You’re gonna hold them to account, this time?

Really?

These thousands dead, you’ll fix in your mind forever?

I’m glad to hear it.

Glad on behalf of the friends who died of AIDS. Thrilled, really, that you’ll make space for them.

Glad on behalf of the people chewed up and spit out by the war on drugs. Super helpful, their deaths. We won that war, right?

Speaking of wars, incredibly grateful you’ll be remembering the bodies piled up in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since we’re talking about wars we’ve won.

Glad on behalf of the drowned in Katrina. Do you even remember how many?

Quick. Find Puerto Rico on a map.

How long has Brett Kavanaugh been on the Supreme Court now? How long has he been sitting in Merrick Garland’s chair?

History will remember, you say, twenty times a day, on Twitter, as each new horror emerges.

History ain’t remembering SHIT.

People are history. And people forget.

It’s what we’re built for. It’s why we NEED history in the first fuckin’ place. It’s what books are for, what pictures are for, what fucking microfiche and your local public library are for. Would we even bother writing this shit down if we thought we’d remember it?

We don’t remember it and the way I know we don’t is that we keep voting for people who hate us and want us to die.

People vote Republican again and again and again and again, despite what happens when they do. Despite EVERY SINGLE TIME IN RECENT MEMORY it resulting in MORE DEAD PEOPLE due to the staggering inability to concede the point that government can and should keep citizens alive.

Someone the other day said they’d prefer Reagan in charge and I almost had a stroke, like, okay, guess you don’t have any pictures from the 80s where everybody in them but you doesn’t exist anymore.

(George H.W. Bush might not have ENTIRELY blown this, but he and his wife still would have found a way to make sure to blame it on imaginary black people.)

But sure, this time, the names will live in infamy.

Christ, if only that were true.

It is so exhausting watching you all make the same promises you made the last 50 times. WHY is it going to stick this time? Because … look, the minute this stuff’s over the living have to forget because otherwise we couldn’t shoulder the weight of our past actions, I’ve read the same books you have, people are cowards, etc etc etc.

But I don’t get the need to make a pronouncement. Does it … help? To say that we will remember? If we don’t? Do we think that’s all we can do, is promise to remember?

There’s something else we can do, and that is VOTE OUT EVERY REPUBLICAN FROM NOW UNTIL THE END OF TIME.

Every single one.

Yes, even yours who is a good one.

Every single Republican. Vote them all out.

That’s a goal you should try to stick with.

This time.

A.