Six resolutions that America must keep in 2022
The nation has plenty of unfinished work from 2021 — from the Build Back Better legislation to the House select committee’s investigation into the Jan. 6 insurrection. 2022 will also feature midterms, the ongoing scourge of the coronavirus and potentially another Russian invasion of Ukraine.
To keep us all on the right track, here are a half-dozen resolutions for politicians, the media and other public figures.
1. We need to reframe the pandemic. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, made a critical point in an appearance on ABC News’s “This Week” on Sunday: Because many infections are occurring among vaccinated people, most cases are mild. As a result, Jha said, “I no longer think infections generally should be the major metric. Obviously, we can continue to track infections among unvaccinated people because those people will end up in the hospital at the same rate, but we really have to focus on hospitalizations and deaths now.” In other words, just as we do not track mild illnesses such as colds or non-life-threatening flus, we should not freak out — or rearrange our lives — when COVID-19 cases surge, so long as hospitalizations and deaths remain low. Given that perspective, many more Americans once vaccinated and boosted should feel much more comfortable going about their lives. As for the unvaccinated, they’re endangering themselves and will bear the consequences of childish defiance. 2. The media must cover the precarious state of democracy responsibly. That means devoting resources, allocating front-page coverage and conducting themselves with a level of seriousness commensurate with the dire state of our constitutional republic. Now is not the time for inane, personalized politics. (“Is President Biden angry at Sen. Joe Manchin?”) It is time to identify Republicans who imperil democracy, propound disinformation, encourage violence and pay homage to the cult leader of a violent insurrection.
3. The Justice Department needs to pursue investigations for obstruction of Congress against the leaders of the Jan. 6 coup attempt. When political leaders seek to strongarm state officials to change vote totals or lean on the vice president to overturn election results or pressure the Justice Department to enable a coup, they must be held legally accountable or they will try it again. If the facts are not there or the law does not apply, the attorney general owes the public an explanation as to why he has decided not to prosecute former president Donald Trump and his associates.
4. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W. Va., must reach agreements with his own party for the sake of democracy. His objections to the Build Back Better bill (e.g., poor people will buy drugs with an extended child tax credit) are off-base, if not cringeworthy. There needs to be a deal that allows every other Democrat in the House and Senate and President Joe Biden to demonstrate they can govern effectively. On voting rights, the time has come for Manchin to put away his fetish for the filibuster and do what is necessary to ensure that Republicans do not overthrow the will of the voters and create chaos after every election.
5. Congress must take on another challenge to democracy: social media platforms. Again and again, heads of major companies have refused to take responsibility for the vaccine disinformation, hate speech and election lies they propagate. They have not been candid about algorithms that, among other things, manipulate and radicalize users. The first step is requiring transparency, which would allow researchers to track the impact of their platforms and to hold companies accountable for failing to abide by their own terms of service.
6. Americans need to be better citizens. Citizenship requires more than voting. It requires a good-faith effort to discern readily accessible facts from reliable sources; tolerance and decency toward fellow Americans; basic civic and media literacy; and a set of rational expectations about government. We should expect governors to not deliberately sabotage vaccination and mask requirements; we cannot expect the president to overcome the willful refusal of tens of millions of Americans to get vaccinated. We should expect lawmakers to try to solve problems (not performing on rightwing media to scare and befuddle the electorate); we cannot expect perfect remedies to emerge overnight to solve complex problems over which government has limited control.