Political purity and the desire for a purest utopia are contributing factors to the shit storm we're in now.

No, a purely communist government wouldn't serve us well. It can never been done "right" because power-hungry f*cks will always take the wheel and drive everone else into a ditch. Lots of tankies cream their own britches over the idea of communism done "the right way." They never fully seem to realize that, while an ultra-billionaire bot wrangler might not rise to the top, another predatory statist will.

Anarchists also live in a fairy tale land where their wildest dreams will come true. The two main arguments from anarchists usually involve 1) small communal structures or 2) pure self governance.

1 doesn't work because guess what? Communal structures, even small ones, are still states. And if you don't have some publicly and widely available resource, you're stuck in that community. What if one hates that fucking community? What if that community is inherently abusive and there is no more regulated structure to intervene on a victim's behalf?

I'd accept 2 before 1, but we're talking a life where folks will fight off roving marauders. The better equipped will inevitably take over in time. And we're back in square one.

High-control authoritarianism and full anarchy strike me as completely ignorant of human nature and the human's relationship to the state. We cannot live with it. But we cannot live without.

We're better off with a blended structure that has elements like social safety nets and public infrastructure. BUT we need a people who view the state with hostility and suspicion at all times. We need better, more transparent voting infrastructure. We have the technology, but the state controls it completely.

Oh, and by the way. The current "state" in America includes large corporations, foreign enemy governments, and our own government. So we have a pretty big, powerful state to combat and wrangle back in line.

But pure communism or socialism isn't going to fix it. It'll lead to a stifling existence that crams every individual into a single blob eventually. Pure anarchy won't fix it because the idea of a happy, calm anarchist culture draws on the fictive premise that everyone secretly cares about each other enough to do what's best for others (they don't).