Imagine if kids rejected the idea that Santa Claus was a myth because the reality was too deppressing. It would be somewhat understandable, but those kids would be giving into the unreasonable idea that something is false if it doesn't make them feel good. Something can be true even if it doesn't have a happy ending.
Unfortunately, I noticed something similar a few years ago. 4 years ago, I often started my presentations to anyone who would listen with an argument: the anti-CRT was never just about so-called critical race theory; it was simply the latest foot in the door tactic for a broader tradition of anti-civil rights (with much resentment towards the very notions of inclusion, integration, and diversity), anti-welfare state (including ublic education) and anti-labor (including anti-union) movements. I hoped I was wrong, but the historians and sociologists I trusted were making similar arguments and they had way more knowledge than me, like Toure Reed, Barbara Fields, and Heather Cox Richardson. Many people seemed to believe that a response like “that's deppressing” could somehow count as a rebuttal or a good reason to believe that the argument was false. Unfortunately, it seems clear that my fellow nerds weren't pessimists or wrong; we were simply telling a story with an ending that some folks didn't like.
There is another argument that could be true even if it could be deppressing: we are losing ground AND we will keep losing ground if we do not accept an organizing perspective on social change. As Adolph Reed Jr. and others have continously argued, “the only possibly successful strategy is one based on genuinely popular, deliberative processes and concrete, interest-based organizing that connects with people's daily lives.” That was slower, more exhausting, less glamorous, more expensive, and less lucrative than the alternatives on the table (like mandatory education, ridicule on the grounds that we are just smarter than other people, resigning from any struggles beyond personal responsibility, or taking on the attitude of an employee counting down the days to their retirement). Yet organizing is the most promising and the most effective, and this contention comes from someone who has a far better record as a professional nerd than an organizer.
There is hope if we put the work in.