The conservatives have long had their Big Sky Daddy that presides from above in patriarchal splendor. Lately, though, the liberal side for their part has carved from unyielding marble the Scolding Cold Mommy whose job is to tell us we’re living our lives incorrectly and that whatever it is we’re doing, we’re definitely doing it wrong.

The latest instance of this is the ridiculous Lancet diet that would have us all choking down nutritionally-deficient near-vegetarian fare for most meals.

This Scolding Cold Mommy is what I also mean when I refer to the liberal dream of having us all dwell in featureless, artless (art makes global warming worse for no purpose) concrete boxes chewing on turnips and moaning on about how our micro-aggressions have affronted this or that group which in reality hasn’t even noticed any such thing.

The Scolding Cold Mommy that many liberals crave and yearn for is an excuse for self-abnegation and diminution rather than seeking out better alternatives. As with the Big Sky Daddy of the conservatives, it’s a way of ceding responsibility, of outsourcing one’s emotions and prerogative as a free human to some other determining agent. “No, it’s not that we didn’t try for better alternatives, its just that Scolding Cold Mommy told us that we have to eat barn scraps and live in a lean-to. It’s what She wants to help the planet!”

This Scolding Cold Mommy won’t be appealing to most, though, which is why this sort of messaging should be anathema to any true progressive. It’s not a path forward — it’s just another way of avoiding actual transformative and difficult changes necessary on the way to finding a truly better future, instead settling for the prison of the now.