The Left Has A Purity Problem, And It Needs To Fix It.

We are now two years into the most openly corrupt, inept, and relentlessly predatory presidential administration in our nation’s history.

We have watched an extremist minority commandeer Congress, the Justice Department, our Military, and the highest court in our nation, mounting an unprecedented repeal of the rights of women, of environmental protections, of voting rights, of elemental liberties.

Republican leadership across this country has declared open war on diversity, on education, on the legitimacy of our elections. Our checks and balances are nonfunctioning, our systems of protection have been compromised—and we are warring with one another.

We should be easily coalescing around our collective values, but we are not.
The upcoming midterms should be the slam dunk of the century, but they aren’t.
We should be rising together to eradicate this fascism en masse, but we’re not.

Some establishment Dems are formulating plans to combat rising Democratic Socialist candidates instead of asking why those people and platforms are resonating with voters, or what might be learned about their party’s weaknesses.

Far-Left activists incessantly push out strident, baby-with-bathwater objections to moderate candidates, disqualifying them for past behavior, one-time verbal gaffes, single-issue stances, or previous political positions.

Longtime party moderates are operating as if the former rules of engagement still exist, too paralyzed by fear and scarcity to do anything but what they’ve always done, while burn-it-all-down anarchists want to turn a massive tanker on a dime without acknowledging the diversity of thought among the voting bloc they seek and need.

From the center to the fringes, we liberals war with potential allies, allowing no gray space of compromise, no personal evolution for people, and no possibility of future alignment with those who do not currently check every possible box. In doing so, we passionately partner in the work of our adversaries. We easily find ourselves violently fighting with one another over matters that are in fact trivial, when compared with all that hangs in the balance.

Put simply, the Left has a purity problem, and if we don’t get over it, it’s going to destroy us.

Meanwhile, despite some fracturing in the MAGA monolith, the other side is simply circling the wagons, making concessions, consolidating power, and gaining traction—spirituality and morality and virtue be damned. This is why we’re where we are today.

For all their sermonizing, Conservatives have never allowed their personal morality to get in the way of a political win. That has been the story for the past few years here: millions of people on the Right trading in their personal and religious values for the coming of a kleptocratic kingdom they will all benefit from. They have sacrificed their individual convictions on the altar of the bigger win, or at least, what seems like victory in the moment.

Now, I’m not asking moderates, progressives, liberals, and Left-leaning believers to do that. I’m not suggesting we collectively sell our souls the way our counterparts have. I’m not advocating for a collective treason against what we value.

We are different from our political and religious adversaries, precisely because we are more committed to our personal convictions than to purchasing influence.
We do stand for something greater than empty pulpit pounding and phony patriotic histrionics about Christianity and America under attack or returning to our days of former supremacist glory.
We are driven by moral and spiritual prompts that refuse to align with monsters or horde a consuming power that will corrupt us.
We aren’t fueled by a contempt that would snap its fingers and wipe out everyone else.

But if we can’t lay down our all-or-nothing, my-candidate-or-no-candidate absolutism and set aside our arrogant virtue to stand shoulder-to-shoulder against a formidable threat, we’re soon going to find ourselves with no voice whatsoever.

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We all need to understand how urgent these moments are. We need to stop killing our allies with friendly fire, and we need to discard the inconsequential battles of preference so that we can win the singularly vital war of which we all will prosper.

When our Republic is secured, and our essential liberties are restored, then we can go about the necessary and very attainable work of navigating our differences to renovate America into something we all can take pride in, something better than it has been.

But if we fail to confront this existential threat because we are distracted and divided by moral litmus tests, lazy squabbling, and performative purity politics, we will have all squandered the moment in front of us.

The Right is pushing America to the brink of theocracy and fascism, and we on the Left need to stop helping them.

We need to win together because when we win, life and the planet and the future does too.

It’s time we pulled ourselves together.