tHE Thing is... there is no safe place.

I know you don't want to hear this. I know most of us don't want to hear this. I know having bared your soul like this in particular you don't want to hear this. But you need to hear this. All of you do.

I think we have to accept not that democracy has failed because it hasn't. I think we have to accept that there's a part of our society - mostly on the far right, but also the far left - that has no use for it, not real. When it works perfectly, when its working on all cylinders, it's dull. Uninteresting. Boring.

And our society, particularly today, doesn't like boredom. They want excitement and more than they want results.

I just finished a book about the leadup to the Civil War and will write a series about it later this year. What I found fascinating was, believe it or not, the dichomoties between the seccessionists and the abolitionists are at their core, almost exact parallels for the extreme left and extreme right today. And both the diehard abolitionists led by William Lloyd Garrison and the diehard secessionists led by men such as Barnwell Rhett both thought that the idea of Union was flawed and needed to be dissolved. Garrison and his ilk belived that because of the immorality slavery it had to be destroyed and if that meant the Union was dissovled and the constitution shredded, he and his ilk were basically fine with it. They had no use for any of the politicians who ran for public office in their own state and argued that their committment to the cause was diluted because they swore loyalty to a document they considered immoral. Even a man like Charles Sumber, whose beating in the capitol because of a speech he gave on the immorality of slavery, was too soft on the subject because in the minds of a man abolitionists he was spending more time in Congress doing his job than at anti-slavery rallies. Right up to the secession crisis Garrison and his ilk not only berated Lincoln for arguing to preserve the Union but actually seemed fine with the South seceding. They had no solution to the crisis and the fact they thought secession would solve the problem makes me question their true committment to it.

Rhett nad his fellow secessionists were subject to a similar dillusion: they truly thought the South could stand on its own as an independent nation based on slave labor. Even though the rest of the south and indeed the free world didn't think the slave trade should continue Rhett and some of his followers really thought that the South would not only secede but that the North would gladly let it go. Rhett's positions were not only outside that of the Union but even most secessionists: at the Confederate convention most of his ideas were voted out of the constitution and Jefferson Davis - a man Rhett considered too soft for his liking became President.

In a sense much has changed in two hundred years and in a sense much hasn't. But the fundamental divides are still there and in a sense can't go away.. Our country has never grappled with the divide of race in our society and this is not as much because the right's position hasn't changed but because too many people on the left's still can't decide what it should be. In both cases the divide always leaves out the working class: neither side has any really use for it but the right at least is willing to show up in certain states - mainly the South - and the left holds the same contempt for them that it has for two hundred years.

The problem in our society is not that the facist right and the totalitarian left can not agree on what is best for America. That I don't think is ever going to change because the two sides have been locked in on their views for two hundred years. Nor is the problem that the right has seized control of one of our major parties though it is a huge one and that I don't have a solution for. No the problem in our society is that both sides have staged the terms of the battle and have essentially decided to ignore what the average citizen really wants. The far right has no interest in solving the problems we face today and neither does the far left. The big difference is the far right has managed to make their views at least appear mainstream and the far left not only doesn't dilute its views but seems just as disdainful of the fate of our republic as the far right does.

i can't tell you how many articles I've read on this very blog writing about the imminent downfall of our country and the majority of them are written by the far left. And what bothers me is how much they seem to be looking forward to it. They seem to be aware of all the dangers you spoke of in this article. But their demands for some nebulous purity not just from Democrats but all elected officials has caused them to fundamentally argue - with a straight face AND EVEN AFTER THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION THAT THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BOTH PARTIES. They will tell you in no uncertain terms what the fasicstnightmare Trump was and that they don't want to live through it again but they refused to endorse Biden or even give anything resembling lukewarm support during his administration and many seem reluctant to go along with Harris.

iN THAT sense they have not changed at all since Garrison and that's more frightening in a sense than the far rights embrace of the fascist mantle. There's no difference between the Liberator and the 1619 project, it makes all the same talking points and has no real solutions. The left has nothing new to say and they still denounce the electoral process as beneath them. tHEY'Ve been saying I told you so for over ten years and they still take no responsibility for it - not the Sanders voteers who voted for Trump, not the ones who voted for Jill Stein in 2016. If evil thrives when good men do nothing as they say, then they deserve a special place of contempt in my heart, a different kind of hatred I bear the far right because I can understand at an intellectual level than the contempt and indiffference for our society the left does.

I think at some point there are people who want democracy to dissolve on the left. They're not as numerous as the ones on the right but that just makes them scarier in a different way. They've spent so much time arguing that the free society we live in and that their ancestors died to defend isn't real freedom because its tainted. They still don't know what real freedom looks like any more than the Garrisons did two hundred year ago. They just know what it doesn't look like and its every society on the planet. I question their committment to their values more than I do those on the right because however bigoted and vile the right's believes are, they believe in somehting and will fight for it. The far left still lives in its ivory tower and thinks that fighting is for suckers.

I have, I should say, more optimisim for the country then you do with this election, and not just because I;'m more certain than the polls that Harris will win. I'm not naive enoguh to think our problems witll end if she wins or even within the next few years. But I still think they're more solvable than either side really wants to admit. But that said, when its over both the far right in the Republicans and the far left in the fringes of the Democrats have to take a long hard look in the mirror at who they are. Neither of their visions are tenable for a democracy and at some point both of them have to accept that. They have to accept that democracy is boring, imperfect and slow-moving. That's what I hope for - and have more reluctance with each year believing either side is willing to acknowledge,.