Progressives deal in automatic emotion (which is advantageous in the era of 140 character reasoning.)  The progressive chant is an unending cascade that titillates the grim primitive aspects of man: envy, sloth, pride, tribalism.

"You didn't build that,” "war on women,” "Put ya'll back in chains,” "social justice,”  “Fare Share,” “The Rich Are Getting Richer,” "level the playing field,” "she played by the rules,”  “99%,”"unequal income distribution," [your examples here].

So large has the list of grievances grown that nearly every citizen can find his or her name-badge under the progressive tent.  The tacit contract to receive an indignation license, revenge, ego-protection, purpose or largess you need only advocate transferring more responsibility/resources/liberty from yourself and your neighbors to an ever-expanding state. The "isms" are merely appurtenances to the transfer of power.

The logic of the materially envious is exoteric. Recall the fable of "The Little Red Hen" who had the industriousness to till the soil, grow the wheat, and bake bread while the other farm animals demurred on helping. Of course when loaf was finally complete, all the farm animals volunteered to eat. This is an excellent allegory for investing and prosperity. The progressive movement has allowed the envy of the farm animals to masquerade as righteousness.

And while it's to the progressive advantage to present money as abstract numerical concepts and fiduciary devices that are distributed and gets people better things.  Thomas Sowell poignantly states in Basic Economics, that investment returns are "delayed rewards for costs incurred earlier..." and that "money is not distributed" but is merely symbolic of "scarce resources with alternative uses" such as "time." Cleaning your house so that you know where to find things when you need them is a type of investment. When citizens harbor deep within them a sense of inferiority they have an insatiable interest in protecting their egos.  This feeling is tacit and kept secret until a demagogue appears with a narrative.  For the materially envious the summation of this messaging is that their success has not materialized because of injustice. It is a teleological assessment; "I feel I'm not successful therefore I must be a victim."

Less obvious is the logic of the spiritually envious. Too many patriots are unable to articulate the motives of progressive victimology among people who seem to have benefited the most from America's material, cultural, and ethical exceptionalism.

There's no shortage of haute bourgeoisie who themselves feel spiritually inferior, unwilling/unable to vindicate their own privilege. Think of the families whose moderate affluence and over-emphasis on the worldly has stripped them of their industriousness and robbed their children of a sense of purpose. Western intellectual, spiritual and material privilege has been building since the Industrial Revolution, making the gulf between America and the third world enormous.  It would pain most Occupiers to admit that they are all 1% inheritance cases in the scope of world history. Winning the lottery of life, they could have been born in Liberia or even as a rich American 100 years ago.  In both cases their life would be far less endowed with wealth and comfort.  They take for granted, if not undermine, the Judeo-Christian values that make America morally exceptional as well.

It is Patriots who understand that money is necessary though not the sole measure of a successful life. Early Americans knew the value of thrift, industriousness, and morality was an end unto itself no matter what your income should grow to. Perhaps, somewhere internally plutocrats and minstrels like Leonardo DiCarpio are searching for purpose.  It can be difficult for many people to accept that the proportionally accomplished rich and famous could feel insecure. Yet, greed knows no upper ceiling and neither does purposelessness have a lower floor.  How many times have you heard that axiom “money does not buy happiness”? Depression seems to have no aversion to the rich.  Indeed, neither do wealth or accolades secure one’s sense of “purpose.”  Whether it’s your well-to-do college professor or Michael Bloomberg, one suspects that embracing paternalism is an exercise in satiating the ego or what holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl called “filling your existential void” in an increasingly luxurious modern existence.  Adding to this sense of meaninglessness is that adolescence has been lengthened.  The gap between childhood and being responsible for the next generation has been stretched for America’s middle class scions and the result is a mad dash to find a surrogate for purpose. 

The preoccupations of secularized adult-children searching for purpose have fed into the machinations of elder statists; their abasement is encouraged throughout the education process until it finds its outlet in the form of progressivism during adolescence, from which many Americans are poised to never graduate.  Environmental hysteria, 1% derision, and rabid outcry for anything less than the exaltation of hedonism are just few of the distracting causes that have served to open the tent to haute-bourgeoisie searching for their own indignation. 

The progressives of today are far more strategic than their militant 60's predecessors. Pandering solely to the materially envious is futile since so many are implicitly lethargic and inarticulate. However, the voting power of the materially envious combined with the talents, resources and existential needs of the spiritually rudderless set the paradigm for the public at-large.  A kernel of rationale becomes encased in the rotting fruit of mob-think -- a feedback loop of emotion and hokum that serves as a surrogate religion for the privileged and revenge for the spiteful. Divergence from the chorus cannot be tolerated and all grievances end with the inevitable cadence of "government" as the solution.

The modern progressive achievement is to permit amorality to masquerade as morality