Just over a year ago, progressives and Democratic voters had a chance to really change things - to reform not just the Democratic party, but the country as well. Establishment Politics was the theme of Election 2016, and the Established Left shot themselves in the foot trying to stamp out the revolution.
They blew an election that they should have had in the bag.
Meanwhile, American progressives, in their march towards acceptance and equality, found themselves unsatisfied with all of the accomplishments they had made over the last eight years and actually began to alienate those to the right by entitling themselves to a brand of political correctness so far ahead of its time that even the moderates found themselves unable to defend it. Identity politics mixed with a right-wing paranoia of losing cultural control and created the Alt-Right, a band of misfits and misanthropes who not only delighted in triggering the left into abandoning their civility, but were masters of navigating the means to do so.
Winning that election empowered them to come out in full force and declare their pride in revisionist monuments to dead men who fought on the wrong side of history; a history that the cities they reside in have finally begun to evolve beyond. But it wasn't enough to show up in a sea of blinding whiteness. They came out in full cosplay as the one thing the left hates most.
And the progressives, so easily distracted, didn't take this opportunity to reexamine their ideology or the political party that had cannibalized itself in vain. They didn't try to figure out where they went wrong or why they lost. Instead, the radicals shouted "Hey, everyone! Look at the Nazis!"
And they looked.
The parties are built on not being the other guy, not about what they are for, but it's been this way for awhile, it's just exploded to this level of loud, screeching gridlock. And so we're now in the period where both parties are going to, not elect the person with the best platform and ideals, but the one who's best at being a carnival barker.
The solution? There is no solution.
Buckle up and enjoy going nowhere.
Welcome to all of humanity's political history.
And yet the wheels somehow stay on the cart.
It's like that shopping cart at the store that's got month-old coupons sitting in the top compartment, and the front wheels haven't turned properly since the store opened. And you're pretty sure that every time the front-left wheel does turn, an orphan dies. At least, that's what it sounds like.
The employees hear the noise as you use extra effort to push the cart along, but they don't care. That cart will be there for years to come. Eventually people will look back on what the cart used to be and think "Ah, when carts used to roll smoothly. Those were the days." But people weren't even alive for those days, and the carts were actually hand-baskets, because carts have never rolled smoothly.
But people will continue to say the wheels will roll smoothly if we just "make them the way we used to."
New people will come in and say we need to replace the wheels, and it will be fixed. Others will say we need to remove the coupons, or the top compartment altogether. And some people will say we need to go back to hand-baskets, but no one listens to those freaks.
And that's where we come in. We WD-40 them wheels, fill the cart up with FUCKING ORANGES, and send that bad-boy full-force, straight into the canned-goods isle.