On working with political opponents
Political compromise gets a bad rap these days, and for good reason--attempting to compromise with Republicans is about as wise as attempting to compromise with starving wolves. But the simple fact is that if we bring the same vitriol to our disagreements with people on the Left as we do with them, we will never be a united movement. So, how do we determine when to be civil and when to break out the claws?
Is it lives being on the line that's the distinction? No. Most of our political theories, if wrong, will get people killed--by definition if you're trying to save people's lives and you fail, people die. Sex-positive feminists think sex-negative feminists are throwing prostitutes under the bus and sex-negative feminists think sex-positive feminists aren’t doing enough to stop girls from being forced into prostitution in the first place; if you only work with the virtuous, how the hell are these two groups supposed to work together? If either side is right, what the other is doing is evil.
What of those who think they are doing the right thing? Now you have the opposite problem; no one, no matter how vile what they do is, thinks they’re a bad person. At best you’ll get people who think they’ve been forced by circumstances to get their hands dirty. The first problem made your pool of potential allies overly narrow, this one makes it overly wide. So if neither the realistic consequences of their actions nor what they hold in their hearts is the thing to determine if you work with someone, what is?
The first quality to look for is trustworthiness. If we’re having a debate, are they coming to it willing to be convinced to change their mind, or are they just trying to score points with their base? Should we make a deal, will they honor it?
The second is just how compatible their platform is with yours. There will be issues you agree on (those are easy), issues you can compromise on (those are hard--by definition, in a compromise neither side is getting all of what they want), and issues you can’t. If the person you’re talking to wants to kill all the puppies in the world and you don’t want to kill any puppies, I doubt either of you will think killing 50% of all puppies would be acceptable. Conversely, if you want a $15 minimum wage and the other guy wants a $12 one, compromising on the issue--or even letting them have their way in exchange for concessions elsewhere--is a whole hell of a lot better than nothing.
This is why even in a well-run system where politicians truly are the voice of their constituents it is better to be lawful than to be good in the world of professional politics. Which is of course the exact opposite skillset to the one a person needs to be an activist, but even an activist needs to know when to pick their battles.
