Nobody wants to think about the future right now. Climate change is wrecking societies, COVID-19 is driving both communities and economies to the ground and, disappointingly, we’re still fighting for marginalized groups to receive a crumb of justice. Whatever past anxieties we had as college students are now exponentially amplified into a soundscape of chaos, and it’s no wonder the future seems like nothing more than a domineering obstacle. 

Almost everybody wants a retreat into the comforting spectacle of the past. You see it in longing Twitter jokes about life before the pandemic and newspaper columns about missing the past and, to no one’s surprise, our current politicians. It is, after all, manifested in both of our presidential nominees’ political slogans. And that’s the biggest disservice our leaders have done to us: attempting to convince us that their party reflects on a pristine past that does not exist. 

First, the current Democratic establishment and its distaste for internal criticism. Many Democrats are worried about the slightest crack of criticism—from both their conservative and progressive peers—costing the party the election. It is part of the reason why many of our progressive establishment leaders have largely quelled their criticisms from the political sphere, completely ignoring how dissenting criticism and activism pushes for stronger agendas and platforms.

Let’s remember that the current Black Lives Matter protests paved the way for scathing criticisms of our establishment leaders. It has, at minimum, started conversations about the 8Can’tWait police reform policies and, at maximum, the abolishment of the current policing system. Let’s also remember how rent strikes have paved the way for politicians to actually look for ways to avoid an eviction catastrophe, even as haphazard as efforts look currently. Might I also add that even our local responses to protests and marches, while not perfect, have improved when compared to summer responses. 

We could also dive into the moralizing “hot” take, the one from 2016 I might add, that President Trump is bigoted and therefore you are too, completely ignoring the fact that the Trump administration has mastered the art of dog-whistle politics and, let’s be real, babes, nobody is proudly admitting their bigotry. Nobody wants to happily admit that they grew up in a bigoted household, a bigoted city or even a bigoted nation, let alone say they’ve replicated it, consciously or not.

It’s much easier to ignore the past than to face what seems to be an eternal punishment, and liberals consciously ignore that we’ve had this exhausting conversation for years now. Now more than ever, transparency and accountability are important in politics. Even President Obama has critiqued his past leadership. It shouldn’t be that hard to move beyond building back a structure with inherent flaws.

The paradox of the Democratic party is that, more often than not, its establishment leaders seem to care more about passing an imaginary litmus test than actually pioneering change and unity. It isn’t, however, the only party with these issues.

If the current Democratic establishment seems childishly moralizing, then the current Republican establishment manifests reality out of a fantasy space-time continuum. Look no further than this year’s Republican National Convention, gaudily decorated in cheap patriotic paraphernalia as political leaders and C-tier culture war commentators warned of an apocalyptic future where chaos and discord thrived without the leadership of the Trump administration, ignoring the fact that we are, after all, already living under their leadership.

For a party proud of not being made up of a bunch of “snowflakes,” it is awfully fearful of the existence of anything that does not conform to their beliefs. Conservatives are still living in the absurd fantasy that trans people are predatory and that, somehow, liberals want to abolish the suburbs. It’s almost as absurd as Adorno saying jazz was consumerist and detrimental to marginalized communities.

Both parties hint at a glistening return to form, where everything was perfect, but we all know that has never been the case. 2020 was bound to happen and every single one of our politicians knew that. We acted minimally on climate change and now we have destructive fires across the globe. We acted minimally on equal opportunity and now our leaders are audaciously wondering why many of us have become politically enraged. We played an endless game of table tennis with our economy and legislation, and the ball finally flew off the table. 

That’s the sad truth about our current neoliberal political landscape. It is nothing more than a reactionary thirst for profit instead of an active search for a sustainable way of life.

The past, as many of us know, is not indicative of the future, and both parties forget that, at the end of the day, their vision of apocalypse can easily be transformed into a search for utopia.

If this country’s birth brought an end to what seemed to be an inescapable political system of monarchy, then we should not think unity and utopia are that far off. I’ve been incredibly proud of the response many of my peers have had towards university administrators and their lackluster response towards our communal well-being, and if we can absolutely wreck their incompetence, then we can do the same with our political leaders. The bar is on the floor, after all.