There’s good reason to look at what’s going on in America’s college campuses with incredulity, befuddlement, anger, disdain and repulsion. But what if the Leftist temper-tantrum that we’re witnessing is in fact something of a last gasp, a sudden recognition that their long-awaited nirvana is never going to come?

Deep down, they must realize that the only real career paths for the campus radical are to join some leftist organization in a professional capacity or to stay on campus and attempt to become a professor. Corporate America may pay off an agitator, but they aren’t terribly eager to hire them or give them any real responsibility. The audience for Leftist agitprop is pretty limited, while works they see as trigger-inducing right-wing propaganda, like American Sniper, finds large audiences.

Sure, Leftists have gained tighter and tighter control over the academic world over the past generation, but they’re recognizing obvious limitations on their ability to influence the culture at large from there. They police micro-aggressions while the culture grows coarser. They call for racial justice while the state of black America slips further and further into self-described crisis. They’ve fought for feminism while “Sugar Daddies” become in vogue in some circles of young women; advertising is as objectifying of women as ever, millions of women obsess over celebrities bodies, and women put 50 Shades atop the bestseller lists. Their effort to divest from oil and natural gas companies is flopping; divestment from Israel has passed in only a handful of schools.