Ever ready to strike a blow for inclusion and tolerance, seven homeowners on the Chevy Chase street where vice-president-elect Mike Pence found his transitional residence have shown their displeasure with him, his ideas and perhaps his existence by flying the rainbow flag of the gay rights agenda, in a show of defiance or pique.

They might have done better to have brought him a nice plate of cookies, as it is to them and their allies that he owes his new title: if it was the Rust Belt implosion that fueled the Trump rise it was the aggression shown by the cultural left in its punitive phase that ran it a close second, as it morphed from an urge for inclusion to a demand for submission that trampled all things in its way.