This System Doesn't Work for Any of Us
And it never will.
[This essay is being proudly sponsored by the ACLU, who are firmly committed to fighting the Trump administration’s dangerous and cruel agenda every step of the way. Please read their sponsorship message at the bottom of this piece, and I urge you all to sign-up here (for free) to support their work and consider making a donation.]
As I write this, Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries has been speaking for going on five hours on the floor of the U.S. House in a concluding protest prior to the final vote on Trump’s absurdly named One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
It’s expected to pass this morning after Republican holdouts spent the better part of yesterday refusing to go along with Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson.
The holdouts were supposedly brought into the fold after an early morning phone call with Trump, who probably assured them the bill is, in fact, sufficiently cruel and he’d do his damnedest to enforce its all-encompassing cruelty.
It’s projected that at least seventeen million Americans will lose their health care coverage through a combination of program cuts, possibly more than ten million alone through cuts to Medicaid.
At least two million Americans will lose food stamp benefits, so there are going to be a lot more hungry people in our country.
It will also close rural hospitals and make veterans and the elderly and the disabled even more vulnerable.
There are other things: a rollback on tax breaks for clean energy programs, taxes meant to deter gun violence have been removed, and the nation’s debt limit has been increased by $5 trillion, which is a pretty curious choice for fiscal conservatives who used to care about that but apparently no longer do.
This was all done by Republicans who want the wealthiest people in our country to be a fraction of a fraction wealthier than they are now and also: far more funding for ICE to continue terrorizing non-citizens and citizens alike and build more migrant detention centers to indefinitely incarcerate the terrorized.
Democrats in the House and Senate fought back valiantly, managing to successfully remove numerous other cruel provisions that would have made this bill somehow a lot more inhumane than it is now. Every Democrat in Congress voted against this bill.
But at the end of the day, the only hope in stopping it was crossing our fingers that extremist Republican House members would rebel against Trump and Johnson and scuttle the Senate’s passed version for not going far enough in its cruelty. They did rebel, but they wound up caving because their daddy told them to.
In the wake of Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the NYC Democratic mayoral primary, I have seen centrist and center-left and center-right commentators lean into a warning that Mr. Mamdani’s bold economic proposals would hurt the NYC economy and spell doom for the American economy if taken nationally.
They are sincerely offering that we should all be concerned for the longterm health of the American economy and that should be sufficient reasoning to reject the policy proposals of politicians like Mr. Mamdani.
I don't think these pundits understand that the vast majority of us in this country, especially those of us under 40, simply don’t care.
We truly do not care.
This is not a system that works for us. I am certainly not a leftist, and it doesn't take being a leftist to grasp that.
Many of us have kids. Many of us are caretakers for parents and grandparents and other relatives. Most of us know we will be someday.
Some of us have chronic health problems. Most of us know we're looking longterm at older age without government benefits we've paid into. Many of us are underpaid and overworked.
Most of us, even in our late 30s, don't dwell too much on dreams of owning a nice home in the future. Most of us are just hoping we'll plan appropriately for longterm costs-of-living and avoid significant health problems, to say nothing of childcare costs.
This is not a system that works for any of us. Why would we give a shit about its longterm health?
My advice to centrist and center-left and center-right pundits who are trying their best to fear-monger over democratic socialism: come up with a more attractive alternative for working class families and quickly.
Because the past six months have accelerated frustration, and the past 72 hours will only dump fuel on the fire of anger and resentment.
You need to read the room.
The Trump Administration is pushing a dangerous and sweeping agenda to control our bodies, our families, and our lives. President Trump has signed far-reaching executive orders attacking transgender people’s rights and trying to erase them from public life. And the Supreme Court recently ruled that Tennessee’s law banning gender-affirming care for minors can remain in effect – meaning that state bans on medical care will continue to wreak havoc on the lives of transgender youth and their families.
But the ACLU will continue to fight in courtrooms and communities across the country to ensure transgender people have the freedom to shape their own futures. The Skrmetti ruling said nothing about President Trump’s unlawful exercise of power against trans people – and the ACLU’s arguments against this abuse of power remain strong. Recently, a federal judge ruled that all trans and intersex people can obtain passports that align with their gender identity while the ACLU’s case against this executive order from President Trump proceeds. But the ACLU needs your support to block this executive order permanently and continue fighting for trans rights over the next four years and beyond.
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The worst of the effects do not start for a few years, so the Republicans will be able to blame someone else and our purposefully ignorant populace will believe them. That the Democrats have been unable to come up with any strategy to meet this moment is infuriating. I recall the Republicans in the minority being able to block most of Obama's agenda. When do they stop playing politics as usual?
The terms "communist" and "socialist" no longer instill fear and hatred among most people in the US. Most people couldn't define these terms, and neither can most politicians since they use them interchangeably. There is no Red scare any more; it's generational and in the distant past. PS: I began making a monthly donation to the ACLU during GWB's second term when it became very apparent that individual freedoms were being taken away. You may not agree with every lawsuit that the ACLU files, but you should be able to agree that it fights for our freedoms.