I was not born in the UK, nor have I ever lived there. I was born in Colorado and write this from a desk in Boston. I am half a world away from my Labour comrades, but I feel your pain. I have often felt your pain.

When Bernie lost the Democratic primary, I felt hopeless. Whatever hellish, grim future Hillary had in store for us, I knew I wanted no part of it.

When Hillary lost the election, I felt despair. Was it really my destiny to be born into an era of fascism? Why was I cursed to watch humanity suffer the indignities and crimes of corporatocracy?

And so tonight, as I watch Labour flounder, my despair is tempered by loss. I know what it is to lose an election — what it is to watch, insulated I may be, as the poor, nonwhite, and atypical suffer the cruelty of neoliberalism. I know what it is to have your agency stripped by agents of corporate greed. I feel your pain.

But more than anything, my despair is overshadowed by a raging fire of purpose. Let the corporate stooges come in droves, let them slander the history of leftism, and let them deride the hopes of the young. Let them cheer Boris Johnson on as he whips a party of inbred Aristocrats towards economic collapse. Because, while they do their best to end history for good, I will be organizing to stop them.

A wise man once wrote that “men make their own history but they do not do so as they please.” Some mornings, when the ruling class raises Lovecraftian beasts from the cesspools of capital, I wish with all my heart that I was born in different times. That I could wake up and find justice, equality, and liberty had already been won for me — that I could spend my life on literature, art, and love.

For all my hoping, however, I was not born in such times. None of us were. And so we must struggle