Back in the day, I remember reading, the Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat had a problem. What to do to cool off all his guerrilla fighters once they were ensconced in a camp in Lebanon? The answer: get them wives.

He was facing the problem with all political movements, especially lefty movements, once they have reached their goals. How do you get the activists to go home? What about the black civil-rights activists after the 1960s civil rights acts? What about the feminists after girls became the majority of college students? And now, what about gays, what with gay marriage and all?

I suppose that movement leaders are all alike. Remember the ageing general in The Four Feathers refighting the Battle of Balaclava with salt-and-pepper shakers after dinner? “You young people are soft,” he’d say. I dare say that ageing leaders of the Battle of Grant Park in Chicago in 1968 like to bore their progressive pals with tales of their Sixties activist derring-do.

Movement leaders like their activism so much that they never go home. And after they’ve won there’s no need to be nice and get the squishy moderates on their side, so they often turn nasty.

We got Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown in the late Sixties. We got Hillary Clinton in the 1990s and then angry gender studies professors. And now, after the Supreme Court legislated gay marriage, we have gay activist lawyers beating on Christian bakers.

So it’s a bit shocking to read Andrew Sullivan in New York magazine in “The Next Step for Gay Pride” that maybe it’s time for gays to get on with life, rather than politics.

What we need now, I think, is a narrative more productive and constructive, less about the harm the world can do to us, and more about the good we can give back to the world.

He goes on to quote Jung, that “there are four key charisms that gay people are blessed with,” etc.

Actually, I understand completely why the victorious activists are mad as hell and determined to make people pay. They are discovering that politics does not lead to salvation.

In the late Sixties, blacks discovered that getting their civil rights did not solve all their problems. Women found that, even with abortion and careers and butt-sculpting leggings, they did not live happily ever after. And gays, no doubt, are now finding that the meaning of life, the universe, and everything has very little to do with “marriage equality” and gay pride.

So what I say to all the 27.2 Democratic candidates running for President is: what is your comprehensive and mandatory program for activist groups that have achieved their social-justice goals? At what point have we had enough Activism Culture?

Because right now it looks like there is no end in sight: not for hunting down the “hate groups,” not for demanding new and exciting free-stuff programs.

And I warn you, dear lefties, we are going to be voting for Trump and more Trump and even more Trump until you cry “uncle” on the activist front.

See, my idea is that our Big Problem is that the left and all its works are a Great Reaction, a unconscious, instinctive nostalgia for the good old days of slavery, serfdom, conquest, tribalism. That’s why I say that socialism is neo-slavery, the welfare state is neo-serfdom, democracy is neo-loot-and-plunder, and identity politics is neo-tribalism.

And really, why be surprised? The Germans, particularly Swiss-German Jung, reminded us that we are mostly our unconscious mind and its archetypes. So of course we would have an instinctive hankering for the good old days of unfettered simian instinct.

And for those of you that remain unconvinced here is dear old Nietzsche, another German, in Book Four of Dawn (also Daybreak or Morgenröte):

Not the bare necessities, not desire -- no, the love of power is humanity’s demon… You take away everything from people and satisfy this demon: they are almost happy[.]

I guess that Fritzi lived in another time; our lefty friends have wealth, desire, bike-lanes, you name it -- and the lust for power. But still they are unhappy.

Because it turns out that power, political power, is not the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Who knew?

Someone should teach the AntiFa chappies in Portland, Oregon, about that. Hey, Pichai, Susan, @Jack, and Markie baby! I’ll bet you social media chaps are going to get right on those AntiFa thugs violating your Community Standards about “hate groups,” real soon. Right? And you Chases and MasterCards are going to close their bank and credit card accounts, first thing Monday morning. Right?

After all, what could be more hate-ologically hateful than beating up a minority gay journalist like Andy Ngo! Even if it was a “mostly peaceful protest.”

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.