Avery Arizola | THE RIDER
I read somewhere that the pandemic is a dress rehearsal for how the ruling class would respond to the impending climate crisis and social unrest.
The last few months have made it clear that nobody is coming to save us. While the working class suffers the pandemic and record-high unemployment, the rich benefit from a system that was meant to serve them since its inception.
In a country where 26,000 die every year due to lack of health insurance, the fact that 20% of 2.2 million COVID-19 deaths are from the U.S. is not surprising. However, what should anger you, not shock you, is that universal health care was argued against during the 2020 Democratic Party presidential debates–as if the idea of working class lives being treated without paying an arm and a leg was debatable.
As a resident of Hidalgo County, where almost a third of the population under 65 is unemployed, this kind of resistance is violent.
Feigned support is the running theme of the Democratic Party. They are committed to gaslighting everyday Americans by voicing support, but providing no substantial change to relieve the onslaught the pandemic has brought upon the working class. This is evident in Democrats’ collaboration with the media’s hollow messaging to honor essential workers but limp support of a $15-per-hour minimum wage, their bait-and-switch on the promise of $2,000 checks to Georgia voters and their “I believe in Science” catchphrase.
When questioned on House voting procedures on impeachment via Twitter, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) tweeted, “A few reasons: Sometimes it’s to get members on the record, so ppl can’t make excuses later. Sometimes these votes create real political pressure that forces developments. Sometimes we vote for the historical record – to let future generations know we did everything we could.”
That exact reasoning was the basis for #ForceTheVote, an online movement conceptualized by online personality Jimmy Dore and spearheaded by Briahna Joy Gray, former national press secretary for the Bernie Sanders campaign. The idea was to use the unified power of the progressive Democrat voting bloc by withholding votes for Nancy Pelosi’s speakership in exchange for a House floor vote on “Medicare for All.” While the vote would ultimately fail, the principles were identical to Ocasio-Cortez’s reasoning for impeachment, despite the end of Trump’s term.
However, Ocasio-Cortez and all members of “The Squad” failed to stand by the message that was central to all of their communications. Moreover, they had little to no response to the pressure that was mounting on social media.
For many, not me though, the progressives led by Ocasio-Cortez seemed like the last hope in a government that is bloated with corporatists on both sides of the aisle. Their lack of commitment to a policy that has an approval rating of 63% among Americans and is synonymous with progressivism revealed them to be the same bad faith actors they often vilify on social media and cable TV.
Liberals, like Ocasio-Cortez, tweet, “Health care is a human right,” almost daily. It has become standard to say things like this, then oppose universal health care within the next breath. The so-called progressives of the Democratic Party do more harm than good to populist movements. They turn working-class policies into strongly worded tweets and punchy slogans one would find on a university student’s T-shirt. Then, when the time to act on these policies comes, congressional progressives have no shortage of excuses for why they cannot do the things they promise. Their political theater disarms and defangs the little power that workers have in the electoral system.
The performative support for an empowered working class has baited Americans into thinking there is hope within a party that will swindle its voters in favor of its corporate donors and financial partners at every chance it can get. Democrats make it clear they have no interest in assisting lower- and middle-class Americans when they go all in on an impeachment trial of a president that is no longer in office, have no immediate plans to fight climate change, make no action to provide universal health care to Americans in the middle of a pandemic and install defense industry war hawks in the presidential administration. The 2020 U.S. Senate runoff election in Georgia made it clear that running on policies that focus on actually helping people is more popular than egging on the never-ending battle between Republicans and Democrats. So, when I turn on the TV and see a Wall Street ghoul bemoaning Redditors trading on the stock market and moments later, three arms of the Biden administration, one with a conflict of interest, reveal they are monitoring the situation, I am no longer surprised. I have accepted that no one is coming to save us. My only hope is that you see it now, too. If we recognize that bad faith actors have no place in the people-powered push for change, then we will be able to save ourselves.
