The Taboo of Honest Debate: How the Left Preaches to the Choir, While Losing the Congregation.

By Michael J Grady

• Approximately 90% of Americans support universal background checks for all gun buyers.
• 60% of Americans support a tax system where the wealthy pay their fair share.
• 65% of Americans want the government to take more action on climate change.
• 63% of Americans believe a woman should have the right to choose.
• 66% of Americans support free college tuition for public institutions.
• 70% of Americans favor the legalization of cannabis.
• 62% of Americans support increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.

These numbers are not fringe positions; they reflect MAINSTREAM VIEWS! And yet, despite this overwhelming public support, we keep losing political battles. Donald Trump just swept all seven swing states, won the popular vote, and Republicans stand to take both houses.

Clearly, the issue isn’t with the popularity of our policies. The issue is us, our priorities, and how poorly we communicate.

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Why Do We Lose?

We lose because we don’t meet people where they are. Instead, we condescend with graduate school lingo like “intersectionality” and “heteronormativity,” terms that often feel like linguistic secret handshakes rather than accessible concepts. We’ve been exclusionary, coming up with moral rulings over semantic arguments and turning political discussions into purity tests.

The Right argues to potential voters that the Left has lost its mind, hates America, and wants to burn its institutions to the ground. Then we start churning out slogans like “Defund the Police,” “The Future is Female,” and “Believe All Women.” And while I get where the people hashtagging these slogans and carrying these signs are coming from, I want to shout: What the f#ck are you thinking?!

Yes, these slogans fire us up—because we know what they mean. But when the literal interpretation of our slogans requires a five-minute explanation to keep people from thinking they’re a validation of the Right’s narrative, I swear, sometimes it feels like we’re trying to lose.

Take “Defund the Police,” for instance. To activists, it means reallocating police budgets to social programs that address the root causes of crime. But to anyone reading it at face value, it sounds like we want to abolish law enforcement entirely. And guess what? That’s exactly how the Right spins it, and it works.

I pointed this out to an acquaintance online once, and they said my concern was “coming from a place of white supremacy.”

I didn’t reply, but what I thought was: Did you honestly think that was going to win me over, or do you just prefer to win the argument by alienating people? With an attitude like that, you don’t get people to vote for your candidates—you get them to vote against you.

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The Purity Trap

Take Dave Chappelle, for instance. Here’s a comedian who has spoken out about income inequality, systemic racism, and the need for healthcare reform. His jokes may have been in poor taste, uncomfortable, or unfunny to the opinions of some, but they weren’t alt-right or instruments of oppression—and part of the reason we know this is because they were made by Dave Chappelle. It wasn’t enough that he manifestly agrees with the Left about the type of world he wants; he also had to tell us the jokes we wanted to hear, in the exact way we wanted to hear them.

And, by the way, whatever happened to the Left being the guardians of free speech?

Or consider Bernie Sanders and his supporters. Back in 2016 and 2020, the people rallying behind Sanders’ call for Medicare for All, free college, and climate action were dismissed as ‘alt-right’ or ‘Bernie Bros’ simply because they critiqued the Democratic establishment. Instead of engaging with their genuine concerns, they were pushed aside.

We’ve turned our movement into a place where ideological purity matters more than practical change. And in doing so, we’ve pushed away the very people who could help us build a real, lasting coalition.

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My Sniveling Cowardice

I’m going to be honest: I’m terrified to say these things. And I’ve been terrified to say them for a long time. Because as much as I believe in the causes the Left stands for, I also know the price that can come from questioning our tactics. I fear my intentions being questioned—not by strangers, but by my friends. I fear being labeled ‘alt-right,’ or ‘something-phobic,’ or, as I said above, “white supremacist” simply because I dared to voice a concern.

And the truth is, I’ve been silenced in this way before—by people I love. Friends who, knowing that applying these labels is a shortcut to winning personal debates, used them to shut me down. It’s not because they’re bad people; it’s because this is what our discourse has become. A space where the fastest way to ‘win’ an argument isn’t to engage, but to brand, to dismiss, to cast someone out.

We need to get rid of this fear, shut down the electrified grid of disagreement, and be open to saying what we think without the threat of being ostracized. Because maybe, if we were able to speak freely and interrogate our approach to creating the world we all agree we want, we’d be more effective. People would feel more comfortable standing among us, knowing that they won’t be cast out for asking questions or raising concerns.

If we can’t create a space where people can speak honestly, then we’re not building a movement—we’re just building walls, and posterity is going to pay for it. And walls don’t create change; they only isolate us further. We can’t afford that—not when the stakes are so high.

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The Final Challenge

The average of all the statistics above is 68%. Think about that for a moment. Nearly 70% of Americans already agree on the big issues—healthcare, wages, climate, and justice. What chance would authoritarianism have if even 60% of us stood together? How far could the far right afford to go?

This isn’t just a thought experiment. It’s a challenge. If we could communicate to over 60% of the country that we all want the same things—basic fairness, dignity, opportunity—the right would have to rewrite its entire playbook. Their success relies on division, on convincing us that we’re too different to work together. But we’re not. The numbers prove it.