The whole of the modern West now presents a sort of socialist thought experiment in a perpetual revolutionary adolescence; where for the rest of their lives citizen adolescents play at being grown-up idealists — forever mounting the heroic barricades of this cause or that

In the comments section of a recent post (Inadvertently Spilling the Truth: What Is the Democratic Party If Not the Party of Sophomoric Teens, Intrepid Cosplayers, and Would-Be Heroes?), our ol' friend Damian Bennett has written one of the best descriptions of the past century — indeed, of the past centuries:

All cultures have rites of passage to transition the young into the prerogatives and responsibilities of adult society. In the modern west the common mechanisms of passage were roughly conscription, trades, college, marriage.

With the European 'social' enlightenment, represented by the socialist/idealist aspects of the French revolution, the rites of passage in the west stopped providing passage and, in the case of France, ushered children into a perpetual revolutionary adolescence, where for the rest of their lives citizen adolescents played at being grown-up idealists.

The whole of the modern west now presents as a sort of socialist thought experiment in eternal adolescence; citizen adolescents forever are mounting the heroic barricades of this cause or that, but never moiling in the unglamorous ditches of accomplishment, of getting things done.

Q.E.D. Candidate KA-mala Harris.

Getting things done is always left to someone else, e.g., the adults, those who have transitioned into productive contributors and family and community.

Q.E.D. Candidate Trump.

And needless to say, these adults, these productive contributors, are precisely the ones who always demonized as the (as society's) enemy, presented as deplorable people to be controlled, canceled, ruined, imprisoned, and/or assassinated. Exactly the kind of monsters (racists, sexists, thisorthatphobes, etc) that the citizen adolescents are forever feeling the need to mount the heroic barricades against. Which explains the expression "killing the goose that lays the golden eggs" and, in turn, why all leftist systems eventually end up in impoverishment.