We are weeks away from the 1 year anniversary of perhaps the most infamous day in the living memory of our nation. Not one of the major conspirators have spent a single night in jail. They are all walking free, raking in cash on speaking tours, holding rallies and fundraisers, founding media companies. We have less than a year until the 2022 midterms. Time keeps slipping away from us.
Two Democratic senators hold the entire agenda, the country, and our future as a democracy by the throat. They’re corrupt to the bone. There’s seemingly nothing we can do about them. The Democratic party refuses to play tough. We’re so scared they’ll swap parties we can’t bring ourselves to admit they already have and treat them accordingly. But then there’s also President Biden, who continues to do things that are nothing less than inexplicable. Student loan payments will begin again in February, sending millions of families back into pain, anxiety, and economic paralysis. The Child Tax Credit is now done and won’t come back next month. Millions of vulnerable children will be driven back into poverty.
The horrors of the Trump regime should have changed us not only as a nation, but as a party, for the better. “Nothing will fundamentally change” President Biden said. The disappointments began to roll in early. Instead of the promised 2000.00 stimulus checks that were promised, we got 1400.00. Instead of a minimum wage increase to 15 dollars an hour, we got a cute thumbs down and a curtsey from Senator Hunger Games. It took six months to establish a commission to investigate the 1/6 attacks. Despite insisting that we couldn’t go back to the way things were, here we are a year later, doing exactly that, all across the nation.
We had a platform we all worked towards. Moderates in the House and Senate, in cahoots with the moderates in the White House, stripped the infrastructure bill of all human infrastructure elements, all climate elements with any real teeth or chance of averting disaster, and then backed progressive into a corner, only to ultimately leave us all swinging in the wind. Progressives in the house fought harder for the agenda than any other group of Democrats, only to realize that they were fighting for an illusion, something the President really didn’t want to see come to pass. Republicans laugh all the way to the bank, happy to take credit for the bipartisan win, happy to blame democrats for that win representing in real terms a failure to bring immediate and meaningful change to the lives of our voters.
We are told, correctly, every day, that Democracy is on the ballot.
We are told, correctly, every day, that if we do not act radically on Climate change, our species is doomed.
We are told, correctly, every day, that authoritarianism is on the rise.
Variants continue to percolate because we didn’t release patents, because capitalism.
Women will lose their right to control their reproduction sometime this spring.
We can be charged with a felony in more than one state for teaching the history of race in this country.
Nothing will fundamentally change.
The George Floyd Justice in Policing act died on the altar of the filibuster. Black Voters who got shot by cops and still motivated millions of people, who got beaten by cops and still registered millions of people, who got people to the polls because they believed that we would change things, they were lied to. Nothing fundamentally changed.
Young voters who were assured we’d act on gun control, climate, and student loan debt? Left out in the cold. Nothing fundamentally changed.
Progressives who were sold on universal Pre-K, family leave, expanded Medicare and all the rest? Left out in the cold. Nothing fundamentally changed.
Kids are still in cages. We’re expanding remain in Mexico. We’re not compensating the families who were separated at the border. We’re putting 43 million Americans back under the boot of crushing student loan debt. We’re letting Republicans subvert election systems all over the country. We’re losing the gerrymandering game because we’re fighting it with one hand tied behind our back. We’re opening the door to Speaker of the House Donald Trump.
We had this one year to get things done. “Nothing will fundamentally change” he said.
He kept that promise.