Fine, I’ll admit it: I love to argue. It’s one of the roughest edges of my personality, and it, unfortunately, informs much about how I engage with the political world around me. I am profoundly stubborn (a trait I attribute to my deeply-Appalachian maternal genes), and love to run my mouth. Oddly, though, these inclinations largely precede my descent into leftist politics, but goodness knows that “going woke” (what a complex cultural term) hasn’t helped lasso them in; they don’t tell you in socialist propaganda class (which every public school has, of course) that becoming any form of leftist is an open invitation to God to sprinkle the most willfully dull-witted specimens the human race has to offer into your life, frothing at the mouth about how pronouns are evil or how gay people drink blood, and some coming fourth reich. How could I resist belittling them? Can’t I call a spade a spade?

But it’s paradoxical, in a way; fervent neo-Nazi types are so wholly disconnected from any sort of historical, material reality that arguing politics with them is about as effective as to trying to convince a cloud to stop pouring rain—the essential first victim of the alt-right’s dehumanization ideology is the practitioner themself, which renders them, among many other horrendous things, poor debate partners.

This leaves me with a problem: if I want to flex my rhetorical muscles, I need to talk to someone who shares at least some common schema of reality (or a shred of humanity). But even if I find someone with these characteristics (an increasing rarity), I end up arguing with some well-meaning sap who explicitly or implicitly shares my socialistic interests! I’m engaging in ideological friendly fire! Even if I convince them of some niche modification to their belief framework, that change itself amounts to little more than an outburst of nervous energy, and does next-to-nothing to change anything except my blood pressure. My time would be better spent elsewhere. The mythology of the “debate” is dead. 

Underlying this self critique is an important truth: though we may not always acknowledge it for fear of sounding self-important, American leftists live on the fringes of persecution. The second wave of the horrific red scare lingers in the consciousness of a single human lifetime; and its aftershocks ring through the sneering looks those same right-wingers possess today. Even beyond the 50s, whatever happened to the Marxist-Leninist Black Panthers? What happened to MLK?  This history is why I find these contemporary notions of an “increasingly polarized” America laughable; we used to (openly) jail or kill leftists! But *now* things have gone too far? Hah! How did that old poem go… “First they came for the communists…,” and yet all I see now are Americans applauding the riot-trucks that’ll someday haul *all of us* away. *This* is why I (and many, many others) need to strengthen our left-solidarity. We exist at the precipice, looming high above a bitter history; a history which is trying to morph itself into our collective, horrific future. We are laden with a past of failure and an uncertain prognosis for tomorrow. Why should I waste my time arguing over vanguard parties and euro-centric hypotheticals? Why should I shout until I’m red in the face that the sky is, in fact, blue? Lying just underneath heaven and the storm clouds, there’s a world to build together, and hungry mouths to feed.