There are few people more tiresome than those who, armed with a degree in multicultural studies or eco-feminism, proclaim as an imperative that “We need to fix the world.”
This conviction that the world needs fixing is embraced with passion in progressive circles. It rests on two assumptions: (1) that we know what’s wrong with the world and (2) that we have the power to do something about it. The usual suspects are hauled before the tribunal: nationalism, imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, racism, misogyny, homophobia and, latterly, transphobia. Then the usual solutions are proposed: anti-racism, the correction of inequities, the smashing of capitalism, the overthrow of the patriarchy, the suppression of the gender binary, etc. and so forth.
But for all their breathiness and glitter, these assumptions rest on a swampy foundation. For we (that is to say, progressives) actually have no idea what’s wrong with the world. Oh, they can cite such vague and foggy abstractions like nationalism, capitalism, inequality, oppression, etc. Platitudes are one thing, however; actionable knowledge is something else again.
Consider the assumption that nationalism is a fixable problem. Okay, so what is the fix? It may be possible—progressives are trying their best—to trash American exceptionalism. Its history can be replaced with semi-literate ideological screeds in the style of the 1619 Project, its imperfections can be framed as original sin, statues can be toppled, schools can be renamed, patriotism can be denigrated. As we see, that work is well in hand.
But once America has been properly chastised and made to understand that it’s nothing special—indeed, that it’s a fascist hellhole deserving of contempt and scorn—how are countries like China and Russia to be persuaded that their sense of nationalism is a Bad Thing? If, say, President Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were to sign a bill outlawing American exceptionalism, would V. Putin be impressed? Would he experience a sudden change of heart? Would he renounce his imperial ambitions, withdraw his legions from Ukraine and concentrate instead on the destruction of the gender binary, Russian edition? It seems unlikely: Virtue signaling has never been a particularly successful diplomatic strategy.
The truth is that most of the problems progressives aspire to fix are not societal bugs but features of the human condition. They may argue that in strict logic nationalism is a destructive force that ought to be suppressed so humanity can live as one big happy family—cue John Lennon’s Imagine. But here’s the thing: Humanity doesn’t particularly want to live as one big happy family, holding hands and warbling Lennon’s puerile anthem. Whether they’re willing to admit it or not, most people believe that the place where they live is a special place, with first call on their affection and loyalty. True, this sense of place and community can take destructive forms, but not always. Even Canadians, those most polite and mild of global citizens, betray pleasure in comparing their country to its southern neighbor—much to the advantage of Canada.
In just the same way other problems afflicting the world—racism, misogyny, homophobia, the whole dismal progressive litany—represent the atavistic dimension of human nature that progressives studiously disregard. These vices can never be eradicated and though they can be managed, this is no easy task. It took centuries for Western civilization and culture to evolve a principle of human equality in opposition to racism and the subjugation of women, and even today the translation of that principle into practice remains a work in progress. Though contemporary feminists wildly exaggerate the power of the Patriarchy in contemporary society, they’re not wrong in their claim that perfect equality of the sexes has not been achieved. Probably it never will be achieved. And meanwhile, in much of the world the equality of women is not only disregarded in practice but denied as a matter of principle.
I’m not saying that all problems are insoluble. Specific, discrete problems can certainly be solved, or at least minimized. Though the poor may always be with us, at least let’s do what we can to limit their numbers. But the world as a whole is not fixable; there’s no Utopia around the corner. Anyone with normal vision can see that. And thus we come to the question of abnormal vision. What kind of people seriously believe that they can fix the world?
In that regard, the history of millennial ideologies from the French Revolution to the present is a chilling cautionary tale. If men like Robespierre, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot were simply monsters of evil like Vlad the Impaler, that would be one thing. But they were idealists too, men who believed that they were fixing the world—who claimed and probably believed that they were ushering in a perfected, Radiant Future. When on the morrow of the Bolshevik seizure of power Lenin said to his comrades, “Let us now proceed to build socialism,” he was expressing that idealism.
But this and similar projects necessarily involved the rearrangement or abolition of the past. For how could a new world germinate and flower if, like weeds rising out of cracks in the pavement, reminders of the old world and its evils persisted? The calendrier républicain adopted by the National Convention of the French Republic in 1792 was designed with that question in mind. It suppressed all religious and royalist references from the calendar—the months being renamed, the seven-day week being replaced by a ten-day week. Such revisions and erasures, often brutal and bloody, were so characteristic of the millennial ideologies that George Orwell made a point of satirizing them in Nineteen Eighty-four. In its present manifestation we call this practice cancel culture.
Now that God is dead—or has gone missing for the present—the belief that the ends justify the means is only too easy to embrace. And it has been embraced by our current crop of world fixers. In 2020, the violence that ravaged American cities after the murder of George Floyd was first denied and then justified. The protests were described as “mostly peaceful” by reporters on the ground, while in the background of the shot flames and smoke rose into the air. Shocking images of widespread vandalism and looting were characterized as episodes of righteous anger, a form of slavery reparations. Nihilistic violence received the blessing of progressives—even including “public health professionals”—because it was said to further a righteous cause: anti-racism.
Today as in the past, the world fixers are afflicted with hubris: They think that what little they know is all they need to know. But that’s far from the most alarming thing about them. Consciously or not, what progressives really want is power. Reshaping society and people, manipulating reality, is so much more fun than tending bar or slinging lattes or drudging away in the dark Satanic mills of Amazon or Google! And if the exercise of power can be touched up with the eyeliner and lipstick of justice and virtue, so much the better.
George Orwell was a mortally ill man when he wrote Nineteen Eighty-four and many readers depreciated his nightmare vision for that reason, arguing that it was the product of depression and despair at death’s approach. “One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship,” he wrote. “The object of power is power.” But are those merely the words of a sick, depressed man? Does not history bear him out? Do not current events?