Because when the word “progress” is used, it is usually a loaded term with some specific connotations. The quotes indicate this is a reference to the word “progress”, not a use of the word “progress”, and it’s intended to draw your attention to the fact that this change, while clearly a positive and desirable one, contrasts strongly with what is usually meant when a person says it.
Every “good person” I know of every political strip is horrifically cruel and violent towards intelligent creatures many times a day. Absolutely needlessly. And they deal with this by simply not thinking about it.
Every single one of them are needlessly – absolutely needlessly and to their own great detriment – participating in atrocity against thinking, feeling creatures who once had the capacity to love them. There’s no question of balance. Everyone loses.
It’s just been you and me, man. If you go back and try to re-interpret, I think you can see my view that the people we label “good” and “bad” are more a reflection of our human or selfish needs of them than of their moral worth. We need to see the people around us, especially those we are emotionally attached to, as good even though by an objective standard, they are all likely actively participating in atrocity and pretending they are not. Being seen as “good” has more to do with moral fashion than actually working towards some set of values from first principles.
read into
vb (tr, preposition) to discern in or infer from a statement meanings not intended by the speaker or writer www.thefreedictionary.com/read+into
You read “calling them evil and disgusting” into the text. It was not there.