In Search of a Current Thing

They are adrift

Submitted by Dixiecrat

Woven in the history of 21st century American political history, few phenomena have been as striking as the left’s penchant for rallying around a singular, all-consuming “Current Thing”. From the hysteria and fury of #MeToo to the cult-like absolutism of Black Lives Matter, from the apocalyptic urgency of climate change to the sanctimonious mandates of COVID-19 protocols, the left has mastered the art of transforming complex issues into unifying crusades. These are not mere policy debates. These are righteous crusades. They are moral imperatives, amplified by the digital echo chambers of social media and sanctified by a progressive culture that demands conformity. As we stand in October 2025, a curious void has emerged… the left has no Current Thing. Its absence is not just a tactical failure but a profound crisis of identity, revealing the fragility of a movement that thrives on collective obsession but flounders without it.

The Current Thing is a peculiar beast. It is not enough for an issue to be serious. It must be urgent, emotionally charged, and capable of drowning out all dissent. It must fit policy objectives. It demands a narrative so clear to the left, so morally unassailable on progressive grounds, that to question it is to invite excommunication. In 2017, #MeToo swept the nation, and we can look back on it as a moral panic. Every woman could claim to have been assaulted or harassed with no evidence, and suddenly, all male behavior was criminalized. Not just one but two CEOs of household corporations were booted for consensual relationships. By 2020, the Current Thing became covid lockdowns and avoidance but quickly switched to racial justice, with Black Lives Matter protests drawing millions. Covid was incredibly useful as it was dialed up and down as needed for the left’s particular goals at the moment. Shut down the world to hurt Trump and manipulate voting laws. Open up for positive jobs numbers for Biden. Get the vax to comply. We know the recent journey: Covid, Floyd, Covid, Vaxx, Ukraine. These causes were not just issues. They were litmus tests, dividing the world into the virtuous and the damned. The virtuous always follow the progressive take.

What is curious about today is that the left’s altar is bare. No single issue dominates its discourse. Climate change lingers like a memory of a bad dream, gun control is a knee spasm instinct, ICE arrests are steady and Gaza is over, but none command the fervor of a true Current Thing. Social media platforms were once a crucible for progressive crusades, but now with fragmentation and a coalition at odds with one another, is a cornucopia of competing priorities (immigration, Trump is a king, Gaza, abortion, inflation) with none rising above the others. The left’s attention is diffuse, its energy dissipated. What explains this?

It has been a decade of energy pointed at Trump. There is the exhaustion of outrage. The left’s addiction to the Current Thing is a double-edged sword. Each crusade demands total commitment and constant vigilance. A 2019 study in Nature Communications described how social media creates “attention cascades,” where trending topics gain exponential traction through likes and retweets. But attention is finite, especially in our ADD nation, and a decade of relentless mobilization has left the left’s base weary. The activists who once flooded the streets are also not being paid by USAid. The emotional fuel that powered Slava Ukraine, #MeToo and BLM has run dry, the money is gone and no new cause has ignited the spark to replenish or fund it.

Another critical element: the left lacks a galvanizing event. The left is a collection of weird, conflicting groups. They trumpet being multiracial, multiethnic and that creates issues. Current Things are born from moments of clarity that can snap all factions to attention and move in lockstep. Is there a video or photo for propaganda purposes that signals clearly what to do and how to think? These are the raw materials of moral outrage, transforming abstract issues into visceral narratives. Without a defining moment with crystal clear good and bad guys, the left struggles to rally.

The left is fracturing under its own weight. It is not a unified movement but a coalition of factions each with its own dogma and priorities. In the absence of a Current Thing, these groups turn on each other, waging purity wars over whether economic justice trumps identity politics or whether global crises outweigh local ones. The post-10/7 Palestinian cause created a fracture between Jewish donors and the base’s street fighters. Articles and hourly social media posts reveal bitter squabbles, with activists accusing one another of betraying or forgetting the Palestinian cause. Tribalism tears political movements apart just as it inflicts wounds on the broader society. The left’s inability to coalesce around a single issue reflects a deeper failure to reconcile its competing visions.

Some of the change is due to media fragmentation and a smarter right. Democrats do not even share the same media sources across their side, which alters priorities. That elderly Democrat who is a brake on full gay race communism implementation only knows from tv news what the current thing is. The younger left has a variety of online sources. The right has outmaneuvered the left in the battle for narrative supremacy. The right is more reluctant to cave and provide any legitimacy to the left’s tantrums. The right can see the left’s theatrics and is better now handling the go to tactics used by the left. We know the formula. The right rolls its eyes at the claim these issues are not just policies; they are existential threats. It gets old with overuse. The left pretends something is new and unprecedented yet also the most important thing in the world. It then repeats this over and over again. Grow up.

The consequences of this void are profound. The left lacks clarity. It lacks direction. Movements thrive on momentum, and without a unifying cause, activism becomes performative, reduced to social media posts that blast into the void. The absence of a Current Thing cedes the cultural stage to the right, which has mastered the art of framing its priorities as superior. There is a psychological cost. The left’s identity is rooted in progress, in the belief that history can be bent toward justice as they define it in the moment. Each Current Thing is a step deeper into the right side of history. Without a Current Thing, that belief falters, replaced by a creeping sense of futility. You see it in the disillusioned tone of progressive influencers, whose calls to action now feel hollow, lacking that fire of Trump’s first term. They all want to do something, but what?

What might such a cause look like? It would need to bridge the left’s divides, weaving economic justice, racial equity, and environmental sustainability into a single narrative. It would require a story as widespread as #MeToo, a moment as galvanizing as George Floyd’s death and a cause they could all agree on temporarily. Is there a candidate out there? How many great white villains are out there? Would a faction take a backseat to get the band back together? It would demand leaders who can transcend factionalism, forging a coalition from the left’s disparate tribes. Who is out there that could pull it off? Pritzker, Newsom, Kamala… there is no one, and they do not occupy the presidency to lean on the authority of that office to force it from up on high.

The American left stands at a precipice. Without a Current Thing, it risks becoming a movement without a mission, an anxious voice drowned out in a world that rewards clarity. The right, with its knack for simple narratives and a relatively unified base, has seized the moment, leaving the left to flounder in its own complexity. The question is whether the left can find its next crusade, or whether it will remain fighting each other on the sidelines, searching for a cause worthy of obsession.