Every time we elect a Republican president we have to start rolling the ball all the way back up the hill again. Every goddamn time.

Good news! Apparently a lot of excitingly new young progressives are mad we haven’t rolled it back up high enough and are refusing to help!

Wait. Okay, not good news. Sorry.

I don’t blame people for giving up on a Sisyphean task

It’s like you’re stuck in the water with a riptide pushing you away from shore. A really strong swimmer would just swim against it, but you’re not, so you swim parallel to shore because then later you can swim back in. At least it’s not pushing you further out.

Nope.

Just decide to quit and drown. This is what the young “I’ll show you by not participating” crowd sounds like to me.

I’ve been swimming sideways to get out of the riptide for 24 years now. When do I get to start swimming back to shore?

Does drowning have any chance of ever getting you back?

Does swimming parallel to the shore have a chance of ever getting me back?

Well, yes. That’s the thing: If you give up, you drown, if you keep going parallel, you never know when the tide might turn. If you’re 24 (that’s how I interpret your previous comment), you’ve only had the option of voting in one presidential election so far. In that election, progressives completed the monumental task of voting out an incumbent proto-facist. And for all of Bidens flaws, there can’t be much doubt that a lot has been heading in the right direction. Of course, there’s still a huge task ahead, but the previous election shows that Trump can be kept out of office, and the past three years show that things can get better.

Step 1: Forgiving student loans, Step 2: Working to reform the system.

Step 1: Pardon certain drug-related crimes, Step 2: Work to reform drug laws.

Step 1: Massive infrastructure investments, Step 2: More investment in public goods

Step 1: EO’s to protect reproductive rights, Step 2: Legislation to do the same.

My point is this: Biden has shown that he is working to make progress, and that he can actually get stuff done. The problem is that there’s a whole lot that needs doing, much more than anyone can do in two terms. We need to keep getting the best option into office, and we need to spend the next four years to ensure that the best option next time is better than Biden is now. If Trump gets four years, I fear that we’ll have a near impossible job.

This is my sixth presidential election.

I"m old enough to know this post is writing a check our government can’t cash. It’s too broken.