What Now?

As I type this, Joe Biden is being inaugurated as President.

Yay?

Don’t get me wrong, he’s MUCH better than the alternative.

But it remains to be seen if Biden is the leader we need. He’s made some positive first steps. His cabinet is diverse and features more women than any administration in history. His first day in office figures to be a busy one with a flurry of Executive Orders aimed at undoing some of the damage Trump has wrought.

These are all good things.

But I’d be lying if I said that I held much hope for any real progressive changes. Universal healthcare? I wouldn’t count on it. College debt? If we see any relief it’ll be a token, mostly meaningless amount. Ending the war on drugs? LOL. Green New Deal? DOA.

When people went to the polls in November, I think a lot of them sought a return to “normal”. Joe Biden is a BIG part of that “normal”. Let us not forget that he was a senator back when NIXON WAS PRESIDENT. He’s had half a century to make progressive change. And what does he have to show for it?

Not much. Those are simply the facts. He’s been a middle-of-the-road centrist for most of his career. And for a lot of people, that’s probably good enough.

Not for me.

Imagine you’re on a boat in the middle of the ocean. You’re carrying valuable supplies that are needed by some faraway people. You’re making steady progress and keeping a constant speed. You can see the shoreline of your intended target ahead of you but then a big orange whale surfaces near your ship and pushes you away. It grabs the anchor line and pulls you further and further out into oblivion. It has delayed your mission by years, if not more. The people you have to help are dying. Is it a good idea to resume your course at a steady, slow speed? Or is it reasonable to expect a little more urgency?

That’s where we find ourselves as a country this morning. We can’t allow “normal” to stop change.

It’s our job to make sure Biden pushes America into the 21st century. Universal healthcare is the NORM around the world. In fact, we’re one of the only countries that don’t have it. The same goes for ensuring people are paid a livable wage. We jail far too many of our fellow citizens. And having multiple generations indebted beyond their means because they wanted to get an education is a recipe for future disaster.

I’m not interested in returning to “normal”. Normal is what brought us Trump. Normal is what led America to imprison so many of its citizens that if all the incarcerated people lived in one spot, it would be the fifth-largest city in America. Normal is what gave us a healthcare system that costs more per person than any other place in the world and yet the care we receive for that money is substandard. Normal is what brought us police killing our fellow citizens at a rate higher than just about anywhere in the world. Normal is where CEO compensation and corporate profits skyrocket while average workers collapse into poverty. Normal means that thousands of children will be homeless and even more will struggle just to find food.

I’m good with “normal”. I want change, real change that actually impacts our lives. Is Biden the one to deliver that? We’ll have to see.