As the Trump administration comes apart at the seams and the Dempublican party marches us into ever-increasing cold war escalations, I look back on my young career in political commentary, on where it’s been and where it seems to be going.

From this vantagepoint I suppose thus far it could all be summed up as one long exchange in which I say what I reckon is going on in the world, and my fellow lefties rush in to say “Shh! Don’t say that! How do you expect to win over the centrists saying things like that?”

This has always puzzled me. I guess the idea is that if woke progressives tone-police ourselves extra carefully and keep sharing our ideas nice and sweetly, eventually establishment Democrats will turn around and go, “Well gosh darn, I guess everything I’ve been taught about my country and how it works is completely wrong after all! Let me go cut the cable, cancel my subscription to the Washington Post and start working on a grassroots presidential campaign for Ajamu Baraka!”

Or something like that; I’m not really sure how they imagine it would work to be honest. Do these people have any idea just how pervasively indoctrinated consumers of mainstream media are? Do they have any idea how big an ideological gap there is between anti-war socialism and the neoliberal neoconservative omnicidal death cult known as centrism? Do they truly expect that massive gap to be bridged, that ingrained-since-birth propaganda brain box shattered, by polite yet compelling arguments?

As the Trump administration comes apart at the seams and the Dempublican party marches us into ever-increasing cold war escalations, I look back on my young career in political commentary, on where it’s been and where it seems to be going.

From this vantagepoint I suppose thus far it could all be summed up as one long exchange in which I say what I reckon is going on in the world, and my fellow lefties rush in to say “Shh! Don’t say that! How do you expect to win over the centrists saying things like that?”

This has always puzzled me. I guess the idea is that if woke progressives tone-police ourselves extra carefully and keep sharing our ideas nice and sweetly, eventually establishment Democrats will turn around and go, “Well gosh darn, I guess everything I’ve been taught about my country and how it works is completely wrong after all! Let me go cut the cable, cancel my subscription to the Washington Post and start working on a grassroots presidential campaign for Ajamu Baraka!”

Or something like that; I’m not really sure how they imagine it would work to be honest. Do these people have any idea just how pervasively indoctrinated consumers of mainstream media are? Do they have any idea how big an ideological gap there is between anti-war socialism and the neoliberal neoconservative omnicidal death cult known as centrism? Do they truly expect that massive gap to be bridged, that ingrained-since-birth propaganda brain box shattered, by polite yet compelling arguments?