The Millennial Democracy

For more than half a century, the term 'American Dream' has been indelibly associated with home ownership; typically of the suburban, white-picket-fence variety. While the early years of this 'Dream' were historically reserved for white, heterosexual, married Americans with a college-educated male breadwinner and a stay-at-home mother tending to their two or three children in a single-family dwelling with a car parked in the driveway, in the decades since this rigid picture of American life has thankfully loosened and become more inclusive in both reality and the popular imagination. That said, not only is the goal of homeownership and generational wealth-creation within middle and working-class families still woefully underserving people of color, particularly the black community, but the ability to buy into the housing market at all is increasingly out of reach for current and upcoming would-be homeowners of all backgrounds.  If this reality is to change, we need to t...

Prior to the presidential election of 2016, a majority of Americans reasonably presumed politics would continue more-or-less as usual. After decades of frustrating yet rather consistent Neoliberal politics stretching back to the Reagan Administration of the 80s, wherein both major political parties seemed more like different sides of the same policy coin rather than ideological opposites, discontented populist wings within both parties were clearly growing in prominence. Yet, left-leaning progressives and rightwing nationalists alike remained unable to capture the majority of the vote from their respective sides, let alone coax enough moderates and independents in the ideological middle to win the White House. That all changed, however, with the election of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States. Since his ascension to the Oval Office, America's political discourse has been treading dangerously close to the edge of losing the democratic republic we hold dear. Sadly...

The United States of America has long been a nation of free enterprise and personal freedoms, the land of opportunity and protector of huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Yet, America is also a nation founded largely upon stolen land, much of it built by enslaved peoples and exploited immigrant laborers, where industrialists, tech tycoons and wealthy folks of all shapes and sizes have wielded huge and corrupting levels of power and influence for most of our history. Greed and exploitation has defined America just as much as freedom and prosperity has, yet the powers-that-be overwhelmingly push to remind us of the latter traits over the former. In fact, if one points out the rampant corruption and greed inherent in our current system, or makes an effort to discuss our history in its truer form, they are often labeled 'un-American', 'unpatriotic', 'socialist', 'woke' and any number of other politicized slurs used over the years to dampen dissent and p...

Over the last fifty years or so, America has been living under a federal-level regime of thought and policy known as Neoliberalism. While the movement towards deregulation, 'trickle-down-economics' and a general "government is bad" philosophy began emerging throughout the 1970s, these trends entered American reality in-force during the 1980s and 90s. In his inaugural address in 1981, President Ronald Reagan stated unequivocally, "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." The president was speaking to the supposed ills of deficit spending, allegedly high taxation and the rampant stagflation and oil shock which had impacted Americans during the back half of the 70s. This line from President Reagan, more than possibly any other sentence from any other speech during his time in the White House, has guided the trends and policies advocated for by both major parties in the United States, yet particularly the...

In the midst of America's economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, our nation struggled with disruptions and bottlenecks in various supply chains to a degree not seen in most of our lifetimes. Construction materials, computer chips, automotive parts, a variety of foodstuffs and more all were either in short supply, having difficulty getting where they needed to go or both. Cargo ships sat waiting for weeks before docking and unloading in ports such as Long Beach and Los Angeles, a long-problematic short-supply of truck drivers left a lag time in goods being moved and distributed, a general labor-shortage resulted in long restock times and difficulties fulfilling goods and services ordered, and all of this was taking place while demand within the American economy was near all-time highs. As a result, the cost of shipping, trucking, labor and goods in general began to see unusually rapid increases. Shipping costs from Asia to North America increased by nearly 10 times, the cost ...

At the core of every modern democratic republic rests the idea that the government of any nation exists for the protection and preservation of its people and their interests. More to the point, government exists as an extension of our collective will. The citizens of America do not exist to serve a monarch as loyal subjects, for example, nor are we content to live under the whims of an authoritarian dictator. Instead, the US government and its authority is derived from the collective consent of the governed, the American People. While this idea remains a powerful concept and a goal we should continue to strive towards, the reality of the modern United States does not fully match this high-minded rhetoric. Much of the reason for the current disconnect between Americans and their government is due to the prevailing and growing influence of so-called 'big money' on our political system. Until we reverse the disturbing trend of the wealthy and connected funding the majority of our ...

Something rather unprecedented in American history has occurred since the Presidential election of 2020. While the majority of Americans readily accepted the reality of President Joe Biden's electoral victory over former President Donald Trump, a sizable and consistent percentage of the population has fully bought into the so-called "Big Lie" which states Trump was the true winner and the election was stolen from him. This has resulted in one of the most stilted public reactions to an exchange of power from one President to another both in modern memory and all of American history. Due to this infamous and disturbing lie, and many other falsehoods which surround it (such as the claim Donald Trump is secretly still leading the country from his home in Mar-a-Lago), there has been a momentous and terrible attack on voting rights in many Republican-leaning states around the nation. The impact of many of these blatant attacks on democracy will begin to be felt starting with th...

Ever since May 2nd of this year, when Politico published a leaked draft of the Supreme Court's  Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision, which functionally overturned the Roe v. Wade decision from 1973 that provided limited protections for abortion procedures throughout the US, a renewed focus has been placed on reproductive rights and wider personal freedoms here at home. In part due to Justice Clarence Thomas' statements that rulings on the legalization of same-sex marriage, access to contraception and even homosexual sex itself should all be re-reviewed and given potentially different rulings (though conveniently interracial marriage, which Justice Thomas is involved in himself, was not recommended for re-review), a revived conversation and coalition advocating for expanded personal rights has emerged. Though such a freedom-focused coalition may have emerged in force too late to prevent further rights from being rolled back in the short-term, it's ...