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Some Final, Parting Words for the Year 2017

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | December 29, 2017 |

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | December 29, 2017 |


Hey Folks! Barring any major breaking news, this is the last posting day of 2017, and I dunno: I felt like I should say something to mark the occasion.

Mostly, I just want to say: You all did it.

In addition to whatever ups and downs, highs and lows you experienced in your personal lives, you all survived what was probably the most difficult year of your lives, culturally speaking. I mean, think about this for a moment: A year ago, we were just really getting to know a guy named Steve Bannon; Maine Senator Susan Collins was vouching for Jeff Sessions; Gina got hit by a bus on Brooklyn Nine Nine; we were watching Sherlock episodes; there were rogue twitter accounts allegedly from inside the White House springing up; and a movie called Monster Trucks was bombing at the box office.

That was only a year ago. It feels like eons.

But you guys survived it. In some ways, you thrived. While Donald Trump’s victory broke something inside of all of us, the Women’s March began the process of putting us back together. You fucking delayed the travel ban. You prevented the wholesale destruction of Obamacare. Your efforts led to 40 percent of the Trump Administration being fired or resigning. Your resistance efforts led to the appointment of a special counsel. Nary a day has gone by without Trump on the receiving end of a bad news cycle. His already struggling approval ratings have dipped much, much further. You helped Democrats win huge victories in Virginia and New Jersey. Fucking Doug Jones won in the reddest state in the Union! And with the #MeToo movement, you created a cultural shift that will be felt for years. There are scores of sexual predators who are no longer in positions of power. You did that! Through collective action, with the chorus of your voices, you. fucking. did. that. And you did it while Nazis were shouting in your faces.

Yeah: A lot of bad shit happened, too. The travel ban was eventually enacted. The tax plan passed, and the individual mandate was stricken. Thousands of immigrants have been deported, and Constitutional norms have been eroded.

But you folks did not lay down for any of it. You fucking resisted it every goddamn day, no matter how tired you were, no matter how exhausted the news cycle had left you. You showed up. You bitched. You moaned. You yelled. You stood up to your Trump-supporting friends and relatives. You shouted down the men who would stand in your way. Some days, you saw hope, and other days, you sought hope. You lot have never stopped expressing cynicism, but you did so while still seeking change.

2017 was a miserable year, but it was the start of something huge. It was the seed struggling to break the soil while jackasses threw mud on top of the garden. But you all busted through. I can see the leaves sprouting. There will be torrential downpours and droughts to come, but my God, you will continue to survive. And thrive, and effect cultural change, and straighten back out that line of progress. I fucking love this place, because every day you rise up in the cafeteria and stab authoritarians with your plastic forks. You hold people to account. You spit in their goddamn eyes.

The other day, President Obama said that there was never a better time to be alive, and there’s something to that. The world needs people like all of you. In fact, the world has never needed you more. There’s an idiotic, simple-minded, pussy-grabbing bigot in our White House, and the only thing standing between him and a fascist state is you.

There’s no one I’d rather have.

Bring on 2018, and let’s fuck some shit up.