The commentariat have affirmed, and will affirm ad nauseam, that Kavanaugh’s appointment marks a significant rightward shift on the High Court that could persist for decades (especially if Trump gets another pick), that Roe is in more serious peril than at any other time in the lifetimes of people under 50, and that it’s quite sickening to see the SCOTUS become yet another arm of a thoroughly corrupted Republican Party.

I’m a gay man and a committed feminist, and none of this especially alarms me, because it was all completely predictable. Not even a notoriously mercurial president was going to get in the way of the best-laid plans of the Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation.

What I want to know is when will we forge our own thirty-year plan to make the progressive vision (although as a minister I prefer to say the godly vision) a widely-shared vision in all parts of this country and among every population segment?

When will we unite the fragments of important and useful single-issue activism under a shared understanding that we need to slay the dragon of finance capitalism joined to white supremacy (our very own Beast of Babylon) in order to have even a snowball’s chance in hell of winning what The Internationale prematurely called “the final conflict?”

I ask these questions because I don’t want anyone to have to ask them 30 years from now. In my view the time is now very short, and the battle for a human future in the face of environmental collapse and resurgent tribalism is, in very fact, the final conflict. In short, I think we have about 30 years left to get it right. A fragmented left lacking any unifying vision isn’t going to get the job done.