You’re Fighting the Wrong Battle
Politics are not my mainstay for article topics. You can scan my somewhat small library here: gaming, game design, mental illness and depression. These are all topics I know intimately and have almost my entire lifespan of experience with. However, I feel like no one has been left out of politics over the past few years no matter how much one may try to avoid it. While I can comment on any part of the world we’re sticking to where I live, the USA.
No one is going to mistake me for a patriot. To be honest I don’t derive any sense of pride, belonging or happiness from what part of the earth I’m living on. I take those things from the communities I foster and build as well as from the things I create and that I help others create.
This is going to be a spoiler for a rather obscure book from a not very obscure author so I suppose if you even knew about this book and intend to read it I’d skip the next paragraph. Following his death Roger Zelazny’s last book was published; an effort that had gone on near the end of his life and was finished by Jane Lindskold called Donnerjack. It isn’t a good book by any means. It is incredibly spurious and has many, many moving parts and ideas which is extremely counter to Zelazny’s typical style. The quality of the work not withstanding Donnerjack’s primary plot and resolution revolve around a very Zelazny conflict: two god-like-beings who are unknowingly at odds with each other. Creation has decided to take over the whole deal by utilizing a seed of Destruction. Destruction himself is, naturally, incapable of fighting his own element so it’s up to the very mortal protagonist to put a stop to it.
Now that the setup is out of the way: this is what we’re fighting. We’re not fighting racists, misogynists, “conservatives”, religious zealots or any other form of creation. Even the literal facists and nazis are in some form agents of creation. It may not be the creation of something you agree and they may be bent on creating something with the ashes of something they destroyed but they are trying to build something; they need people to agree with them and follow their ideals.
What you’re actually fighting is destruction. You’re fighting nihilists. The problem is you can’t fight nihilists directly. Brian McFadden hits it on the head in this particular comic on The Nib. Nihilists only want pure destruction.
Obama, despite being decried as a facilitator and centrist compromiser after the fact, broke a lot of people’s brains by holding office for 8 years. This created an entire sector of the populace that had previously been herded into monodistricts by republican governors and state officials over the past few decades who were ripe to blindly lash out and accept a worldview which consisted solely of nihilistic principals. The Rs ran for years during Obama’s administration on a platform of pure “I’ll do the opposite of the other guy”. No actual direction, no creation, simply destruction.
Trump enters into this perfect storm of a voting base rife with nihilism and rises on the platform being propped up by the traditional source of nihilism: the internet. The dark side of the internet latched onto this clarion call with one mission: to tear down anything they could get their hands on at any cost to themselves. You can’t debate a nihilist because they want nothing. You can’t defeat a nihilist because literally any outcome that involves chaos or destruction is their victory condition.
The only thing you can do to fight destruction, like Donnerjack did in that novel, is to create something. Organizing communities, creating opportunities and driving the country forward despite the hellscape devolving around us is the only way through. No matter how many nazis and facists you punch in the face; no matter how many racists you yell down or rape apologists you shame or politicians you expose nothing will change if you stop creating because at the core of our problems is nihilism.
It is a rough time. Right-wing and nationalistic domestic terrorism is on a sharp rise globally. This machine of facism fueled by nihilists is causing destruction and spreading fear on a grand scale but ultimately this thing is like a hydra. Every facist head you cut off just spawns 2 more. To end this you have to stab the body. You have to create things for the people around you and for the sake of the people around you.
The only thing that perpetual war solves is perpetuating war.