There’s a lot of things I wish I could say. Including swear words, but my mom sometimes reads what I write and she doesn’t like it when I use that language.

Having watched Joe Biden’s speech yesterday, I wish I could say I was reassured. I wish that I could say I feel like we’ve turned the corner on a new era.

I wish I could say America’s war is over. That we won. That we got something meaningful out of these last 20 years. But 20 years of work can be undone with a single bad decision. A decision we saw just over two weeks ago.

I wish I could tell you that American truly was in the process of healing and that we can finally move forward. I want nothing more than to continue fighting future battles, but we are stuck fighting the past ones still.

I wish I could paint a rosy picture for y’all, but I can’t. The federal government is led entirely by ideology, theory, and partisan talking points. The Democrats are laser-focused on January 6 as though it ultimately affected the U.S. government in any way other than delaying the certification of election results for a few hours. They want Americans to believe that the Republicans are trying to suppress the vote through election reform bills that do more to expand than subtract if you actually read them.

They want you to think the Florida governor is cooking the books on COVID-19 deaths in order to make the state look better, while not telling you that eleven other jurisdictions – including New York City – changed to the same method as well.

They want you to believe that Americans who were left behind and abandoned in Afghanistan were not left behind and abandoned. They’d like for you to think that this historic evacuation went according to plan and that everything is as it should be. Meanwhile, the Taliban is granting al Qaeda a base of operations once again and ISIS-K is moving to take the country and create their Islamic State once more.

America is not at peace. It is simply not currently at war.

And all the while, the Republicans cannot decide what to do next. Kevin McCarthy can’t make a decision that ultimately takes him off the fence on any given issue. Mitch McConnell is holding down the fort in the Senate, but only so far as his own agenda is concerned. You have Republicans who did the “popular” thing and voted to impeach Trump, support an amazingly bad infrastructure bill, and attack members of their base all for the media hits.

The media held the Biden administration accountable only when members of their own class were held hostage in Afghanistan. Now that the evacuation is “complete” and almost every journalist is home, they are right back to covering for Biden. They aren’t allowed to ask questions and they really don’t care because Joe Biden is one of them. He is of the Left. They fought to get him elected.

This is all what they wanted.

And you, the American people, are catching on. The push for super wokism is turning you off. The push to keep kids out of schools is turning you against public schools and teacher unions. The absolute disaster of Afghanistan is helping you realize that some of you made a mistake in 2020 (not voting for Trump is one thing, but voting for Biden is another thing entirely, and there is a lot of buyer’s remorse out there).

Even Democrats are acknowledging that you should probably add 2-3 points to the Republicans in most public polling. 2022 is on the horizon and it is looking more and more awful each time they look up. The House is definitely in play. The Senate could very well be in play.

California may not recall Gavin Newsom, but it looks like it will be very close. Virginia is in a dead heat. Other strongholds are wobbling. The Democrats cling to things that are overblown or patently untrue to try to drag the Republicans down, not make themselves look better.

In 2012, faced with two bad options, the American public kept the status quo. In 2016, the American public wanted a non-Clinton face to the government. In 2020, they wanted action and not loud, obnoxious rhetoric. In 2022 and 2024, they are going to push back against radical change, and as much as the Democrats are trying to make the Republicans just look terrible ahead of these elections, they can’t make them look worse than the social and political changes Democrats are loudly calling for.

I wish I could tell you, though, that 2022 and 2024 are certain to go against the Democrats. Because the Republicans still don’t know who they are in a post-Trump era. They are torn between the Trumpism of the past and the DeSantism of the present. There is no conservative leadership in the party (yet), and there is no unity.

The best news I can offer you is a glimmer of hope that the Republicans can outlast the Democrats and decide on a leader in the aftermath. But that gives the Republican Party perhaps too much credit.