I recently discovered there is actually a legitimate psychological term for what I think this kind of behavior represents: moral scrupulosity. A subtype of OCD. The idea being that a person becomes fixated on the idea of personal moral purity, and terrified of being a bad person. If OCD is, at base, about anxiety management, this becomes a strategy to manage and control the anxiety surrounding the feeling of structural impotence you mentioned. Throw in a constantly shifting and sometimes wildly contradictory set of pre/proscriptions of what exactly one should/n't do about any given topic via social media and larger cultural discourse, and this is a recipe for meltdown and burnout. Looking at my mental state over the past 10 years, I think I came dangerously close to this, and I fear so did many of my progressive comrades.
Yes — the modern organic‑purity crusade really does sound like a secular St. Augustine:
striving is the new original sin, and modernity is the fall of man.
Mao tried this already. His Cultural Revolution marched people back to the farm so they could rediscover the “virtue” of hardship — which mostly meant rediscovering famine, mud, and the joys of communal grain quotas.
The people in this article seem to want a sequel:
a return to the “good old days” of hunting and gathering, preferably without the inconvenience of actually hunting or gathering.
If they had their way, we’d all be living in caves again — sustainably sourced caves, with ethically harvested moss and a hand‑chiseled fire pit.
And in their imagined Eden, everyone is equal because everyone is equally miserable.
Their call of nature would drag society back to a world where no one has shoes, no one has medicine, and no one has a future beyond reproduction — the kind of world where “barefoot and pregnant” isn’t a slogan but a survival condition.
That’s the progressive fantasy:
perfect equality achieved by universal deprivation.
Some anthropologists argue that hunting and gathering societies were NOT the horror shows you propose. The REAL misery was the first few millenia of agriculture, with its stratification and wars and famines and grueling field work. Cosseted modern people may see hunting as awful, but I bet it beats plowing fields working for the local nobility (or clerics)
Sure — some liberal left wing anthropologists say hunting and gathering wasn’t pure misery. But they always make that claim from the comfort of air‑conditioning, antibiotics, a refrigerator and local coffee shop.
Yes, early agriculture was brutal. But let’s not romanticize the alternative. Hunting and gathering meant spending your life chasing calories that were actively running away from you, while hoping predators didn’t consider you lunch.The difference is that agriculture eventually produced cities, medicine, literacy — and the luxury of arguing online about how wonderful hunting and gathering supposedly was.
Not just “early agriculture”. Until the Industrial Revolution. Some reactionary apologists downplay the misery of agricultural societies because they want to bring back feudalism. From the way you immediately label researchers you dislike, I would assume you are one of these reactionaries
Brian M: You are making the argument against Luddites that never gets mentioned on today's left-leaning media. The followers of King Ludd were selfish; they want to make sure machines didn't replace them with their three-day work weeks and their comfortable cottage workrooms that allowed them to work from home before the term was invented. Change often involves breaking rice bowls, but resilience beats resentment in the long run.
Better that millions of people be deprived of cheaper, more comfortable, and serviceable clothing? Factories were rotten, I am told, and they probably were, in the beginning. Change takes time to work out. There are still abusive factories in the world today. But I'm sure there are good factories, too. Actually, the craftsmen and women are probably better off today, making cloth and clothes for folks who have more spendable income than the average citizen used to have. So in the longer term, while sometimes nasty, the outcome is a win for humanity. I can even say that though I have less than favorable reactions to some of the tactics organized labor used to win better working conditions for members. So we can argue about that, if you want.
I haven't read such a blistering commentary since I can't remember when. The joylessness of modern progressive politics is so degrading to the human spirit that I should have died a long time ago, but it lingers on.
I wonder where Columbia's mattress girl is now.
I blame the blind hysteria of the George Floyd movement for turning impressionable kids raised by inflammatory social media into anxious, knee-jerk sponges who absorb every drop of guilt the progressive world has flicked at them. I'm trying to suggest ways they can reconsider their role in society. That process makes me feel as though there are probably fewer of them than I had imagined. Maybe they are growing tired of the grinding despair that threatens to consume them.
Gawd, but I hope so.
Pessimism became a major part of that generation's education. So I hold the educational establishment responsible. There are many caring teachers who didn't recognize that their training in the 80s and 90s was producing students who were unhappy and convinced that the only way to assuage their guilt was to demand a total, revolutionary make-over of American society and culture. Unless we who feel differently manage to make our rebuttal points heard, there's far too strong a chance that while we celebrated 250 on July 4, our children and grandchildren will designate 300 as a day of mourning.
Back in the day, the sixties, maybe, there were some of us who flippantly declared that "Guilt is a wasted emotion." Today, I say that without flippancy. Guilt is corrosive. I want it to be lifted from the shoulders of our younger generation. Now.
I'm 84 and worked with a bunch of young Progressives (I'm a Liberal/liberal) and found none of that. There are people in business who are greedy assholes but normal people don't condemn business or capitalism; people in medicine who do bad things but we don't go after the whole medical profession; not to mention school teachers who molest kids but only crazies home-school for that reason alone. Maybe the approval (it's called winning an election, as Trump did - twice) is about people sick of being run over by algorithms, marketing gurus, and politicians unable to tear themselves away from donors long enough to hear their constituents. I thought I'd never see Black people in positions of power and authority but 60 years later it's not perfect but, if we get rid of Republicans, we can breathe a little easier.
Pat, I'm 83. As a writer, I have gone from #2 pencils on wide-ruled Big Chief tablets to AI LLMs that are far from perfect but at least as far from one-room school houses in 1948 to trade schools and universities that charge $200,000 for degrees that fail to prepare young people for the world we live in in 2026. There are lots of young people who want to serve mankind but believe that progressive NGOs can save it. And I saw black people assuming positions of power and authority decades ago, before the politicization of race relations split the country into identity and affinity groups. I think we could agree on many things but I doubt your solution, displacing the GOP, is the magic solution. So let's talk.
Well, that was tongue in cheek. If you watched Lawrence O'Donnell tonight you saw our AG, Adrian Fontes, talking about the County Recorder office here in Maricopa County; it is split between the recorder, a MAGA guy, and the board, almost all Republicans. So some Republicans understand our constitutional government, it's just that sorting them out is problematic.
You know, every so often the simple answer is the correct one. How do these young angries get along with their parents? Badly. And they are losing their inheritances because of that. Of course they are angry.
Guilt, is self indulgent, and non productive. Not to mention the idea that you can change the whole world is extaordinarily arrogant. I have, for many years, been involved with informing people of destructive influences of substance abuse. I learned a long time ago you can only educate, not change people.
I recently discovered there is actually a legitimate psychological term for what I think this kind of behavior represents: moral scrupulosity. A subtype of OCD. The idea being that a person becomes fixated on the idea of personal moral purity, and terrified of being a bad person. If OCD is, at base, about anxiety management, this becomes a strategy to manage and control the anxiety surrounding the feeling of structural impotence you mentioned. Throw in a constantly shifting and sometimes wildly contradictory set of pre/proscriptions of what exactly one should/n't do about any given topic via social media and larger cultural discourse, and this is a recipe for meltdown and burnout. Looking at my mental state over the past 10 years, I think I came dangerously close to this, and I fear so did many of my progressive comrades.
Yes — the modern organic‑purity crusade really does sound like a secular St. Augustine:
striving is the new original sin, and modernity is the fall of man.
Mao tried this already. His Cultural Revolution marched people back to the farm so they could rediscover the “virtue” of hardship — which mostly meant rediscovering famine, mud, and the joys of communal grain quotas.
The people in this article seem to want a sequel:
a return to the “good old days” of hunting and gathering, preferably without the inconvenience of actually hunting or gathering.
If they had their way, we’d all be living in caves again — sustainably sourced caves, with ethically harvested moss and a hand‑chiseled fire pit.
And in their imagined Eden, everyone is equal because everyone is equally miserable.
Their call of nature would drag society back to a world where no one has shoes, no one has medicine, and no one has a future beyond reproduction — the kind of world where “barefoot and pregnant” isn’t a slogan but a survival condition.
That’s the progressive fantasy:
perfect equality achieved by universal deprivation.
Some anthropologists argue that hunting and gathering societies were NOT the horror shows you propose. The REAL misery was the first few millenia of agriculture, with its stratification and wars and famines and grueling field work. Cosseted modern people may see hunting as awful, but I bet it beats plowing fields working for the local nobility (or clerics)
Sure — some liberal left wing anthropologists say hunting and gathering wasn’t pure misery. But they always make that claim from the comfort of air‑conditioning, antibiotics, a refrigerator and local coffee shop.
Yes, early agriculture was brutal. But let’s not romanticize the alternative. Hunting and gathering meant spending your life chasing calories that were actively running away from you, while hoping predators didn’t consider you lunch.The difference is that agriculture eventually produced cities, medicine, literacy — and the luxury of arguing online about how wonderful hunting and gathering supposedly was.
Not just “early agriculture”. Until the Industrial Revolution. Some reactionary apologists downplay the misery of agricultural societies because they want to bring back feudalism. From the way you immediately label researchers you dislike, I would assume you are one of these reactionaries
Brian M: You are making the argument against Luddites that never gets mentioned on today's left-leaning media. The followers of King Ludd were selfish; they want to make sure machines didn't replace them with their three-day work weeks and their comfortable cottage workrooms that allowed them to work from home before the term was invented. Change often involves breaking rice bowls, but resilience beats resentment in the long run.
better those selfish lazy craftspeople be forced into penury and 70 hour workweeks to benefit the industrialist class
Better that millions of people be deprived of cheaper, more comfortable, and serviceable clothing? Factories were rotten, I am told, and they probably were, in the beginning. Change takes time to work out. There are still abusive factories in the world today. But I'm sure there are good factories, too. Actually, the craftsmen and women are probably better off today, making cloth and clothes for folks who have more spendable income than the average citizen used to have. So in the longer term, while sometimes nasty, the outcome is a win for humanity. I can even say that though I have less than favorable reactions to some of the tactics organized labor used to win better working conditions for members. So we can argue about that, if you want.
You can take the leftist out of the fire and brimstone but you can’t take the fire and brimstone out of the leftist.
An epigram is worth a thousand words, Sherman.
I haven't read such a blistering commentary since I can't remember when. The joylessness of modern progressive politics is so degrading to the human spirit that I should have died a long time ago, but it lingers on.
I wonder where Columbia's mattress girl is now.
I blame the blind hysteria of the George Floyd movement for turning impressionable kids raised by inflammatory social media into anxious, knee-jerk sponges who absorb every drop of guilt the progressive world has flicked at them. I'm trying to suggest ways they can reconsider their role in society. That process makes me feel as though there are probably fewer of them than I had imagined. Maybe they are growing tired of the grinding despair that threatens to consume them.
Gawd, but I hope so.
Pessimism became a major part of that generation's education. So I hold the educational establishment responsible. There are many caring teachers who didn't recognize that their training in the 80s and 90s was producing students who were unhappy and convinced that the only way to assuage their guilt was to demand a total, revolutionary make-over of American society and culture. Unless we who feel differently manage to make our rebuttal points heard, there's far too strong a chance that while we celebrated 250 on July 4, our children and grandchildren will designate 300 as a day of mourning.
Back in the day, the sixties, maybe, there were some of us who flippantly declared that "Guilt is a wasted emotion." Today, I say that without flippancy. Guilt is corrosive. I want it to be lifted from the shoulders of our younger generation. Now.
I'm 84 and worked with a bunch of young Progressives (I'm a Liberal/liberal) and found none of that. There are people in business who are greedy assholes but normal people don't condemn business or capitalism; people in medicine who do bad things but we don't go after the whole medical profession; not to mention school teachers who molest kids but only crazies home-school for that reason alone. Maybe the approval (it's called winning an election, as Trump did - twice) is about people sick of being run over by algorithms, marketing gurus, and politicians unable to tear themselves away from donors long enough to hear their constituents. I thought I'd never see Black people in positions of power and authority but 60 years later it's not perfect but, if we get rid of Republicans, we can breathe a little easier.
Pat, I'm 83. As a writer, I have gone from #2 pencils on wide-ruled Big Chief tablets to AI LLMs that are far from perfect but at least as far from one-room school houses in 1948 to trade schools and universities that charge $200,000 for degrees that fail to prepare young people for the world we live in in 2026. There are lots of young people who want to serve mankind but believe that progressive NGOs can save it. And I saw black people assuming positions of power and authority decades ago, before the politicization of race relations split the country into identity and affinity groups. I think we could agree on many things but I doubt your solution, displacing the GOP, is the magic solution. So let's talk.
Well, that was tongue in cheek. If you watched Lawrence O'Donnell tonight you saw our AG, Adrian Fontes, talking about the County Recorder office here in Maricopa County; it is split between the recorder, a MAGA guy, and the board, almost all Republicans. So some Republicans understand our constitutional government, it's just that sorting them out is problematic.
You know, every so often the simple answer is the correct one. How do these young angries get along with their parents? Badly. And they are losing their inheritances because of that. Of course they are angry.
Guilt, is self indulgent, and non productive. Not to mention the idea that you can change the whole world is extaordinarily arrogant. I have, for many years, been involved with informing people of destructive influences of substance abuse. I learned a long time ago you can only educate, not change people.