Why the Left is All Doomer Nowadays

The illusion of a shortcut to utopia always leaves people burnt out in the end

Photo by Marcel Strauß on Unsplash

There's no denying it: the left is in an absolutely doomer phase. Gone is the optimism for 'revolutionary change' that pervaded leftists spaces in the late 2010s. Breadtube has been largely dead for several years now. Cancel culture largely stopped being a problem by 2022, not because the left suddenly had a collective awakening about free speech, but because the activists who did the canceling largely stopped showing up. Everywhere on the internet, you hear people complaining about how bad the 2020s are, and it appears that many of those doing the complaining hold leftist views. The 'resistance' to the second Trump era has been a lot quieter, not because people are not as opposed to his actions, but because the loudest voices of the first 'resistance', the leftist protestors, are now sitting at home in despair. Many of the people saying how Vance is definitely winning in 2028 are also not MAGA people, but actually leftists! In fact, in left-wing circles, hope and optimism are very uncool at the moment. Doomerism is undoubtedly the overwhelming zeitgeist of the 2020s left.

So how did the left get here? Objectively speaking, if they were more optimistic in 2018 than right now, then subjective views must have been doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Both back then and right now, Trump was/is in the White House. Both back then and right now, the anti-SJW reaction / red pill / MAGA-adjacent culture, long seen as the mortal enemy of the left, was/is a significant player on the scene, enjoying a high level of popularity on almost every social media platform. Both back then and right now, the leftist agenda, especially on cultural issues, was/is largely unpopular with the general public, and widespread backlash to that agenda was already building back then. The fact is, we are objectively in a similar place right now compared to the late 2010s. If leftists are doomers today, then they should have been equally doomer back in the late 2010s. I think the only way to explain the discrepancy here is that the left was under the illusion that a magical breakthrough, a shortcut to utopia, was soon to come back in the late 2010s, because they were convinced so by their flawed theories. That the promised change hadn't come all these years later has finally killed all hope of it actually happening at all.

It isn't even like this is the first time the left's empty promises of an instant magical shortcut to utopia 'inspired' a generation to misguided forms of activism, and eventually left them all burned out, after the promises of utopia didn't come true. A similar thing happened back in the 1960s to 70s, an era of radical cultural change, protests about almost everything, and general societal upheaval, with all that eventually resulting in the conservative backlash of the 1980s. If we don't learn the lessons of history, we are bound to repeat them again and again.

What the left doesn't understand is that there is simply no shortcut to utopia. Sound and sustainable improvement, especially in terms of cultural issues, can only come about as a result of gradual, step-by-step changes, taken in a cautious way, with every detail carefully considered before the change is implemented. It is long-term hard work, because it has to be. History has shown us that abruptly implemented cultural change, especially where the details are not carefully worked out in a consensus manner beforehand, almost always ends in disaster. The fact is, there is simply no shortcut to utopia, because there can't logically be, except in the philosophical sophistry of New Left postmodern critical theory. Every improvement needs to be well developed and well thought out. Consensus needs to be built by changing hearts and minds one by one, while the reform itself is refined by taking people's concerns into consideration at every step. Finally, the reform needs to be implemented carefully, making sure that there aren't any unintended consequences that could lead to backlash. None of this hard work can be avoided, nor can the time frame be magically shortened, if we are to have a sustainable program of improving things for everyone.

Leftists loathe to hear people say that 'life is suffering'. Some chronically online leftists even seem to think that Jordan Peterson invented the phrase, when the Buddha was the one who first said it. But no matter who says it, 'life is suffering' is indeed the objective reality. Wars, discrimination, conflict and so on are undeniably constant objective realities of life. My philosophy is that improving the condition of humanity by reducing the amount of suffering, by reducing the frequency and burden of the aforementioned realities, is what gives our lives meaning. Our time on Earth might be relatively short, but if each of us can make a difference by moving things just a little towards less suffering, in a way that is sustainable and long-lasting, then our time on Earth would be worthwhile. Of course, we also need to make sure that we are not actually making things worse, and this is something the left all too often forgets. If we stay true to this philosophy, and thus place our hope in a sustainable program of gradual social improvement, we wouldn't be distracted by theories promising false hope that can never come true, and we won't end up as burned out doomers.

This article is part of TaraElla's Political Theory of Everything Project.

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TaraElla is a singer-songwriter and author, who is the author of the Progressive Conservative Manifesto, the Moral Libertarian Manifesto and the Moral Libertarian book series. She is also the author of her autobiography The TaraElla Story.