the issue, of course — there is an intense gravitational tug to pull back to a previous position. This desire is so strong that it’s being weaponized to gin up voter enthusiasm. The only issue, come November, is which suite of Too Far issues has the greatest sway.