Democratic Presidential nominees appear to be in a race to the bottom, or lowest common identity-politics denominator as their virtue-signaling knows no bounds.

After a week of discussions about reparations for slavery - soundly dismissed by numerous African American speakers - Senator Elizabeth Warren has tried to outdo her opponents by seeking reparations for another group of repressed and long-suffering individuals.

Warren reintroduced the Refund Equality Act, a bill that would allow same-sex couples to amend past tax returns and receive refunds from the IRS.

“The federal government forced legally married same-sex couples in Massachusetts to file as individuals and pay more in taxes for almost a decade,” Warren said in a statement. “We need to call out that discrimination and to make it right - Congress should pass the Refund Equality Act immediately.”

As NBC News reports, a report by the Joint Committee on Taxation released Tuesday estimated that taxpayers who were in same-sex marriages prior to the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act in 2013 would be eligible for up to $57 million in refunds. Warren introduced a version of the bill in 2017.

I’m glad to introduce the Refund Equality Act in the Senate. Our bill ensures legally-married, same-sex couples can claim the tax refunds they earned, but were denied before marriage equality was the law of the land. https://t.co/01rgfSiXUQ — Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) June 20, 2019

As we concluded in March, after noting the spread of 'reparations' is now a worldwide phenomona, guilt is not a constructive emotion on a personal level – it prevents us from letting go of the past and moving on with life.

Could this be true on a societal level, too? The phenomena of virtue-signaling – fooling ourselves and others into thinking we are making a positive difference with ostentatious displays of do-gooding – is a common way of temporarily allaying this social guilt without requiring the sacrifice or work of genuinely creating change in the world. Thus, we remain stuck in a downward-spiral of self-loathing, while simultaneously failing to correct the ongoing injustices we see around us.