Why Engagement Doesn't Matter Anymore.

I've been thinking about this for some time now, and it's a hard thought to have especially as one who has been very actively engaged with political discussion for years, but the truth of the matter is that engagement to fight for basic humanity and decency is over.

What am I talking about?

We all know that those narcissistic, arrogant, bigoted White Supremacists (we'll call them Nazis for ease of use) who support Donald Trump, who have turned the Republican Party into the Nazi Party of the 1930s, and who are destroying all that the USA was built upon will never, ever be convinced they are on the wrong side of all that is sanity, but we engage them in discussions (arguments actually) to convince those on the fence that yes, these people are bad, they are ignorant, they are voting for hatred and bigotry and greed, and that you shouldn't ever be on the fence about them or their actions.

We also engage them to show the Nazis, hey, we are NOT going to put up with them and be silent about what they are doing to our fellow human beings in this nation or other nations. Or to our environment. Or to our children. Or to our lives. That we are standing strong and will fight them at every step of the way.

However...it doesn't matter anymore.

We have reached a tipping point. We have gone through two years of a wanna be Hitler and his sick, fanatical cult followers as well as his Congressional enablers of the Republican Party. We have gone through two years of Corporate Democrats (Vichy Democrats) who have done absolutely nothing to fight against Trump or the Republicans except pay lip service and put a pretense of "fighting." We have engaged bigots, haters, racists, liars, the delusional, and the profiteers that support what's going on.

Two years. For some of us who saw this coming and what the Republican and Democratic Oligarchy actually means, many years more.

And now at this time it doesn't matter anymore. Engagement is meaningless.

Nazi Republicans will never change what they are now that they are out of their Hitler shrine basement dwellings. They have proven that time and again at the ballot boxes, in their reactions to mass murders by their fellow White Supremacists, in their support of the horrors being inflicted on others from Hispanics to Muslims to Blacks to Native Americans. Engagement changes nothing.

Vichy Democrats will never change what they are because they are blinded into thinking that their "side" is good. They can't see that Trump, who was a member of their party and supported their party and their candidates, was one of them. That their current "leaders" (not representatives) are purposely protecting Trump and working with Republicans on everything from the bloated military budget to imperialist wars to corporate gifting. The people who support these politicians say "vote blue no matter who" giving the Vichy Democrats carte blanche to be what they are, Oligarchs like the Republicans who care nothing, not one single bit, about them or anyone else. Engagement changes nothing.

So what's left? Progressives? Yes. They are the future. They (we) are fighting to change everything and it's hard and it's tiring and it's disheartening and it's a struggle. But we're not engaging other Progressives, we're agreeing with them in discussions and reasonable talk and ideas of what humanitarian's can do to save our nation, and even the world, if we can change things. Always talk to your fellow Progressives.

But engaging the Nazi Republicans and Vichy Democrats is futile. They are as entrenched and ignorant and blind and self destructive as human beings can be. They, like our political system, are two sides of the same coin, a duopoly of blind fealty to Oligarchy that each side thinks will somehow help them, elevate them, and save the nation.

When in fact both of them work together to destroy the nation, but cannot at all see it, and never will, no matter what is said or how often it is said.

The only thing that can change either sides minds is their own self realization. Will that come by the nation being buried under rubble like Germany in 1945? Will it come through the end of a horrific Civil War like our's in 1864? Will it come through a bloody head dropping revolution like France in 1799?

Or will it come through a complete change in our society by Progressives in 2020?

Time will tell. But one thing that will not change anyone's mind anymore is engaging them in social media, in the news, in blogs, or anywhere else. After two years all their minds are made up.

Instead of futile engagement save all your strength for working toward a more powerful unity of progressivism. To work together, to support each other, to strengthen each other. Use the time you would have spent arguing with Republicans and Democrats to rise up those that share your view of humanity as a whole. In that way you can make a bigger difference than futile engagement, a difference that in the end might actually bring about the change we all hope for.