No matter what your political ideology is you are always being bombarded with news saying “the enemy is winning, do something!” while never encouraging effectual action. If you are a Second Amendment advocate you are scared and angered by the long churning of new state and federal bills that make it harder to acquire firearms, reinstate the 1986 Assault Weapons ban, or otherwise limit your right to self defense and firearms ownership. You hear about these bills being sponsored and submitted but never about their failure. If you are a women’s rights advocate or an abortion advocate you hear about the repeal of Roe v Wade but never about the vast number of states that have certified women’s ability to end a pregnancy. If you are concerned with growing wealth inequality you’ll see disturbing charts and graphs from every publication about Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, et al. seeing their personal wealth as much as triple during the 2020-22 pandemic but Washington Post (which is owned by Bezos) would never run a story about Amazon (also owned by Bezos) workers successfully unionizing to end their terrible working conditions.
In 1990 nearly all US States either did not allow concealed handgun carry at all or were “may-issue” States meaning that they would only issue licenses to conceal a firearm in public if the requestor was a retired police officer, gainfully employed armed security person, had a distinct need such as being a celebrity with stalkers, et cetera. In 2022 nearly all States are “shall-issue” meaning that unless there is a specific prohibition such as being a felon or mentally adjudicated by a court as incompetent you will get a license on request. Nearly half of all states have gone a step further in not requiring any permit to conceal carry. Some even claim to be “sanctuary states” that prohibit local police from prosecuting against federally banned devices such as suppressors and fully automatic guns that are not being used for crime. The Assault Weapons Ban ended in 2004.
Roe v. Wade was overturned but the majority of states have their own laws that still allow for abortions in most to all cases. The ones that don’t have threatened to pass laws that would make a woman guilty of felony murder if she crosses state lines to have an illegal abortion either fail for lack of legislative support or because they understand that this would almost certainly be found to be unconstitutional by the State or Federal Supreme Court. Many companies even go as far as to provide women with thousands of dollars for travel and medical expenses incurred from having an abortion.
The rich get richer but this is only rope for them to tie their own nooses. Socialist ideals are spreading like wildfire on both the left and right with young people pulling away from the Democratic and Republican parties towards left libertarian socialism and national socialism respectively. Eventually the rich will be incapable of keeping the status quo through bribes political donations because there will no longer be enough crony capitalists and moderates to give money to due to outvoting and political pressure from constituents.
This isn’t encouragement to do nothing. After all, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” This bad news that is always being pumped out is designed to make the masses feel incapable of affecting change. “It’s always getting worse” they say. “It’s not worth leaving the house to protest anything.” Find the victories and celebrate them loudly. It’s fuel to to keep doing more. Change is possible but is slow and requires constant pressure. You roll the stone up the hill and celebrate, then there is another stone at the bottom of another hill that needs pushing. You did it before, you can do it again.