There are a few nuggets of truth in this analysis.
What the author is unwilling to see is that the root of “progressivism” is a lack of faith in the democratic process.
Progressivism, right from the start, was all about elites ordering society for everyone else, and how to lie the right way to get everyone else to allow the elites to stay in power.
The leftists only used democratic processes when they were useful for obtaining power and keeping it. Just the same as any other method. Progressives have always been all about power, and nothing about morals or ethics.
“Progressivism, right from the start, was all about elites ordering society for everyone else, and how to lie the right way to get everyone else to allow the elites to stay in power”
Well stated.
What bugs me about reading hard-core leftist stuff like this is that just like a Soviet citizen, the leftists constantly see their history being revised, their once strident narratives being changed to suit new facts, and even their so-called basic beliefs being trampled out of convenience to the ideological line of the day.
Yet in the end, they still rally themselves to a new, greater, nebulous boogeyman - of course, the “proto-fascist Trump.”