February 24, 2022

Perhaps nothing encapsulates these past two years as poignantly as the term “the before times.” We look back on our way of life before the pandemic with nostalgia, but also with a sense that it is not something to which we can ever return. There were high hopes for 2021: Biden assumed office, vaccine rollout had begun, and normalcy was on the horizon.

Flash forward past an attempted coup, our disastrous retreat from Afghanistan, a global shipping crisis, hundreds of mass shootings, and underwhelming vaccination rates—one year later, Biden is facing a 41% approval rating and we’re staring down over a dozen COVID-19 variants, most notably the Delta and Omicron strains. It’s hard to be optimistic in the wake of what some are calling the Year of American Disappointment.

And yet, there is something to be said for optimism. The Omicron variant is burning itself out, and COVID-19 infections have fallen by 60% and hospitalizations by 25% over the past two weeks. Not only are we seeing a declining rate of transmission for COVID-19 cases, but the global solidarity that allowed us to develop vaccines in record time has also pushed mRNA research to the forefront, allowing for the potential development of vaccines against shingles, malaria, and even skin cancer.

Of course, the pandemic is only half of our daily source of stress these days. There’s also the broader political situation—the U.S. is still a deeply-divided nation trying to heal, both economically and socially. This year’s midterm elections are shaping up to hand the GOP control of the Senate, and coupled with a conservative-leaning Supreme Court, we can expect the remaining two years of the Biden administration to be characterized by obstructionism, infighting and inaction. Regardless of where you stand politically, we can all agree that a gridlocked, ineffectual government is the last thing we need right now as a country.

On the Democratic side, the party must stop squabbling amongst themselves and take a hard look at their options. Infighting between progressives and moderates has done nothing but disillusion voters, and an overly-critical cancel culture means that the party has been unable to accept their own political achievements—from the stimulus package to pandemic recovery—so long as there is a single critique to be found. In holding out for a perfect solution, Democrats are letting other opportunities pass them by. Come November, the balance of power will almost certainly shift to the right, and they can either find avenues of bipartisan cooperation, or else remain obstinate and take the risk that they’ll be able to mobilize voters to retake the Senate and maintain the presidency in 2024—assuming that the U.S. can still count on free and fair elections by then.

The American right is thankfully far less disjointed than their liberal counterparts, but far more alarming, actively “shattering faith in the integrity of our elections and abandoning their commitment to the peaceful transfer of power” by defending the January 6 insurrection and passing increasingly draconian voting restrictions. Unless Republicans can recenter their party around actual policies rather than prejudice and authoritarianism under the guise of MAGA hats, they will be responsible for not only the eventual implosion of the GOP, but of American democracy.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi exemplifies the pragmatism our country needs in the coming months, arguing that “[what] unifies us is the empathy that we have for America’s working families and the priority of meeting their needs.” After all, the average American is less concerned with political theory and more concerned with the day-to-day realities of inflation, job security, and public health. We want to know that a tank of gas is affordable, that our children’s schools have enough staff to stay open, that we can walk into a grocery store and see fully-stocked shelves. When voters head to the polls, we will do so with only one question in mind: Am I better off now than before?

After all, the average American is less concerned with political theory and more concerned with the day-to-day realities of inflation, job security, and public health.

There’s no single answer to that question, but across the board, there’s cause for optimism. The U.S. added over 400,000 jobs last month and is on track for economic recovery despite the Omicron-induced slowdown. College completion rates are on the rise despite the hiccups that came with remote learning. The U.S. and China made history with a joint pledge to the Paris Agreement goals despite concerns that their domestic politics would hurt diplomacy. On every level and on every issue, there are signs of progress. We simply need to nurture it, and both parties have a role to play.

So enough with the doom-and-gloom predictions for 2022. It’s not that the future is bright, exactly. But the future is changeable. It will be what we make of it. In normalizing hopelessness, the only thing we achieve is to excuse our complacency. What might this country accomplish if we not only cultivate hope, but also act on it?

Seth Jacobson is the founder and principal of JCI Worldwide, a Los Angeles-based communications and research firm. He spent several years in the Carter and Clinton administrations in positions focused on economic development, foreign policy, and media relations. He is a frequent lecturer on policy and public affairs at Pepperdine University and UCLA.

When I was nine years old, I became absorbed in the world of Anne Frank.

That year, my Catholic mother pressed Anne’s diary into my hands with the same sweet urgency with which Anne recorded Edith Frank pressing a prayer book into her own, stating: “Read this.”

Years later, a secondary school classmate borrowed my copy. In transit, she asked why it was so beat up. I responded quickly that I was careless with things; rather, I was careless enough with things I was devouring multiple times a year alongside the Sweet Valley High series and “Beyond the Diary: A Photographic Remembrance.”

In truth, the Franks’ family structure was mine. I adored my father; often, like Anne, I felt that he was the only one who understood me. At times, I came to the conclusion with Anne that my father and my mother did not understand me. I shouted at my mother; this was before and after she sweetly pressed Anne’s diary into my hands. At times, my father, like Anne’s, encouraged me to try to understand my own mother.

Time and again this was a failed attempt, and I ran to Anne for comfort.

In truth, I reminded myself that the Franks had two daughters who perished, each with her own diary; often, I wanted to focus on the one more known to me. Externally, I was Margot in age, looks and scholastic temperament. Like that brainy, bespectacled teenager, I wrote letters to and birthday poems for my younger and sole sibling. Like Anne, she was always at the center of a group of girls and at least two boys.

Internally, I was Anne and immediately identified with her; like that teenager, I was a self-described smart aleck. God might know everything, but I knew everything better, and did not hesitate to tell family and friends so.

As a previous publication of mine put it: Anne, a self-described chatterbox and “frolicsome little goat tugging at its tether,” functions for me as an adored older sister—even as I surpassed her in age two decades ago.

August, 1944: Three days after Anne’s last entry.                                                                

A typical Tuesday morning in Amsterdam: The police in plain clothes.                              

A typical arrest: A group of Jews, good for 60 guilders.                                                       

A group that joyfully listens to the radio in secret, thinking that this is the year.                           

Of, as Anne writes, peace and a mocha cake, prewar quality.                                            

Of, as Anne writes, looking at the world, feeling young and knowing one is free.             

Quicksilver Anne, who walks the floorboards quietly, on little cat feet, for twenty-five months.                                                                                                                                      

Anne is instead arrested with the others this year. 

Each year on August 4, a certain former helper went into her room and shut the door. There was the sound of jackboots in the street no longer for her. Each year on August 4, I think that this year will be different. This year I will let go: of dates, photographs, and sentence phrasing, of this knowledge of a small group of people and one precociously small girl. This knowledge does not help one person.

This attempt alone, though, to push away Anne? It brings me to her. This attempt to let go.

How to let go of a world that will not let go of me?

As Anne writes in her last entry: “You can’t imagine how often I’ve tried to push away … Anne … to beat her down, hide her.” Her enormous, absorbing eyes haunt me even as I attempt to push her world out of me. How to let go of a world that will not let go of me?

Nor can I let go of the world that I want to inhabit—a dreamy world of cities. These are the usual westernized dreams for a woman of such upbringing: Chicago, New York, London and Oxford, Paris, and, since the age of nine, Amsterdam, with thanks to Anne.

These, then, are the desperate desires of my heart. To return to the city of big shoulders and little cat feet. To return to the city of dreams. To return to the city of life and to the city of dreaming spires. To return, less desperately, but still dreamily, to the city of light. To travel for the first time, with dreamy trepidation, to a citified annex, now not-so-secret.

As taken from Virginia Woolf’s imitable novel “The Hours”: “there is the life she is leading and the book she is writing.” There is the life I am living, with its continuous push of quiet, and the dreams I am having—both despite an attempt to exist in a different, writerly way.

In dreams begin responsibilities, as Delmore Schwartz believed.

Time and again I think this ora that must count for something. In my current employment as an office coordinator, nine stories up in an office building. In my current twin city as the wail of a siren goes by and I sit, dreamily, worriedly by. This brings me, again, to Anne: “if only there were no other people in the world.” This girl who was once here in the world.

Vanessa Waltz‘s writing has been published with Image, The Jewish Journal, Mslexia, PRISM: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Holocaust Educators, and the Star Tribune. She received her MA from Middlebury College and completed her studies at Lincoln College, Oxford.