Author nails it!
Attack of the armchair activists
A key failure of American progressivism is that it places style above substance.
But this is what happens when a movement has little hope for tomorrow and no love for today. When the past is the only period from which a person draws his inspiration and sense of moral certitude, that person will begin to romanticize and even fetishize the past, litigating endlessly that which has already been resolved, misunderstanding modern conflicts through a specifically narrow historical lens, and even going as far as to roleplay as historical characters.
For the American progressive, there is no more exciting and honorable a period than the civil rights era of the 1960s and 1970s. They want desperately to experience for themselves the righteousness of those days — so desperately, in fact, that some have even adopted the mannerisms of civil rights icons, including the Southern preacher-style dialect . The problem is that America now is not the America of those decades, and the villains of yesteryear are now in short supply. As a result, we’re left with the ludicrous spectacle of modern progressives misapplying the rhetoric and strategies of the civil rights movement to modern problems, regardless of the situation or the facts, and waging increasingly ill-conceived and largely pointless wars against mostly invented social ills.
Looking ridiculous, however, is not even the worst of it. The worst of it is this: Modern progressives are lazy. Their rage against the machine is heavy on the style and light on the substance.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...-not-elitism/attack-of-the-armchair-activists
Attack of the armchair activists
A key failure of American progressivism is that it places style above substance.
But this is what happens when a movement has little hope for tomorrow and no love for today. When the past is the only period from which a person draws his inspiration and sense of moral certitude, that person will begin to romanticize and even fetishize the past, litigating endlessly that which has already been resolved, misunderstanding modern conflicts through a specifically narrow historical lens, and even going as far as to roleplay as historical characters.
For the American progressive, there is no more exciting and honorable a period than the civil rights era of the 1960s and 1970s. They want desperately to experience for themselves the righteousness of those days — so desperately, in fact, that some have even adopted the mannerisms of civil rights icons, including the Southern preacher-style dialect . The problem is that America now is not the America of those decades, and the villains of yesteryear are now in short supply. As a result, we’re left with the ludicrous spectacle of modern progressives misapplying the rhetoric and strategies of the civil rights movement to modern problems, regardless of the situation or the facts, and waging increasingly ill-conceived and largely pointless wars against mostly invented social ills.
Looking ridiculous, however, is not even the worst of it. The worst of it is this: Modern progressives are lazy. Their rage against the machine is heavy on the style and light on the substance.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...-not-elitism/attack-of-the-armchair-activists
