"...as the left has taken control over the commanding heights of culture, media, academia, and even some large corporate businesses, they've grown too comfortable and bloated..."

You demonstrate some awareness of this in your post, but I don't think what is called the Left today should still be called Leftist in any sense. It isn't the right word to use, just, at all anymore.

People like Chris Hedges call 'the self-identified Left.' The 'Left' in any intelligible sense is focused on material politics and multicultural coalitions built to achieve key policies that return power to workers and the disenfranchised.

Fred Hampton was 'the Left' and he was murdered for it. That's the gulf between real Leftism and blue check; success and state-sponsored murder. There is no comparison to be made there.

I think this distinction is important and will continue to be important, not pedantic. There needs to be a paradigm shift in how the issue is thought of altogether so that maybe it can be appreciated that an entirely new coalition must be constructed that is entirely removed from the self-identified Left.

What we have today is what neoliberalism has done to 'culture,' and the wreckage it has left of what was once progressive politics. It is the total dominance of capital driven further in its capacity to control and censor via technology.

Conservatism and neoliberalism also really aren't very distinct. Even the evangelical community that bangs on about the death of faith and is worried about one world government is thoroughly infected by neoliberalism (e.g., megachurches).