Yelling at Progressives While Real Problems Get Worse
- Kevin Lankes
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Kn9TLp960RY
It’s looking like Zohran Mamdani is going to be the next mayor of New York City. Whatever you feel about this, I’m feeling pretty good about it, the thing that we really need to talk about that’s living underneath all the uproar surrounding Mamdani is this long-standing narrative about progressive candidates. The main thing I’d like people to come away with is that the reason a lot of us collectively fear progressive policy positions and come out with all kinds of reasons why they’re supposedly destructive and radical is because historically, the solutions have not kept pace with the problems. There is an exponential growth happening in the gap between the time we addressed something last and where the problem is now. So at this point, real solutions to problems have this disruptive and impractical energy because they kind of need to be very substantial to fix all the things we’ve just let go for so long.
What are some examples of this? Wages have been stagnant and haven’t kept up with inflation for fifty years now; housing costs are through the roof, which consequently a growing number of people don’t have anymore, so no roofs, costs are easy to go through; the U.S. has by far the most expensive healthcare in the world, and the data shows us that it’s not even good healthcare, it’s a terrible system and we’re fighting over how many of us should even deserve to get the absolute shittiness that that is; the wealthy don’t pay their taxes, neither do corporations, which are now involved in the biggest monopolies and most extensive levels of control ever seen in human history barring one singular example of the Dutch East India Company; outright corruption is now going completely unpunished, specifically in the political arena, trump pardoned George Santos recently for the love of Pete; white collar criminals are more brazen and organized now and they also live in the white house.
Climate change is probably the best example of the situation I’m talking about. The longer we go without fixing it, the more invasive the solutions will be on everyday living. Detractors shout a constant refrain of “the economy!” And their screeching drives home to us that it’s a mortal sin to stop the money machine for one split second. JP Dimon needs another mega yacht, you guys, like think of the sad smaller one he has to deal with now. The truth is these rules aren’t real and we could do whatever we wanted at any time that we all agreed on it. And that would be really important to do right now, because meanwhile, we aren’t going to have an economy anymore when society breaks down in the face of rising global temperatures. This is going to displace entire national populations and destroy whole crop-producing regions of the world. The more we let it go, we also won’t have any more people around to fix it, either.
And that’s looking far into the future. In the immediate present, for middle-class people, for working Americans, the costs are accumulating and there is no relief in sight. Trump might think he came up with the word groceries but the majority of us can’t afford them, so why even bother arguing with him about it? Better to spend that energy on your fifteenth job so you can afford milk. All the while costs are rising, the messaging just tells us to keep voting for the people who caused the mess in the first place. And yes, there is an information literacy problem in America, and there are a lot of reasons for that, and I’ve talked about them multiple times on this channel. The public needs to be better informed, better about matching the policies they support with the political candidates who want to enact them. I’ll say this until I’m blue in the face but the vast majority of Americans support progressive policies. This is what the data tells us. Survey after survey shows that Americans want politicians to enact progressive solutions to problems. Voters simply do not match up those policies with the right people on the ballot, because of the effects of modern populism. I did a whole video on the history of why that is and you can watch it here.
Those who create the problems for everyday Americans do a truly phenomenal job of convincing us that the blame lies somewhere else. It lies with the brown people who came to the U.S. seeking a better life, who were actively persecuted or even victims of real genocide, and instead of having empathy for them and understanding that we’re always stronger together and with diverse viewpoints in a big cultural flambe’, we allow powerful interest groups to torture those people for political theatre. I don’t know how to spell flambe’.
The wealthy echelon of society really does not want any of the status quo to change. Yes, members of both political parties share some responsibility in the reason we haven’t legislated our way out of this situation, but no, both sides are not the same. One side is fairly reasonable and measured and wants to walk a tightrope between corporate interests and the wellbeing of regular Americans. It also holds an establishment core that is unfortunately filled with neo-liberal policies and a penchant for ostracising the few genuinely caring members of their ranks.
But those people are there and they exist. There are those on the left wing of our government who genuinely want to solve problems for people. It’s difficult to push through the corporate-captured bureaucracy to do that, though. And from the time we’ve had to check him out, it seems like Mamdani might be that kind of person for New York City. Someone with reasonable, helpful solutions that would genuinely make a difference. And that’s where all the immense pushback comes from from all these monied interests. Because they would have to sacrifice in order for us to achieve that difference-making. If we had just kept solving problems as they came, crawling out of the primordial political sea and just fixing shit as we went, keeping pace with social progress, then we wouldn’t be here in a position where rich people kept yelling at the only politicians who want to make things better.
Anyway, just my two cents. Vote for whoever you want, but please make sure that you’re voting, and that you’re voting for the people who represent the policy positions you care about. Don’t vote for personalities or for weird intangible characteristics that belong in the circus way more than they belong on the political stage. And if you’re watching this way after the mayoral election in NYC has happened, then take this to the midterms, or the next presidential election, or the school board, or dog catcher. Just look for the helpers. Look for the people that care and the policy positions that would get us to the point where we can do some f*cking good about the growing problems we’re facing in the world around us.
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