Well said. With all of it. I couldn't agree any more if I had written this myself.
I do question, though (not your arguments or your conclusions) the actual beliefs progressives have. There are, yes, the useful idiots in any cause. Heck, maybe we'll be proven to be Steemit's useful idiots. :)
However, the actual zealots in any cause are not the ones pulling the strings or running the show. Those folks are the real progressives, the ones who use whatever ideals they can get people to buy into to bring about their own, more selfish purposes. Wealth. Power. Worldly Glory.
When it comes down to it, it's all about the herders and the herded. It doesn't matter how it happens, or what belief system is in place, as long as that belief system is contrary to Nature and common sense. It's about ruling through controlled chaos (now there's an oxymoron and a misnomer). It's about keeping people pitted against one another when in reality, there isn't so much separating the common man.
It's about gaining and preserving power. Then you die, unless they figure out ways to prolong that for themselves, too. :)
I've pondered this myself. Is it some energy band or as Sheldrake says, a morphogenetic field, that these people are tied into that influences their beliefs and behaviors? But like you say, it's not just progressives... it seems that all of us are easily and even subconsciously influenced by group think. We are susceptible to dashing off like lemmings without thinking rationally or critically about our beliefs. Not only that but our beliefs, even if terribly irrational, take on the weight of fact and reality.
I've touched upon this phenomenon in another post but it deserves further investigation. One perfect example is this: The Sumerian Myth of Origins. You most likely are familiar with it. Essentially it is a quite elaborate story of how aliens from the Pleiades constellation came to earth some 400,000 years ago and by genetic manipulation created modern man. Anyway, from these ancient roots modern monotheistic religions from the middle east have emerged. The story has been retold so many times and magnified by elaborate YouTube vids that now there is a great number of people who believe it. The thing is I came across a person here on Steemit about a month ago who actually reads the ancient Sumerian script and I asked her about these stories to see what she thought. She said she had never heard of them, which I found to be very interesting.
I very carefully explained this to a true believer of the Sumerian myth recently. Have not heard from him since. He apparently did not like that I questioned his reality. Disappointing.
Oh, and as to those who might be the ones who influence progressive professors, for example, I wonder about that too. Is there in fact an organized campaign to manipulate the Millennials? It would certainly appear so. Their world reality and mine are certainly not of the same origins.
I've heard about aliens potentially being responsible for all kinds of things, from our very existence, to mundane tasks like building pyramids and providing other technologies that early man supposedly could not have developed on their own. I find it all very interesting that people will believe in aliens from other planets (something that I find feasible for them to exist), but then turn around and call other things fairy tales. Somewhere, though, you do get to the truth.
I think in every generation there has been a concerted effort by those who are in power or who would take it to try to mold the up and coming generation into something else, thus hoping to ensure change because eventually the old guard dies off.
While it works in a more incremental fashion, it doesn't quite get there because something funny happens on the way to maturity. Youth finally get enough experience to look around and realize that reality isn't what they were told it was. And so many of us make it through to battle off those who either never figure it out or end up not caring because it brings them the power they supposedly never wanted. And then they end up doing the exact things with it that they hated before and swore they never would do, because once had, most will not put power down.