The current state of affairs is disheartening. It’s sapping my energy. It’s undeniable that there’s going to be a lot more ugliness in the upcoming weeks and months and years. These are dangerous times.
Our focus has to be on moving forward, because that is all we can control, really. I’d like to hear your thoughts about how we can move forward – not in the comments in this post – but in guest posts from all of you. In those guest posts threads, we can talk in the comments about the ideas proposed in that particular post. If you have alternate ideas from what’s in a post, or you think something else should be a higher priority, please consider submitting a guest post yourself.
You may remember that we did the same thing with guest posts in January of 2021, only then we got to think about, and talk about, what the 4 previous years of Trump had been like, what the incoming Biden Administration meant to you, and what legislative priorities you wanted as the focus of the new administration.
This time around, the future is far less bright, but I would argue that that makes it even more critical for us to look ahead with clear eyes and share our thoughts about where we go from here. We certainly have been sharing our thoughts for the past 2 months, but not always in a thoughtful way. And with more looking behind than looking ahead.
California is literally on fire. All the people who have lost their homes have to fucking figure out where to go from here. At possibly the worst moment in their lives, they have to keep going even when they are exhausted, and they have to make a plan even when they feel like everything is lost. And for some of them, even some of our BJ peeps, everything they owned is is literally lost.
California burning is the tangible embodiment of our country on fire, and many of us fear that it may all burn to the ground. But we have to keep going, too. The world is not going to stop so we can get off, and sadly Obama’s time machine isn’t available to us. I am working to accept the current reality, even as my brain continues to try to reject it as simply not possible.
Even now, when I think about how bad it might get, I’ll have a thought pop into my head that somehow the system will stop him. That something will stop him. We all know that the system we thought would save us doesn’t exist anymore, and where it does exist, Trump will try to hobble it. So what’s left? The people. We are the ones who will have to stop or slow everything we can.
Tomorrow is Martin Luther King Day. He didn’t throw up his hands or rock in the corner when he hit a roadblock; he kept doing everything he could to change the status quo. And he knew who his real enemies were. The white laborers in the garbage strikes at the time – they were not his enemies – he found and made common cause with them. And when he was killed, his followers also did not throw up their hands, and they dd not rock in the corner. Or maybe they did, but then they got back to work.
It’s my hope that we can do the same. I hope that a whole bunch of thoughtful BJ peeps will take the time to describe what the past four years have meant to you, what the loss was like for you, what Democrats should focus on going forward. And why. And how. Please send your write-up to me by email as a potential guest post.
If you want to submit something for a guest post, please don’t just list things – pick a priority (or priorities) that are important to you. Tell us why. Explain what the goals are, and how you think we might get started.
There’s not one true faith, and there’s not just one reason for the loss. It was a perfect storm in the most terrible way. Some things clearly had more effect than others, but change any one of those things and the outcome could have been different. But we can’t go back.
Just as there was not just one reason for the loss, there is not just one right thing to focus on going forward. We don’t have to agree on which things had the most impact; we have to look ahead at all the key things that can influence the outcome going forward. Not everything that had a great impact can be fixed in the timeframe we have ahead of us. We can work on several fronts, and we can be allies with folks who choose a different focus than we do. There’s plenty of work to be done.
There’s not one right way to play the hand we’re dealt.
I hope that you will all give this some thought, and if you have something to share with us that you will write it down, and submit it as a guest post.
If there are 10 or 15 different ways to move forward – or even 15 opposing ways to move forward – that’s fine. That’s probably as it should be. Different things will resonate with different people, different things will motivate different people, and each of us can choose where we put our energy and our efforts.
The future is all we’ve got. The future of our country. I think we have to fight for it.
