PK— Caught a question from you last night, just as we were crashing.

About political strategies, I’m no expert—for 30 years the Hatch Act limited my participation to voting and donating. There a couple general principles, though, that can be dug up and tested.

One is that real progressives are in a long war, perhaps an infinite one. We’ve been fighting the same purveyors of greed, fear, and hatefulness since the Pleistocene. While we are certainly winning, it’s not reversible and we often have to take the same ground again and again. Save something for the next march.

We have a great advantage—we are communal and affiliative, facing fairly unevolved egocentrics. The RW can barely see past short-term self interest that is focused on family und volk. Where we are cooperative they are overtly competitive. We can use that.

On the downside, we tend to pick leaves, locked on individual racists and other end-products, instead of attacking the roots. Too little is spent learning and interrupting the processes that could prevent the various kinds of -phobes. SPLC is great there.

splcenter.org