Whether wrecking American energy to wreak far worse environmental damage elsewhere, printing enough funny money to substantially devalue the dollar, insisting on demonstrably harmful Covid mandates, or ushering in millions and millions of unvetted migrants, it amounts to a sort of shock treatment to corral and humiliate an unruly electorate that has been found wanting.
Yet the crass opportunism only guarantees greater backlash and further delegitimizes the actual progressive project, or whatever’s left of it. Generations of hard work and good faith have been squandered in just a few short years, trading credibility and potential for spiteful self-indulgence.
Perhaps electoral apocalypse over several cycles might chasten the powers that be, but I doubt it. Beyond all the money and inertia, too much of the establishment truly believes enough coercion can make their fantasies come true, with all manner of carrots and sticks to force others into line.
Nonetheless, stubborn reality burbles on beneath even the best-funded manipulation. The Emerging Democratic Majority might’ve really materialized had Dem apparatchiks any discipline to appear to give the slightest shit about what most voters think. But with society supposedly determined by fungible narratives from up top, the peasantry’s ignorant superstitions are irrelevant.