Yesterday several thousand neo-Nazis marched through the streets of Charlottesville. They killed a woman. They beat a black man. They terrorized a community. And the occupant of the Oval Office refuses to condemn them.
So what are we doing to stop them? Are we organizing rallies? Supporting candidates and organizers who are speaking out?
No. We’re spending the day consumed with a bullshit internecine pie fight, going the same way all pie fights go. Someone starts it with a snarky and imprecise reference to people on the other side of some intra-party divide. Then someone overreacts by interpreting it far more broadly, and it escalates from there until you end up with a thousand-comment thread consisting mostly of Bernie and Hillary people blaming each other for 2016.
Regardless of your precise feelings about last year, this is exactly what happened to us. We spent all year fighting the wrong battles, tearing each other apart rather than coming together to defeat evil. We’re doing it again today. We need each other — literally, as neither the Bernie nor Hillary faction has anywhere near a majority of the population. We join together or we lose forever.
Will we ever learn? If actual Nazis marching openly in the streets of American cities, tacitly encouraged by the president, can’t teach us to stop eating our own, what can?