For what it’s worth, I don’t think we share the same estimation of ‘the problem’. I gather you see the problem as a lack of Democrats in power. I see the problem as a lack of reality within our culture. Further, I see the weakness of the Democratic party as a function of this.

Maybe I’m not cynical enough about politics, and I haven’t yet reached a conviction that the best you can hope for is to emotionally manipulate the masses; and further, that players like Corey Booker are unavoidable. That the party is going to continue to be controlled by Central Casting, who will continue to serve the interests of Wall Street by means of demographically diverse/economically identical mouthpieces.

I’m still not cynical enough to accept that the Hillary Clintons are inevitable, and that it really does just hurt the Cause to support people like Bernie, who seem to be actually saying what they mean, rather than contriving circumstances to seem heroic.

I’m a sucker for the idea that authenticity matters, profoundly… and not just because one day it might pay off with a deal with Nike.

Most perverse of all: I think there’s common ground to be found with the deplorables, across the Left/Right divide.

I’m still naive enough to at least want to believe that the Culture War might be peaceably resolved by human decency and simply speaking truth, rather than dramatically striking a pose by knowingly twisting it.

I still naive enough to cringe at Kamala Harris for asking Brett Kavanaugh if he was aware of any laws restricting the male body. What a burn! Except that this difference is entirely rooted in the fact (brace yourselves, biology ahead): human females, like other female mammals, give birth – and in gestating other human beings their bodies necessarily, at some point in the process, become subject to laws governing the intersecting rights of individual persons.

To present this difference as if it were instead a clear and irrefutable testimony to the fundamental misogyny of our society in general, and those evil Republicans in particular, is, in my view, extreme.

As I see it, this kind of theater will win Kamala Harris popularity among her base, at the cost of further dividing the public. This, it seems to me, is the general tactic that has come to dominate our politics.

These days, it’s all about polarizing grandstanding, because these are the clips that will get shared and shared and shared, and raise the political and economic fortunes of the social media politician.

I’m just not yet cynical enough to accept that this is how it has to be.