Yeah, this was always my big one too. I’m a green at heart, but I learned a brutal lesson then, that I’ll carry inside of me forever. A lesson that has only gotten reinforced by the slow march of modern fascism.
Democracy requires dialogue, patience, empathy and compromise. The alternative is authoritarianism, and the unavoidable power struggles that come from too much centralized power in a world with ambitious humans. We need to remember that, and dialogue and compromise with our, in many ways younger-self progressives, instead of trying to corral them. We can do this. We are not too afraid.