Joshua Adjutant of Enfield is a NH state representative.
If the early 19th century was known as the “era of good feelings,” the early 21st century will be known as the “era of bad vibes.”
Ever since the early 2000s, Americans have noticed a dramatic shift in anxious feelings as two Bush Era wars paid for on a credit card, two separate financial collapses, and a dramatic decrease in available resources have led many to feel that the standard of living their parents and grandparents had is slipping out of reach.
The numbers back this up — American life expectancy fell for the first time ever in 2020. The American dream of owning a home appears to be dying as well. Finite land is being developed into luxury housing as local zoning boards block affordable housing because “the wrong people may move into there.”
Refusal to act on climate change has brought droughts, extreme weather, environmental destruction, and made the cost of resources explode. A lack of political courage to raise the cap on taxable income for Social Security leads many Americans to believe that the life-saving program won’t be there for them when it’s their turn to collect.
The abhorrent American healthcare system leads many incapable of seeking care until it’s too late, and our rigged prescription drug pricing system prevents those who can get care from following their provider’s orders, by either not filling scripts or cutting medications in half.
The bleak picture painted above can all be surmised in “a lack of hope for the future,” and if there’s one thing contemporary democracy requires, it’s hope.
A generation of Americans from 1952 to 2000 understood that no matter which political party controlled power, there was a future available. It allowed them to put their faith into an electoral process because, at the end of the day, the state would do what was right to preserve a good standard of living.
Social Security would be protected. The environment would be protected. Home ownership as a ticket to the middle class would be supported. The minimum wage would increase, as it did under both Democratic and Republican presidents. Every election wasn’t perceived as existential to the future of humanity and its standard of living. We do not have that same trust in democracy today because the interests of the common everyday person do not appear to be considered in Washington.
Common sense and popular ideas like the construction of affordable housing, reproductive choice rights, and healthcare expansion do not appear capable of breaching the corporate control of the halls of power no matter how many times you vote, and expressing frustration with that reality is often dismissed as “conspiracy theory.”
Meanwhile, the Bush Administration swore up and down that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. They were never found, while thousands of American service members and countless Iraqis perished in the ensuing civil war. Following the 2008 financial crisis, the people truly rinsed were the homeowners who were sold false bills of goods in subprime mortgages, not the bankers who would go on to receive taxpayer-funded bonuses after they obliterated the economy.
When COVID-19 broke out, Americans received a one-time $1,200 check, as corporate industries received hundreds of billions of dollars in bailouts. How is any American supposed to look at that and feel their interests in the present, and their futures are being considered? How can they have faith in democracy?
You’ll likely hear a lot of talk in these upcoming midterm elections about “saving our democracy,” in response to the insurrection of January 6th, 2021, or the voting restrictions in dozens of states in response to the pure horse hockey claims of election fraud in 2020. But simply expanding voting rights and prosecuting insurrectionists alone will not turn down the national temperature.
If we are to truly save our democracy, we need to also save our future, and that means halting climate change, raising the minimum wage, building more affordable housing, making healthcare for all a reality, reigning in the greed of prescription drug and oil companies, making the rich pay their fair share in taxes, and much more.