My URL is intended to be double speak, winking at gradually getting older while implying my progressive roots and aspirations. Time for some aspirational exercise.
There is the slimmest possibility that in this difficult time for the country some realization that we are all in this together will germinate, even flower. Progressives have never been the enemy. They are, at the very root of it all, for everyone. There should be no club, no entry fee, no secret sign.
Maybe being universally treated like we were tools for this President’s aggrandizement, and very little else, has worn down the barriers between some folks. It’s hard to be used. It hurts.
And it pisses you off.
I imagine a rebirth of decency. Not in an old-school sense, but in its simplicity. That I wouldn’t do to you what he’s done to us. It’s a bridge too far. Couldn’t think that little of you. I just can’t go there. Fly your MAGA flag, but I don’t wish you a leader that would trade your family’s health for your vote.
I really don’t.
Maybe we come together around something that simple. That we all count when the chips are down.
We all went down together. Testing doesn’t really matter anymore, or not in a very impactful way. It would have been helpful to smooth the peak a bit, maybe, but that time is passed. He served us all up en masse. All to look like a bad ass.
Maybe 2020 will be the high-point for badass-ism. Maybe, just maybe, being considerate will be the new cool. Maybe bullies will be seen as negative again, and not presidential material. The hatred and cruelty that has been on display in the White House will be an egregious betrayal of the people again, unacceptable for anyone that would deign to represent us, and thus unacceptable within us as well.
With the crippling failure of conservative economic ideology, long obvious but now revealed by failed leadership, a tenacious virus and a financially unprepared population, just maybe a new progressive agenda is born from this. Maybe the idea that we really are in this together will be revealed and be the emergent guiding star to our politics, government and economy.
In the face of a global pandemic, just maybe the suffering of the people will be revealed on a grand scale and scrambling for scraps of the American Dream won’t be good enough anymore. The cost will be tremendous, but we just may rise from this to something new, better, more compassionate, more encompassing.
Just maybe.