Alienation II
30th October 2020
Severian continues his analysis.
That’s just the most glaring case of a general flaw: Leftism is, and always has been, an oppositional identity. “Rebelling” against “the Man” isn’t a bug, it’s a feature, and despite a half-century of practice, Liberals haven’t figured out how to handle the situation when they, themselves, are The Man. It doesn’t compute. Hence the strange spectacle of modern life, where Lefty controls everything but carries on like he’s a tiny, persecuted minority…
Exactly right. The fundamental characteristic of progressivism is that there is no endpoint. There is no time at which they can say ‘Okay, we’ve got enough Progress, we can stop now and enjoy it’, because Progress is not a state but a process, so they are obliged to Keep On Changing, no matter what the change might be. Nothing is ever good enough, no time is ever satisfactory, because there is always something More To Do. This is why ‘activist’ is the mark on their souls and the badge that they all carry.