Progressivism's Final Bubble

An uncharacteristically optimistic take

I want to start this with something I think we can probably all agree on. Progressive philosophy has been ascendant in the United States for the last, lets call it 90 years. I’ll admit it. Progressives have been winning, and in a reflection of my most magnanimous self I offer congratulations.

I mean really. Hats off. Extensive federally provided social benefits have exploded in the that time with social security and medicare, food stamps, welfare payments, education subsidies, student loan forgiveness, senior prescription drug benefits all being introduced.

Right along with social benefits the regulatory state has made amazing strides. Think of everything from OSHA and the EPA to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

And of course culturally we have moved in the same direction. Progressives are dominant in education, journalism, entertainment, and the corporate board room. Progressive themes permeate our movies, TV shows, and YouTube feeds. Attribute that to what you will be it a deep state conspiracy or a natural arc towards all that is decent and good in the world. It doesn’t much matter why, but I think its pretty obvious about the what. We can all see who’s been winning. So congratulations progressives for running up the score.

The victory lap I’m acknowledging here isn’t new information. We have been hearing about demographic trends ushering in the permanent democratic majority for at least the last 15 years. Democratic majority here as I’m thinking of it means progressive majority because democrats are where the bulk of progressives reside, and progressivism drives the parties policies. When you think of democrats you think of the movers and shakers in the party the AOC’s, and Elizabeth Warren’s. Nobody thinks of democrats and thinks Joe Manchin. Democrats are the progressive party machine. The two are synonymous.

In the progressive world view the battle is over. Its just a mop up operation at this point, think the last days of World War 2 as we were cleaning up the last few remnants of NAZI holdouts. Its somewhat fitting as they seem to consider the rest of us to be NAZI’s. This just looks like the final few perfunctory battles before everything about our society follows the progressive prescription for how things should be. The forces of evil will be vanquished. The revolution is right on schedule.

The theory for the permanent ascendance of the left is relatively simple in that it extrapolates voter trends into the future noting that demographic groups that tend to vote republican are shrinking and groups that tend to vote for democrats are growing. You can feel their sense of ultimate triumph in their Twitter feeds, and Reddit musings. There is an ongoing tidal shift in society, and its going in their direction. In effect the battle is over. The rest of us just don’t know it yet.

But……..

Here is where it gets interesting. There is a popular book called the fourth turning that argues society moves in predictable cycles over roughly an 80 year time period. There are 4 generations in that cycle each with its own characteristics. Those cycles culminate in a crisis in which there is a reset of the social order. In the United States these cycles would include The Revolutionary War, The Civil War, and World War 2, each 80 years apart give or take. Those events all ushered in a complete change of the social and political order in the United States with the first corresponding to the birth of the country, the second establishing federal dominance over the states, and the third corresponding to the new deal and the modern progressive welfare state.

I’m not saying those cycles are correct, but if they are the next moment of complete social transformation is scheduled to happen right about now. Its pretty easy to imagine progressive forces will finally crush opposition to their vision for America and bring us into the sunlit fields of utopia they always imagined for us.

But what if that’s wrong? What if progressivism isn’t about to win the final battle against the evil forces of wrong think. What if instead progressivism isn’t really permanently ascendant, but instead is more like a stock market bubble that is about to pop?

Progressivism’s Bubble

Market bubbles and manias have been with us for at least centuries. Generically speaking you can think of them as situations where large groups of people lose all reason and get swept up in the zeitgeist of the moment pushing the crowd to crazier and crazier behavior until suddenly everyone sort of wakes up out of the delusion, and the bubble or mania collapses under the weight of its own absurdity. Stock market bubbles are obviously pretty famous. I can remember being a new investor during the 2000 tech bubble, and incredulously watching a companies stock value triple overnight not because they had announced a cure for cancer, but because they announced they had launched a website. It was utter absurdity and the whole thing collapsed on itself. Cisco was one of the survivors and to this day has not gotten back to its bubble prices of 1999/2000.

On the social side you could point to the Salem Witch Trials as a great example of a mania as the Massachusetts settlement whipped itself into hysteria, accused hundreds of people witchcraft then executed/murdered 20 of them. These were preceded by numerous similar incidents over several centuries across Europe.

During another famous speculative bubble known as tulip mania in 17th century Holland, a single rare tulip bulb was briefly able to fetch the same price as a nice home. Whether financial or social the parameters are the same. The mania builds, gathers steam, goes utterly parabolic, and then collapses when it hits peak absurdity.

So perhaps just perhaps progressivism isn’t about to see its final triumph but is rather in its final moments before the bubble bursts. Maybe progressivism is really just Beanie Babies, but over a longer time frame. It’s possible its finally about to collapse under its own weight into an object so dense that not even a logical thought can escape. Keep in mind manias and bubbles get nuttiest right before they collapse then recall that progressives think men can menstruate.

If we were to display progressivism like a stock market chart for my investing oriented readers it would look a lot like this.

Getting beyond absurd social beliefs there is another practical problem with progressives, namely their job performance. At its heart progressivism is a deal between the public and the progressives who deem themselves the most fit to run society. The deal goes like this. We’ll give you money, and other goodies that we pilfered from other people. You vote for us and let us run the world without complaining too much. This is proper because we have the unique combination of education intelligence and morality required to solve societies most serious problems. It’s not about populism or human rights or standing up for the common man. That’s the ad campaign. The reality is the whole progressive project is transactional. You give us the power we deserve, and we’ll use it to give you some kickbacks in exchange for your patronage. In addition since we are the best and brightest putting us in charge will solve our vexing problems, and make the world a better place.

Your average person would probably be fine with this arrangement if things were actually running well, and our ever expanding government was bringing peace, prosperity, comity, and social order. I think a fairer take would be the country is an utter and total shit show (quite literally in California). When the toothpaste at Walgreens is behind locked plexiglass I’d say there might be a bit of problem with social order. In a normal and functional society you shouldn’t need the same level of physical security to protect 6 tubes of Crest Ultra-White as you need to protect high end diamond jewelry on Rodeo Drive. In a functional society you don’t have homeless encampments spreading like mold in a wet basement. In a functional society entrepreneurs don’t think creating an app to to map out the location of feces on San Francisco sidewalks so they can be reported to city officials is a viable business idea.

These are of course some of the more iconic examples of the problems we are facing, but bottom line progressives asked for money so they could fix things. The federal spending chart below shows that we gave them everything they asked for, and now borrow almost 2 trillion dollars a year to do it.

In exchange they did not provide solutions. They gave us vast homeless encampments costing 16 million dollars to house 300 people, and the idea that 8 year old boys should be allowed to cut their dick off along with an army of activists that scream you are transphobic and violent if you think perhaps they should make this decision when they are 18, you know, like when they are old enough to get a tattoo on their own.

Alternatively take a look at this hysterical contradiction between The Intelligencer penning articles suggesting children should have the freedom and bodily autonomy to cut off their genitals on one hand but full grown adults should be forcefully vaccinated on the other.

Or take this hot fresh story out of New York where a woman who inherited a home she was trying to sell was arrested when she changed the locks on HER HOME. Turns out there were squatters in her house, and instead of doing the obvious thing and arresting the squatters for felony breaking and entering the police arrested the homeowner for changing the locks.

Progressive world is clown world, and has given us clown results. Eventually much like the Salem Witch Trials subsided this probably will too.

I can hear progressive voices scream out.

Wait that’s not fair we didn’t cause all of that!

I suppose that’s another topic for another debate, but remember back to the first paragraph where we agreed your approaches are the ones we are implementing and that you are winning? Here’s the funny thing about being in charge. When you win the debate, and your policies are implemented you are responsible for the results. Your performance needs improvement.

For example:

Homelessness

Here’s what HUD has to say

At a point in time at the end of January 2023, 653,104 people – or about 20 of every 10,000 people in the United States – experienced homelessness across the United States. This is the highest number of people counted and reported as experiencing homelessness on a single night since reporting began in 2007.

Drug abuse?

Glad you asked. Here are drug overdose deaths by year.

Education costs

Pell grants were created in the early 70’s to help make college more affordable for average people. How’s that been working out?

In 1963 a 4 yeah college education including room and board cost $10,118 a year (in 2017 dollars). By 2017 the cost of a 4 year education had almost tripled to $26,593 a year. Student debt is at record highs.

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d17/tables/dt17_330.10.asp

You can go across the board, and as we’ve sought out progressive solutions driven more and more by the federal government the problems they allege to address get worse. Its a tough argument to say “Vote for us! Education costs have tripled since we started fixing them”. Sure it can work for awhile, but eventually you run out of greater fools willing to buy your tulip bulbs.

My wife and I visited Santa Fe, New Mexico a couple of years ago. I was excited to check out the city as one of my friends mentioned that this was “the spot” he was interested in retiring to. The most notable thing in the city wasn’t the Georgia O’Keefe museum or other sites. It was the rampant homelessness and misery that was literally everywhere. Just a few years ago you might see someone begging on a single corner in an urban or suburban area. During our visit each corner had a unique beggar with their own signs, and own unique pitch, poverty entrepreneurship at its finest. After dark we made the mistake of walking up to the grocery store from our hotel to pick up a few things. This experience had a night of the living dead meets crack house aesthetic. Zombie eyed people shuffled about the parking lot of the grocery store, and seemed to gather in strength as the night went on. On our way back we had the privilege of observing a guy masturbating against the wall of an office building. Good times in a city where progressives are in charge. This shit is not normal. It wasn’t like this before, and at some level we all know it. If you are reading this I’m sure you have your own similar “WTF happened? This place used to be nice” stories.

What’s the progressive response? Give us more money, more programs, and more authority and social control to fix these problems.

Dude we already did that.

We spend 7 times what we did in 1960 on an inflation adjusted basis. Our population has a little more than doubled in that time. That means we are spending more than 3 times as much per American at the federal level. Given that investment I shouldn’t be watching the 8PM showing of a homeless guy masturbating on the side of an office building. At the very least I should be paying for it at a reputable establishment where I can buy a $9 box of milk duds that used to cost $5 before progressives “saved” us from Covid.

At some point when you spend more and more money without generating results there is going to be a reckoning. Individuals can sometimes fail upward, but can an entire movement? I have my doubts. I look forward to that fourth turning. It may not play out as some people seem to think.