Here’s a classic progressive fairytale:
Reality isn’t progressive however, so let’s add a little addendum to the story.
Eventually one of the five monkeys (we’ll call him Progressive) who had never received a cold shower convinced the others that their old fashioned horror of the ladder was a ridiculous hangup and they should all be free to pursue personal autonomy to the utmost. There was some dissent but eventually a vocal minority made up of Progressive and Safe intimidated Fearful and Naive to shut up and threatened to beat up Conservative if he didn’t let Progressive go up the ladder to get the bananas. Conservative warned that going up the ladder was a bad idea but Progressive went up anyway. Sure enough the other monkeys were doused with cold water, but Progressive managed to come down with bananas for them all so they shouted down Conservative and loved Progressive.
When more bananas were placed at the top of the ladder Progressive went up again. The scientists decided to see how far Progressive would take his little rebellion so they slowly began reducing the number of bananas on top of the ladder. Eventually there were no bananas up there but Progressive kept going up, claiming it wasn’t his fault they were getting sprayed and suggesting that Conservative just didn’t want them to have any bananas and besides, he was probably taking all the bananas and eating them himself.
Eventually Fearful (who made everyone call him Strongman) suggested that they try killing Conservative to make the bananas come back. They tried it, but the bananas didn’t come back. Naive said they shouldn’t have killed Conservative so they killed him too. The scientists decided these monkeys were now too dangerous to work with and euthanized them all.
In related news, millennials are more likely than their elders to have a favorable view of communism and its early stage, socialism.
The Memory Palace of Mitchell Hackett 