My Leftist Headache

Painting by migraine artist Priya Rama

When I was about 9 I started getting severe migraines. The memory of the first few is so clear — the absolute baffling terror of unprecedented, bizarre discomfort. A bloodstream that felt shot through with metal. The taste of pennies. Blurred vision and ringing ears.

The world ending from the inside out.

But then they kept happening — sometimes weekly, sometimes daily — and over the years that unpredictable agony became a part of life. Still awful, but familiar.

I'm about 80 hours into one now. They call that a "status migraine," and it, too, becomes just the way things are.

In the beginning you hunker down and kill the lights and wrap yourself up against the neurological onslaught. But hiding is only possible for so long. Eventually, pain notwithstanding, you have to get up and get on with the business of living.

I rage at the left because I know what we are capable of when we get on with the business of creating a better world.

I rage because I see people who used to be vital instruments of change embracing the world-weary affectation of political nihilism. I see them hunkering down with no intention of getting up again, choosing not an alternate path of activism, but no path at all.

When asked for a solution, they give none.

The right and privilege of criticizing what is carries with it the unavoidable responsibility of presenting what could be. Without that, we're just diagnosing the ills of the world. And diagnosis without treatment is worse than useless; it is abandonment of the millions who don't have the privilege of giving up.

Politics is disappointing business. For every tiny step forward, a dozen blows push us back. You hide in the dark and wait for the onslaught to end. But eventually, because there is no other choice, you push through the disappointment and the pain and you keep moving.

We don't get to make demands of the work that's required of us.

In people's criticism I hear doubt that electoral politics will ever give us the change we need. That is true. But there are a million other ways you can fight, from mutual aid to organizing workers.

In people's hopelessness I hear the belief that we can never really win, so there's no point in fighting.

That is most certainly true, at least in the short term. We cannot stop the course of climate change. We cannot replace the entrenched and cancerous system of American government.

We will die before we see the world we dream of.

But along the way we can ease suffering. We can bandage wounds. We can learn the difference between bad and worse. Refusing to do so because of some misguided sense of ideological purity isn't just intellectually bankrupt — it is grotesquely cruel.

Every leftist — every human being should be able to answer the question, "if not this, what then?"

I rage at the left because we are the people responsible for carrying the work forward. Beyond an election or a nation or a lifetime, we are the ones who have to carry hope.

If you can no longer hope, I’ll do it for you. And we can all get on with the business of creating a better world.

Solidarity and love forever.