Do we live in an age of false empowerment?

[Sympthsical]

4. As we talked, they accumulated power

It's been a thought in the back of my mind for some time now. One of the things I've always felt was incredibly alarming and completely underplayed by our side was when nearly 1,000 state seats were lost during President Obama's tenure. I started clanging those bells back then in the spaces I was in, and no one really seemed to care. "We're awesome, stop being concerned." (Man, do I hate "Thanks for your concern!" and then we lose and it's still somehow your fault for warning people).

It felt like we payed a lot of attention to the "celebrity" of President, governors, senators, but didn't really care or worry about the political undertow of Republican gains across many different states in lower level offices. And honestly, it didn't seem like the media cared very much either. I wonder if that's because so much of our media is concentrated in that NY/DC/LA triangle, where conservative state legislatures aren't really a thing they think about, so not as much attention was paid.

The past twenty odd years, which is my entire adulthood, has felt like watching Republicans accumulate power on background while we worried about the races on the main stage. And now, it feels like their moment is coming. They managed to grab all this power, and now they feel they're in a position to truly wield it.

I feel like our activism of inactivity has gotten us here.