Why I Still Have Hope

As Americans enter an anxiety-filled final few weeks of our election cycle, here's why I still have faith in our shitty, shitty systems.

I'm a dyed-in-the-wool American Progressive. Have been since before there was an official term for someone who was left-of-left-of-center but not, contrary to popular demonization, a Red Communist socialist.

I'm also a Xillennial, just this side of being a proper Gen X'er. So many of those I call my peers are more conservative than I am. They bemoan cancel culture. They think Gen X's mean streak is the same as being tough and resilient (but of course, call any one of them out on anything, ever, and the watch the defensive sob fests fly!) They think Jerry Seinfeld and Dave Chappelle have been done dirty. That #MeToo went too far. That the two major political parties are the same / "lesser of two evils". That we're simultaneously backsliding while changing too rapidly and then in the same breath proclaim that nothing ever changes.

Sound familiar?

And I'm empathetic: it is dispiritingly easy to lose faith in institutions that regulate or police but mostly seem to do so at our expense. Institutions that talk a good talk but never seem to solve problems. Or only ever seem to solve them for those who already have plenty, or are undeserving, etc.

We live in a Democracy / Republic. As such, what matters most is that our government represents the people and responds to the people as we actually are. And on that front - and this will likely surprise most people, it certainly surprised me - it actually does.

This is Who You, Me, and Our Neighbors Are

For those who worry that we're backsliding or that nothing ever changes, rest assured: things have changed dramatically in just the last 20 years. Shifts in attitudes and world views have occurred in significant ways.

For those who worry that things are changing too fast and too radically, also rest assured: the changes have brought a parity to American political divide, but they haven't tilted scales into complete unrecognizability.

Let's take a quick look at who we were circa 1999/2000 and who we are today.

On social issues, Americans have become vastly more liberal. whether its LGBTQ+ rights, marriage rights, women's rights or minority representation, we have, as a group, moved significantly to the left. As you can see from the chart above, we've moved from 19% of the populace identifying as liberal on social issues in 1999 to 33% in 2024.

However, you'll also note this is a mere one percentage point above those who currently identify as Conservative or Moderate on social issues, which are both at 32%, respectively. That's a drop in both since 1999. And now all three - Lib, Mod, and Con - are nearly matched in terms of total population percentage.

This means we've become much more liberal, a little less moderate, and a little less conservative, but are now at a stalemate in terms of anyone claiming a clear majority. This isn't just "politics" having become "divisive". It's that we've hit the unavoidable convergence point of change, where we're authentically even-stevens with no obvious majority. Fuck, that’s annoying.

If you're a Conservative or Moderate, this might FEEL like a tectonic shift from the Reagan years. And it absolutely is. But it's also authentically where the American public has gone, AND it's important to note that we are literally divided on the issues, near equally, which is why it can feel like there's so little common ground to be found unlike "back in the day" when consensus was organic, given there was an outsized majority.

If you're liberal, it can feel like a majority of today's Americans want what you want, unlike in the past, and yet there's this constant, significant pushback that seems reactionary. But America's liberal majority is currently ever-so-slight (though Moderates tend to agree with Liberals on social issues more often than not, so we often do have a solid majority there, even if it's not extremely so.) And those who disagree with you are still high in number.

That all said, the hopeful part I get from this is: Our political system is representing us properly.

We have become much more liberal, and policies have largely reflected this. And yet liberals are still frustrated because the American public as a whole isn't there yet. And the system represents them, too.

And Then There's the Economy

And here's the kicker - when it comes to economic issues, we're still a majority conservative country. And always have been.

This is why liberals can't move the needle much on student debt, on worker's rights and unionization, on financial regulations and white collar crime, on progressive taxation. At least not to the same degree we've shifted to the left on social issues.

That said, we HAVE become more economically liberal in the past 20 years, as a population, but the progress here has been more gradual than on social issues.

So if you're Conservative or Moderate, you're still fully in control of economic talking points, taxation, wages, and the rights of the haves vs. the have nots. It's possible that having a consensus here is why not having a consensus on social politics is driving you nutter butters. Sometimes you feel the weight of the majority on your side and then the topic shifts to something social and suddenly you’re in new-fangled territory where your opinion is verboten. And that's naturally frustrating.

If you're liberal, it feels like the country is never going to change our zombie economic habits. That we're never going to stop trying trickle down economics or start trying progressive taxation or a minimum wage chained to inflation or god forbid loan repayments that aren't horrifically predatory.

But it IS happening - we're changing, albeit slowly. As new generations inherit the country, this change is likely to accelerate.

This is Why I Still Have Hope. And Why You Should, Too, No Matter Your Politics.

A Democratic government is meant to be representative of its people. Of ALL its people. And as much as I disagree with numerous things our government does, on balance it is doing what our population actually wants, according to said population.

We're not divisive today *just* because we're all meaner, or more brainwashed (not *just*), but rather, we are at a near-equilibrium in terms of what we all believe. This convergence point had to happen at some moment in time, as attitudes shifted. Soon they will shift beyond this, one direction or the other. Until then, things will be neck-and-neck.

It's easy to fall into a "my vote doesn't matter, nothing ever changes" mindset, but history doesn't bear this out. We've changed A LOT. Mostly because more people became politically active more often.

On the podcast, we recently talked about a true event that happened back in the 1970's: a father wanted to keep his teenage daughter away from dirty drug-using hippies. She rebelled and hung out with them anyway. So dad took a shotgun and blew everyone away - the hippies AND his own daughter.

He was given a light sentence from a sympathetic judge, and letters of SUPPORT then piled in from empathetic parents who said they would all have done the same. Not one SINGLE letter from the public condemned this father for what he had done.

This is unthinkable now. Certainly, a father might do something like this in the modern day. And certainly a smattering of unhinged messages of support would be posted on social media. But the public on the whole would not be on the side of such a parent or such a barbarous act just “cuz hippies". Things HAVE changed. Don't romanticize the past, and also don't think the past was the same as today just with shittier technology. Hearts and minds have been changed. And as they change, so changes our government.

There will forever be blips from special interest groups gaming the system. The overturning of Roe v. Wade being foremost among recent examples. Nothing approaching a majority of the country wanted that.

There is also the ways in which government handles economic policy - we feel that prices are too high, taxes are too high, and wages and job security too low. (Though please note, wages have actually outpaced inflation since 2019. Now job security, that's a different topic and one we need to tackle if we all want to retire without being a burden on society.)

So what can we do about these things?

Plenty.

This is Not An Argument For Complacency

I'm not suggesting that representative government happens magically while we go about our lives. That somehow things magically function they way they should. Changes in society have occurred because people have fought for them, advocated and volunteered and refused to be silenced. This holds true for all sides of the political spectrum. We're heard because we take action. Because we speak out.

In the wine world, we're currently grappling with our lack of having taken proper alarm for a neo-prohibitionist movement now swaying local, national, and global organizations. While the neo-prohibitionists made sure their voices were heard, the adult beverage industry did not. And now there will unavoidably be one of these "blips" for us. It can be corrected, given time, but damage will nevertheless be done, because we were complacent.

Bullshit stuidies and bullsnit headlines like this proliferated, and we waited far too long to counter them.

Governments and industries are swayed by those who speak up, in numbers, and often. So don't be complacent. Not about anything you truly care about.

Be politically engaged as much as you can stomach. Engage to be knowledgeable and do what you can, not to argue or win arguments, per se. What you want is never guaranteed to happen, but it especially isn't if you're not doing the bare minimum to make your opinions heard and counted.

Note which political party is WILLING to accomplish what you want to see done. The fact that another party might block them from achieving it, is reason to not vote for the party that blocks, not to punish those who "couldn't get it done."

In regards to our arbitrary two-party system - a gripe I fully understand - note that ranked choice voting is the most achievable, and most lasting way to overcome this, without weaponizing votes and achieving little else. If you believe this to be a problem, vote for those open to making ranked choice voting a reality in our future.

Vote to make the world better, not the same. Even if you had to suffer through some form of difficulty in the past or present, vote to make a BETTER future for the next generations. Humanity's story is that of making our lot easier, happier, more fulfilling, and less onerous over time. Continue that trend. We do the best we can given our technology and resources and philosophies at any given time. That never means we can't do yet better in the future.

Have Hope. We live in a more representative democracy than you likely feel we do. But the numbers say: we do. And it's progressing alongside upcoming generations, as it should. Your vote matters. Your worldview matters. You will sometimes be in the majority on an issue. You sometimes will not. That is the system working as intended. And it's why I do still have "faith" in "the system". Even though it's not always in my favor, and even though progress is never perfectly linear.

Over time, and on balance, it's working, and works. And dammit that gives me hope. I hope it’s given you some, too.