The Frictionless Souls Addicted to the Cause. By Daniel Greenfield.

In a matter of weeks everyone has come around to having a passionate opinion on the subject. …

When the war in Ukraine has come and gone, some other cause will arrive to fill that void, and the outrage, blue and yellow flag waving, and all the rest of it will be gone with the vodka.

Lefty enthusiasm is an ever-moving religious bandwagon:

It is no coincidence that the least religious parts of America are the most invested in this war, much as they’re the most invested in wokeness, in the COVID culture wars, and all the culture wars that have come before and that will come after to fill the void in their souls.

People without a purpose to their passions rush from one cause to another in search of a momentary sense of meaning. Conspiracy theories make the world meaningful and nurture their sense of outrage because it distracts them from the aching emptiness within.

Radical politics acts as a substitute religion with its own theology, momentous destiny and personal commitment, but without any sense of personal connection or enduring continuity. What is true in politics one week may not be so the next. Political touchstones shift and the partisan who is at the heart of the cause may find that a few years later he’s an outside enemy.

The Left’s purity tests and radical transformations force its followers to run to catch up or be left behind as reactionary bigots still protesting that we had not always been at war with Eastasia or that men have not always been considered the best possible women. Insecure social mobs embrace new causes because they have a deep fear of being left behind the bandwagon.

Politics provides them with external validation and internal purpose. To politically dissent is both the equivalent of losing their religion and their place in society. That is why cancel culture is dreaded at a psychological level, not just because of the loss of employment and educational opportunities, but because the affected party loses their society and their soul.

Herd behavior is a rational response to this threat. Virtue signaling protects their place in the herd. And offers a sense of temporary security in an extremely insecure sociopolitical order.

The seeming randomness and irrationality of some of the causes, the lack of personal connection to the mostly white upper class people who embrace them, are an asset. If a cause may have to be left behind at any time, it’s easiest if the cause, black people, a country thousands of miles away, mask culture, strange sexual fetishes, is impersonal.

A frictionless world in which family, sexual partners, friends, homes, and careers can be abandoned at short notice also requires frictonless causes that are equally disposable.

Replacing religion with politics has made for more frictionless souls who never grow. The emotional retardation can be seen everywhere as adults behave like teenagers and teenagers behave like children. No one ever grows up, instead they feign maturity through politics.

Advocating for causes makes them seem like they care about something more than themselves. The right politics bestows membership in a community based on politics, but behind all the virtue signaling is the fundamental immaturity of people who only truly care about themselves.

That is the dirty secret of leftist politics whose egocentrism is thinly masked as altruism.

Leftism is not an act of conscience, but an escape from conscience. Its causes, legitimate or illegitimate, are manifold, but what they all have in common is an underlying denial. The only form of liberation that their politics truly offer is the liberation from moral accountability and personal growth. The more radical the politics, the more radical of an escapism it represents.

Analysis: True.