On the Left and its purity culture

People on the left have this bizarre trait of criticizing their candidates for not being left enough, when the current alternative is literally Hitler without a mustache. David Sedaris wrote this quip that stuck with me: To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it? To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.” A center-left candidate can be ahead in the polls against a literal Fascist, and leftists will will be like “yeah but they don’t support bike lanes” and be sad about it. Perfection is truly the enemy of the good. Leftists are idealists by nature—we have to be, because the current system is thoroughly rigged for inequality and exploitation. But we need to realize that there isn’t going to be…