That’s such an interesting observation. Maybe it’s rooted in how we come to the materialist framework, so it always remains available like a set of tools, and even though the world seems hopeless my tools tell me that there are opportunities for change all around us. Dialectical materialism is kinda like walking around with the pocket scanner from Star Trek

Agree, I've noticed this too. My hot take is they've subconsciously recognized that making a better world will necessarily cause them discomfort with respect to loss of class privilege, so bullshit like this becomes a source of both self-preservation and self-flagellation, which is a delicious contradiction itself