In the annals of progressive overreach, there are moments that make you check your calendar to ensure it isn’t April 1. According to a September 4, 2026, column in American Thinker, columnist Eric Utter encountered just such a moment—this time involving a black bear and a neighbor whose commitment to identity politics apparently extends to the animal kingdom.
Utter, writing from his cabin community, recounts that when a neighbor learned a black bear was raiding a nearby garbage can, she referred to the bear as “they.” When informed there was only one bear, she remained steadfast in her pronoun choice, explaining that she didn’t know how the bear “identified.”
In his column, Utter—who describes himself as “old school”—says he was tempted to respond with a blunt retort about bears knowing what they are, and being smarter than humans who ask such questions, but he held back, perhaps wary of being “too aggressively truthful.”
The episode serves as a caricature of progressive sensitivities run amok—a single bear stripped of its biological reality and recast as an emblem of identity ambiguity. It’s a sentiment that may resonate with conservatives who see the broader progressive project as disconnected from common sense, and with anyone who has ever watched a bear and thought, “That’s a bear.”
But the bear was only the appetizer. The same neighbor, Utter reports, once released minnows from another neighbor’s bucket into the lake, intoning “Be free, be free!” as the tiny fish swam to whatever freedom a stocked lake can offer. While the gesture might seem whimsical, Utter notes it’s potentially a crime—misdemeanor trespassing and theft, because the minnows weren’t hers—and, more seriously, a violation of laws against dumping store-bought bait into natural waters, which can spread invasive species and disease.
Beyond the absurdity: A pattern of performative compassion
For Utter, the minnow incident is not just a moment of naive do-gooding but a “misfiring, virtue signaling retard” (his words, not ours). It’s a sharp, offensive characterization, but one that underscores his broader point: that performative compassion, untethered from real-world consequences, can cause actual harm.
Releasing minnows into a lake may seem like an act of kindness, but from an ecological standpoint, it’s a reckless act that could introduce pathogens or disrupt the local aquatic balance—hardly a “well done, good and faithful servant” moment. And on the bear front, while no jail time is likely for pronoun misuse, the episode reflects what Utter sees as a troubling trend: a culture so steeped in identity politics that it loses the ability to distinguish between a human’s chosen identity and a wild animal’s biological existence.
A symptom of a larger cultural ailment
Utter’s column is a monologue of frustration, but it taps into a genuine current in political commentary: the sense among many on the right that progressive ideology has reached its logical—and often ridiculous—endpoint. Whether it’s pronouns for bears or the liberation of bait fish, there’s a strand of progressive thought that prioritizes gesture over substance, rhetoric over reality.
To be fair, not everyone will see a single anecdote as representative of a movement. Referencing one bear as “they” could be an isolated quirk, not a sign of societal decay. But for Utter—and no doubt many readers of American Thinker—the bear story is a mirror into a world where even the most basic biological and linguistic norms are under dispute.
And the minnow release, while minor in scale, hints at a deeper ethical problem: a willingness to impose one’s sentimental values on ecosystems and property that don’t belong to you, all while wrapped in a self-congratulatory glow.
A call for plain speaking
Utter writes for American Thinker, a website known for its unapologetic conservative commentary, and this piece is true to form. It closes with a note about the importance of free expression for preserving what he calls “the republic we cherish” and solicits donations to keep such voices strong.
The broader message—whether you agree with the tone or not—is that there is value in calling out what looks like folly, even if the targets are trivial. In a world where public discourse is often sanitized, Utter’s willingness to name what he sees as foolishness is a reminder of the role opinion writers play in questioning the contours of acceptable thought.
But his column also illustrates the hazards of that approach: using terms like “retard” as an epithet is widely considered offensive, and dismissing a neighbor’s quirks as “progressive lunacy” risks painting an entire ideology with the broadest stroke. The word “lunacy” in the headline sets a tone, and some may find it apt while others will see it as hyperbole.
What’s undeniable is that Utter has surfaced two incidents that are, by his own account, “the unvarnished, unexaggerated truth.” Whether they represent a crisis of progressive culture or just an eccentric neighbor is for readers to decide.
In the meantime, one hopes the bear, whatever its preferred pronouns, continues to trash garbage cans in peace—at least until someone tries to free it from its identity.
Source: www.americanthinker.com — https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/09/unbearable-progressive-lunacy/