Who the hell is Richard Spencer? I had never heard of him until a couple weeks ago. No one I know who claims the label "alt-right" had heard of him until a couple of weeks ago. No one anywhere had heard of him until the media dug him out from under his rock and started shooting arrows into the big bull's eye he helpfully painted on his idiot forehead for them. Were I conspiratorially minded, I'd imagine he might be a false-flag plant. But I'm old enough to know better.

The people I know who claim "alt-right" are not. They're young and full of piss and vinegar. They're also largely quite intelligent and not less well supplied with humanity than anyone else their age. They were quite receptive to the idea that nothing in the world is simple, and that demonizing any group of people en masse is a cheap, lazy, stupid shortcut past a lot of hard thought and the careful application of empathy toward the acknowledgement that compromise and negotiation are necessary toward any modus vivendi that's satisfactory to everyone, or as nearly so as can be managed in the imperfect world we inhabit.

I've been at this for a year now, more or less. It's been slow, difficult, complex, and anything but heroic, as teaching always is. But I'd capitalized on a couple of early successes, favorably impressing some of those among this group who are themselves generally looked up to by most others, and I was having a real effect. I had them thinking, or starting to - critically analyzing the contradictions between the left's claims and its behavior, and distinguishing the desirability of a lot of progressive goals from the counterproductive ways in which the modern progressive movement operates. I had them getting toward ready to start using the brains and the hearts God gave them to work toward a genuinely better world - for everyone - rather than the mirage of the progressive millennium whose pursuit has brought us to the pretty pass whereat we stand.

Of course, that was before the whole godforsaken world started calling them Nazis, sight unseen. How the hell am I supposed to compete with that? They're good kids, but they're kids. If you think it's easy, over a purely textual medium, to outdo "fuck you, you're not my dad", then by all means I invite you to try. And if you want to write them off, fine. That's easy and it's comfortable and it feels good. I get that. I
don't even blame you, although I'd like to, because that would be easy too. But I am going to tell you you're making a mistake.

Not that it matters, at this point. In the last few weeks, I've seen my influence go from considerable to just about none. They aren't listening to me any more, because there's nothing in the world as exciting as to fight against injustice - which is exactly how they see it, and considering the way I'm seeing them slandered I don't even think they're wrong. Certainly one bookish old homosexual who counsels analysis and empathy over rash action can't live up to that! So they're going to go their way, and you are going to go yours, and I guess I've wasted a year's worth of the hard work with which the actual left, for whom I hold no love, can't be bothered. Perhaps I should have done better, but for the life of me I can't see how. There's only so much shit you can expect people to eat, and the left long ago passed that mark with those whom it makes its enemies. Little wonder they're starting to sick it up now, and we all have to live with the mess.

(And I see the post's been flagged, which means even the time I've spent writing this comment was wasted, because no one will see it. So it goes. May God and history judge us all more kindly than we deserve.)