The war drums are pounding again, but it’s not what you think—no bombs, no napalm, no screaming jets over the jungle. No, this is different. The new warriors are brandishing hashtags, Twitter threads, and microphone megaphones, going toe-to-toe on campus lawns, in café basements, and the thousand-panel Zoom calls. All of them ready to go to battle for social justice, as if change could be smelted in an echo chamber. But look closer and you’ll see the rot in the foundation.

Scratch the surface, and a strange cycle emerges—a “Check Your Privilege” routine as old as a decade but still as crude as the day it was coined. You see, every social movement that climbs on the back of a privileged ally is fighting a two-front war. They need the support—the cash, the clout, the white teeth on the magazine covers—but the privilege of their backers is a double-edged sword that wants to steer and dictate.

The privileged allies step up, smile wide and willing to help, but it’s never enough to just help, is it? They want to lead. They step to the front, commandeer the microphone, and assume the steering wheel like they’re the second coming of Moses. Feminist organizers tell men to stand back, Black organizers tell white folks to just listen for once—but the itch for control and the scent of power is too potent to resist.

The privileged allies can’t be sidelined, but they can’t be trusted to steer. A very real conundrum for the idealistic crowd. They know how to whip up a crowd, sure. They’ll get us to march for gay marriage, or defund the cops. They’ll plaster “BLM” signs on their lawns and sponsor hashtags in solidarity—but where does it lead? They’re good at stirring things up, no doubt about that, but then the wind changes, and they leave, moving on to the next cause du jour.

“Locusts,” one friend from the trans community called them. “They’ll swoop in, spark outrage, push the movement right to the edge of oblivion, and move on before the dust settles.” A harsh sentiment but perhaps true. Movements move faster than ever, faster than the people within them can adapt. A wild ride of impatient absolutism, driven by the bright-eyed youth, raging on social media feeds like they can end oppression by ratioing bigots and wagging their fingers at anything and everything but the wallet. They’ll march and cry, they’ll hashtag, they’ll organize their morally righteous committee hearings about justice, equality, and all that good stuff—just as long as nobody’s talking about money.

It’s a theatrical routine: Democrat-led, finely-tuned to stir emotions, but engineered to sidestep the most radioactive of issues—economic structure, financial power, and real accountability. They’ll gladly raise hell about pronouns, plastic straws, representation in Hollywood. But bring up the machinery of wealth, taxation, or corporate consolidation, and they’ll get all meek and contemplative, like they suddenly remembered they left the keys on the mantelpiece or something.

The left’s “teeth” are dulled from self-policing, from the endless lecturing that skates around class and cash. Instead, they’re content to keep up the performance, dancing around everything that could really shake things up. All passion, but no bite—just more handwringing, head-shaking, and high-minded outrage to distract from the fact that the real power structures remain untouched.

And then there’s a weariness creeping in, from the front lines where the “pikemen” stand, the ones who can’t afford to just pack up and move on to the next cause when it gets rough. The trans folks are starting to notice the game. “They placed us at the front, like some kind of disposable infantry, to soak up the backlash,” one of them said, with a tone that would make a bootlicker blush. “I just wanted my rights, a job, a safe place to exist. Now here I am, lecturing people on pronouns instead of fighting for healthcare, housing, basic dignity.”

The truth comes into focus—a bleak realization that maybe this wasn’t about the movement, that maybe it’s been more about stoking the flames of some social justice inferno than actually putting it out.

Trans rights? Sure. But did they have to die on the hill of high school sports? Policing? They went to war with “Defund” as their rally cry, and now every community leader is running for cover.

A trans friend summed it up in brutal clarity: “First it was Black folks on the chopping block. They botched the policing issue and left them to fend for themselves. Then they pivoted to immigration, and now we’re in the crosshairs.” The kind of hard truth that smashes in like a sledgehammer at 3 a.m. while the city sleeps.