There’s this great scene in the best political movie ever made, “Wag the Dog,” where a couple of political consultants are caught by the CIA making up a fake war with Albania to distract attention away from a presidential sex scandal right before an election.

The CIA is about to make the consultants disappear, when one of them points out to the CIA man that, “There’d better be a war or a rumor of war. If not, what are you in business for?” Or words to that effect. The CIA lets them go, realizing the political wisdom in the statement: If there’s not a problem then no one gets hired to fix the problem.

So, there always must be rampant injustice, systemic racism, class warfare, and persasive sexism to fight in this country and it must always be a Battle of Armageddon between the good Left and the evil Right. If not, what would all those media types, left wing professors, SJWs, and Democrats actually do for a living? Ergo, they are always in high dudgeon about this grievance or that. After a while, they start believing their own press releases and become miserable people.

This country isn’t perfect by any means. But over the last fifty years or so we’ve come a long way in making this a more equitable society. However, for the Left it can never be enough. To admit we are close, which we are (taking into account human nature), to a realistically fair society where individuals are equal under the law can never be done no matter how much progress we make. The goal posts must always be set back again and again, lest the Left have nothing to kvetch about and thus lose the staffing and funding to do it. As the U.S. Air Force used to say about space program funding, “No bucks. No Buck Rogers.”

The grievance industry thus is perpetually aggrieved at something. They have to be. That’s why a Democrat National Convention sounds like a giant nasally whine spread over multiple nights. Somebody wants more money because they just invented a new victimhood. Another group has achieved tolerance. Now they want acceptance as a norm. Somebody owes zillions to somebody else from slights going back centuries. Everyone wants gun control. Except for their armed security guards.

Government works the same way. If you run a county anti-poverty program and because of your efficient operation poverty goes down, thus you are serving less people, next fiscal year your funding and staffing will do down. However, if poverty explodes because you are an incompetent idiot, and thus you are serving more people, your funding and staffing goes way up. Now gee, what course of action would a career-oriented bureaucrat take?

Yup. The Left has so many grievances because that’s their con, their shuck, their jive. Things can’t ever get really better for them, nor even improve just a bit. If they did, what are they in business for?