Losing the Fight for a Better World Takes a Toll
Choosing to be a leftist means that you are going to lose a lot. And losing a lot is not easy. How can we keep fighting while also acknowledging the emotional toll of losing over and over and over again?
Sign from Bernie Sanders’s 2016 campaign for president on February 2, 2016, in Derry, New Hampshire. (Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)
In 2011, my husband and I felt so defeated as leftists that we were soliciting content for a proposed website called “Why Fucking Bother?”
Barack Obama was president, and there was little dissent. The post-9/11 wars still raged but were met with no mass protests. Bailouts and recessions had met with little rebellion, either. “In Why Fucking Bother?” we envisioned perhaps an ongoing digital pep talk, as well as a serious analysis of our situation, convincing ourselves and others to stay in the fight.
People responded eagerly, hungrily, to this project. They wanted to contribute, and to read about why to bother. Feeling defeated, they felt seen in those feelings — and wanted a way out of them.
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