Don’t forget the good news of 2021
The decaying of democracy, the unraveling of the Republican Party and the paralyzing effects of the filibuster could leave one depressed if not despondent about the future of America. But we cannot allow frustrations and disappointments to let us not forget some genuine success stories.
First and foremost, the wonders of science and the brilliance of our scientists produced lifesaving vaccines, effective booster shots and treatment pills for COVID-19 in record time. A “dream” vaccine that would permanently protect people from future variants — no boosters needed! — is in the works.
In other words, science works even if our political system and media don’t. As Francis Collins, the retiring head of the National Institutes for Health, ruefully observed, “Maybe we underinvested in research on human behavior.” He confessed, “I never imagined a year ago, when those vaccines were just proving to be fantastically safe and effective, that we would still have 60 million people who had not taken advantage of them because of misinformation and disinformation that somehow dominated all of the ways in which people were getting their answers.”
The transition to electric vehicles is another success story. E&E News reports: “Electric vehicle sales are booming in the U.S., with purchases nearly doubling over a year ago. That trend is chipping away at the long-held narrative that drivers aren’t ready for electric cars, and it’s leading some analysts to recalibrate their predictions.” Sales of electric vehicles went from 2 percent of all car sales last year to “nearly 5 percent of light-duty vehicles like SUVs and sedans and more than 20 percent of all passenger vehicles sales, according to recent data.”
The infrastructure legislation President Joe Biden signed into law this year will further accelerate the trend, with a goal that 50 percent of new car sales will be electric vehicles by 2030. The law will allocate billions of dollars for 500,000 charging stations as well as research into electric battery innovations. This is a rare success story that combines enlightened consumer choice, private industry and government funding.
Regarding the court system, Biden has nominated, and the Senate has confirmed, a record number of highly qualified and remarkably diverse federal judges, demonstrating that quality and diversity are not mutually exclusive. NPR reports, “President Biden has gotten a group of 40 federal judges confirmed in the Senate this year, the most for a new president since the Reagan era — and he’s prioritizing diversity among his nominees for these life-tenured posts.” These include “the first openly LGBTQ woman to sit on a federal appeals court, Beth Robinson of Vermont, and the first Muslim American to be a [federal] judge, Zahid Quraishi of New Jersey” as well as more Black women for circuit court seats. The high number of public defenders, academics and civil rights attorneys among these appointments provide much needed diversity in experience for the bench as well.
While right-wing Supreme Court justices indulged in partisan hackery and shredded precedent, lower court judges and juries have been doing their work. State and federal judges handed down stiff sentences for Jan. 6 insurrectionists, pointed to the disgraced former president’s responsibility for the assault on the Capitol and sanctioned his attorneys who participated in frivolous lawsuits that sought to undermine the credibility of elections.
Juries do not always get it “right,” but this year, they have convicted the killers of George Floyd and Daunte Wright, offering hope that white police officers will be held accountable in the deaths of unarmed Black men. Like democracy, a trial by one’s peers sometimes seems like the worst system for administering justice — except for every other system.
And though democracy reforms remain stalled in the Senate, redistricting commissions in lieu of political gerrymandering have garnered praise for fair and reasonable maps. As Dwayne Yancey of Virginia’s Cardinal News observed about his state’s congressional maps: “Democrats who worried that a court mostly appointed by Republicans would draw maps that favor Republicans were wrong . ... The two court-appointed special masters who drew the lines — one nominated by Democrats, one by Republicans — say they ignored incumbents in drawing new lines and focused on creating what they felt were more logically drawn maps.”
Michigan is another success story. The Detroit Free Press reports: “A yearslong effort to bring an end to gerrymandering in Michigan — the practice of drawing voting districts to benefit one political party — hit a key milestone Tuesday when the members of the state’s inaugural citizen-led redistricting commission adopted new congressional and state legislative districts.” Democrats who had previously been disadvantaged by gerrymandering wound up with a fairer map. “The maps adopted by the commission would still favor Republican candidates though nowhere near to the same extent as the current maps. … One measure for the congressional and state Senate map used by commission indicates the new maps would favor Democrats.” Commissions are not infallible, but they do point to more equitable and credible process that no longer allows politicians to pick their voters.
Overall, there is plenty of news to suggest a bright future is ahead. Hopefully, more will emerge in the new year.