An Essay from Six Years Ago

 

Except for essays I'll be taking an extremely well earned facebook break after the election which I will explain... in an essay....

In the meantime, I would change some of what I wrote here, but not that much. We're neither fully autocrat nor democrat now, we are, instead, in the beginning stages of a lifelong fight. That much was preordained, not even at the moment Donald Trump won the election, but the moment he was nominated by the Republican party. We saw on January 6th exactly what Trump would have done in 2016 if he lost. The moment he got a party's apparatus, the challenge of the rest of our lives was pretty much written in stone.

Even now, the enemy is the same, the solution is the same. The solution is inclusion, inclusion, and more inclusion: INCLUDING people whom you find EXCLUSIVE. It's almost impossible to have strong disagreement without acrimony, and so I don't think any kind of discussion between people who disagree does much good for anyone anymore. But questioning the moral character of people who have basically minor disagreements does nothing but take us further down the steep path. Propaganda from Fox News and the internet (right and left both) is so strong that there's no breaking through any wall into reason for people who refuse to acknowledge reason. Talk nicely to someone, they go back into their corner and read a source that isn't true. Yell at someone, half a dozen of their friends yell back.

The enemy, though, is still the same. The enemy is purity, and that means that people who strive for purity in their inclusion are also anti-democracy, and whether they realize it yet, they will, and if they get enough of their way, they will either be horrified at what they've helped to wrought, or they will adjust themselves to antidemocratic platforms with stunning speed. Watch vigilantly.

Onward, whatever happens today, we've got to save democracy, and it won't be won or lost in one day, it will be decided over the course of fifty years, and we have to show up every day of it. Get your health in order for your children and grandchildren.

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I've bloviated far too much over the last two years about what is at stake when we awaken tomorrow, on fucking facebook no less. I don't need to tell you, in yet another way, that this is the world's most important election in 80 years. After tomorrow, the most powerful country in the world will either remain a democracy, however flawed, for another era, and in all likelihood, it will; or we will fall into autocracy for many, many years hence.

But it's not over tomorrow. Trump will find any reason at all not to concede, and even if he does concede, he will claim that he was coerced and manipulated into it within a few weeks. To all who worked us to the point that he can be beaten tomorrow, even if only temporarily, the world thanks you, but we're all far from done.

Whether in 1933 or 2016, there is an enemy and we call the enemy by its name. The enemy is not the Republican Party, it's not even fascism or authoritarianism at its base, however much they resemble the enemy and however much they are symptoms of the problem.

The enemy is purity: purity of race, purity of sex, purity of money, purity of class, purity of agreement, purity of speech, purity of religion, purity of science, purity of technology, purity of ideology, purity of party, purity of motive. It's a cancer that metastisizes its way through Right and Left alike and can kill anything that might be helpful in them both and leave only death in its wake.

The way to beat it is to hold all that exclusivity up to the light - there is no one solution, no one doctrine, no one country, no one race to rule, no one class structure to overthrow. The solution is to strengthen the immune system. Everyone in America to be able to talk to each other, and not just talk, but yell, scream, insult, slander, question motives, and do it all mercilessly, while still being able to remain friends. That is how a democracy stays functional, that is how it stays healthy. Go in peace, whatever happens, I'll yell at you Wednesday again, with renewed resolve to hold nothing back. The fate of all democracy depends on the trollishness of this facebook feed.