One of the things progressives are good at is selling good intentions, whether racial justice, climate justice, clean energy and/or Middle Eastern peace. However the path to these laudable goals wends through riots, resegregation, carbon taxes, gas shortages and renewed war in Israel. Why is that?
One theory is these bad things — like the depressing jobs report — are signs the progressives are on the right track. ‘Things have to get worse before they get better’.
The public will buy this contradictory experience for a while, just as some have gone along with the notion that more censorship, surveillance and gun control is needed to save democracy. But they will not go along with it forever. Sooner or later a policy becomes defined by what it does, rather than what it intends.
You are what you do. What have they done?