There Is No Tomorrow

Introduction

The core ideas of The People’s Parliament have been covered, at this point. All that remains is for us to underscore the severity of the current moment so that we charge ourselves with an appropriate sense of urgency. We can feel the injustice in everything that is happening. However, it can be jarring to confront what appears to be a total collapse of the social contract that the United States (U.S.) was built upon.

Perhaps by considering both what promises really are and how cruelty and betrayal inflict devastating trauma, we can understand the importance of holding to solidarity so that we can build a nation that finally both embraces justice and lives up to its ideals for all of its people.

We cannot look to others to do this work. It is up to us.

---

---

About Promises

Infidelity is one of the leading causes of destroyed relationships. When we form an interpersonal pact with another, we sign a verbal and moral contract that is inked within the ether. And we can smell it, in every breath. And it surrounds our every movement, in the air surrounding us. And every word that we utter, and every action that we take within our reality is judged by this sacred, ever-present agreement.

Agreements, contracts, pacts and relationships. Promises and unions. When we make a promise, we make a vow that is both beholden to, enforced of, and adjudicated by our shared connection to the objective reality that we inhabit.

I speak of being true.

The oath we offer to others is a pledge to take actions that will enforce the creation of a predetermined state of reality between us, as specified in the covenant. This is a world defined by both my actions adhering to my promises to you and your actions adhering to your promises to me. We are agreeing to create the future together, to alter the state of our material world to meet our shared specifications.

Betrayal hurts because the severing of this contract causes us to kill a life that we cannot have. A broken contract is a broken future reality, a lost dream. The person who will be will not be the person that would have been, had the pact been fulfilled. The ether shifts us into a timeline not of that defined in the covenant. It is something else. Something unknown. Something not desired.

The entire purpose of the union was the culmination of the agreement. If the avowal can no longer be discharged, then the union must be dissolved.

About Cruelty & Betrayal

We have come to realize that the political system in the United States is based upon the assumption that individuals will act in good faith, with respect to the established legal framework, as set forth by both The U.S. Constitution and the U.S Code. But what happens when that assumption is proven false?

Major Battlegrounds Lost

Those who are elected to public office give an oath to faithfully uphold the duties of the office to which they have been elevated. These duties are always centered around service that is meant to benefit The People, though given slightly different domains of activity and specific powers for execution of responsibility. Nonetheless, all public offices – whether elected or appointed by electeds – are bound by a promise to serve The People.

Congressional Democrats, with the support of the public, challenged both White House and Congressional Republicans to preserve subsidies for the Affordable Care Act (ACA), preserving reasonable access to healthcare for millions of citizens. In response, the Republicans – led by the regime of Donald J. Trump – chose violence by canceling Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits for millions of Americans. The People said that they wanted affordable healthcare, and the Republicans found that to be grounds to starve people.

This was not a complicated contract. The agreement was simple. We told the Democratic Party that we would hand them additional power during the 2025 election cycle as a show of good faith toward the 2026 election cycle, given their performance over the interim. Our initial ask: “Fight to deliver us ACA subsidies. We understand that the regime is withholding food and pay. We will find a way to get by. Take our power and bend the Republicans until they capitulate.”

Americans polled at 80% in favor of ACA subsidies. The Democrats were clearly aware of this. The 2025 election resulted in a landslide victory for the Democratic Party. Based on polling, most Americans blamed the Republicans for the shutdown. Even better: the Republicans were still stunned by the uppercut they received on election night. Trump was blaming the Republican Party and demanding that Senate Republicans eliminate the filibuster, in an effort to protect his presidential term by forcing their agenda: 1) pass a continuing resolution bill that would end the shutdown, and 2) take back control of the narrative, in order to stave off potential losses in the 2026 Midterms. John Thune (R-SD), Senate Majority Leader, held tight to the filibuster, arguing that there wouldn’t be enough support in the Senate. But it’s known that Thune supports the 60-vote requirement to approve most legislation. This sparked a battle between the Senatorial GOP and the White House. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) was under fire, ducking questions about both a long-recessed House of Representatives and the swear in date for recently-elected Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ). The Republicans found themselves in disarray. The pressure was on them to end the shutdown and stop stalling the proper appointing of the newly elected Democratic Congresswoman. All the Democrats had to do was hold the line. That line was important because it represented more than fighting for affordable healthcare. It represented standing up for freedom and democracy, which are under siege. Of note, the regime has done a great amount of damage to the country already. Let’s look at some of the ground that we have lost:

• The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has already received a near-$200B budget, including $75B for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and $65B for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
• Citizens and legal residents were being kidnapped off of the streets, at work, and at school. At the current date, this has devolved into extrajudicial murders carried out by DHS federal agents (ICE and CBP, of specific note), in the streets and in broad daylight.
• ICE is illegally forcing themselves into private homes, without a judicial warrant, in clear violation of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
• SNAP benefits are being denied.
• Tariffs are inhibiting trade, both creating inflationary pressure on everyday Americans’ budgets and stressing the profit margins of small businesses, decimating the financial viability of both groups. Additionally, the Supreme Court has deemed these emergency tariffs as illegal.
• Medicare and Medicaid are under attack, based on the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (The One Bill), legislation which contents contradict its naming.
• The Supreme Court of the United States of America has green lit racial profiling.
• Tech giants such as Anthropic and OpenAI are forcing data center construction in local towns, offloading their power costs to the public versus paying for their own usage as a part of their business costs.

And that’s not the half of it.

Eight Senate Democrats crossed the aisle to vote with Senate Republicans, ending the shutdown fight in the upper chamber of Congress. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) attended an interview with the Fox News Channel, in which she admitted that her group of dissenters were in touch with Senate leadership the entire time, and that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) knew what they were planning to do. And Schumer still told the public that the Democratic Party would fight for ACA subsidies in the Senate. He made a promise to the people that he knew he could not keep.

Weak in Shutdown Fights

Senator Chuck Schumer has only found himself in this place of utter failure because he completely misread the room in July 2025, and he voted in favor of cloture, allowing the full Senate to pass The One Bill. This was the initial legislative initiative that allowed for the ACA subsidies to expire. Schumer put himself behind the eight ball in the summer. This put him in a difficult position in the fall, in which he had to negotiate from behind, in order to try to save the subsidies. His actions represent a complete lack of leadership. He failed to adequately read his Republican opponents in July 2025, who are both ruthless and cruel, as a result of their adoption of Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) ideology. Further, he failed to rally Senate Democrats toward a winning government shutdown strategy that was sold as intended to save ACA subsidies. Even worse, he likely knew of the eight defectors, prior to the November 4, 2025 elections. Yet, he still told the public that they would continue to fight for ACA subsidies, knowing that the electorate would hand the Democrats more power in exchange for a shutdown win that delivered said subsidies. Therefore, it is highly likely that Chuck Schumer intentionally misled the people in order to steal their power for the Democratic Party. In the eyes of The People’s Parliament, the abusive and corrupt usurpation of the power and voice of The People is an unforgivable offense. If it is true that this conspiracy took place, then Chuck Schumer should be immediately ousted from his seat and barred from public service for life. The same should be enacted against any and all Democrats who intentionally engaged in this subterfuge. However, the reality is that the Democratic Party still supports Schumer by not either removing him or pressuring him to act upon the will of The People.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

The Republicans have shown that they do not care about either effective governance or the people that they swore to serve. They have removed ACA subsidies, criminalized the innocent, attacked civil liberties, kidnapped and murdered citizens, lied about the economy, obstructed state and local authorities who were attempting to investigate potential crimes committed by federal agents, levied unlawful taxes upon the people, and implemented a second wave of Jim Crow through executive policy and legislative inaction. In response to Democratic opposition in the Senate, the Republicans opted to shut down the government and withhold food from U.S. citizens, in the form of paused Supplemental Nutrition Aid Program (SNAP) benefits, rather than allow a continuation of subsidies for the ACA, which enabled affordable healthcare for the public good.

Further, The Republicans do not have a replacement plan for the ACA, even though they wanted to kill the subsidies. Per analysts in both healthcare and economics, it is expected that millions of healthy Americans will roll the dice by cancelling healthcare that they cannot afford, and they might take their chances with using emergency rooms as their primary healthcare resource. It is estimated that this will lead to tens of thousands of deaths, per year, due to the inability of citizens to engage in affordable, preventative healthcare, such as check-ups and routine diagnostics.

The Democrats were given a mandate to provide a check against the Republicans on November 4, 2025. There was a blue wave that handed an electoral sweep, in favor of the Democrats, including wins in Republican strongholds. By Sunday, November 9, 2025, the Senate folded, voting to reopen the government without gaining renewal of the ACA subsidies and receiving no other benefit for the American people, beyond what was initially offered by Republicans on day one of the government shutdown.

What’s more? 

What Both Parties Have Allowed

Over the past several decades, both the Republicans and the Democrats have overseen a steady degradation of the economic outlook for everyday citizens. Let’s take a look at the fruits of the labors of the actors in this two-party system.

Wealth and Income Destruction of the Average American 

Wages lag productivity gains over the last several decades. Meanwhile, C-Suite, wealthy investors, board members, and shareholders reap all of the rewards from the value created by our work.

Evisceration of the Job Market

The job market has been degraded since the 1970s, in general. A shift from high-quality manufacturing jobs toward low-skilled, low-paying service sector jobs has impacted career growth opportunities for many Americans. Manufacturing has been mostly off-shored. Layoffs and hiring freezes plague white-collar work due to advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI), federal reductions in force, corporate restructuring, and responses to current market conditions. Currently, most workers are finding it almost impossible to find work, while new college graduates, facing low job-placement rates, are beginning to question whether attaining a degree was worth the effort and resources required to garner their academic qualifications.

Unaffordability as the Norm

The average citizen or household can no longer afford to purchase a home. Amidst an annually worsening housing crisis, increasing numbers of Americans are living in short-term rental accommodations (Extended Stay, motels, etc.), cars, tents, motorhomes, RVs, and storage units. Mortgage foreclosures, auto loan delinquencies, student loan debt, and unsecured debt are at all-time highs. It has become normalized for workers to live check-to-check, with inflating numbers of consumers using Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) platforms to subsidize grocery budgets, underscoring the fact that citizens are tapping out on the same credit that kept them afloat, in recent years. 

Isolation and Economic Backlash on the Global Stage

The rest of the developed world is engaging in de-dollarization, an initiative to conduct international trade without the use of the reserve currency, the U.S. dollar. Without the bulwark of the reserve currency, the U.S. economy could sink into a deep recession, or even a depression. While the U.S. dollar still holds a relatively strong position as the reserve currency, it is clear that many other nations have begun to move away from the North American nation’s currency as a flexible, global asset.

Bifurcated Economy

By now, many of us have heard of the “K-Shaped Economy”. In our heavily-financialized, capitalist economy, assets are the primary driver of wealth, and thus income. Labor is seen as a debt burden and a cost within the process of product development and service delivery. Therefore, laborers, the majority of U.S. citizens, are neither valued nor prioritized. The working class has created a boom in productivity since 1970. Turning again to the Economic Policy Institute’s report on “The Productivity–Pay Gap”, we can see that wages have not matched the increase in productivity and wealth generation. Additionally, we see that policymakers from both sides of the aisle contributed to the weakening of laws and policy that protected workers’ share of the value gains in society. And the division of wealth in the nation bears that truth out. 

The top 10% wealthiest households control almost 70% of the nation’s wealth. The bottom 50% of households control only 2.5% of our collective value. Meanwhile, the top 1% keep a firm grip on about 31% of the wealth generated in the country. That’s nearly one-third of all value being held by 1% of the households in the nation. The wealth is being concentrated at the very top of society, leaving little else for the rest of us.

Proof of Wealth Concentration
There has been much discussion of the phenomenon of the concentration of wealth among the richest of American households. It is happening. We don’t have to question the knowledge in the zeitgeist. The Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States of America, has openly reported this as a fact. Based on their report on the “Distribution of Household Wealth in the U.S. since 1989”, we can see that the value generated by The People is being hoarded by a select few. Let’s take a closer look at that data.

Note: In the tables and charts below, be aware that the aggregate groups of the top 50% of households contain the percentile groups listed in the table below.

Aggregate Group Membership
Aggregate Group	Percentile Group Members
Top 1%	– Top 0.1% – 99-99.9%
Top 10%	-Top 0.1% -99-99.9% -90-99%
Top 50%	-Top 0.1% -99-99.9% -90-99% -50-90%

---

---

---

Wealth Distribution – Share per Percentile Group
Percentile Group	1989(Q3)	2025(Q3)	Change
Top 0.1%	8.6%	14.4%	+5.8%
99-99.9%	14.2%	17.3%	+3.1%
90-99%	38.0%	36.4%	-1.6%
50-90%	35.7%	29.4%	-6.3%
Bottom 50%	3.5%	2.5%	-1.0%

---

Cumulative Wealth Concentration – Share Per Aggregate Group
Aggregate Group	1989(Q3)	2025(Q3)	Change
Top 1%	22.8%	31.7%	+8.9%
Top 10%	60.8%	68.1%	+7.3%
Top 50%	96.5%	97.5%	+1.0%
Bottom 50%	3.5%	2.5%	-1.0%

---

When referencing the Federal Reserve data laid out in the charts and tables above, we can see that only the top 1% of households saw gains in their share of the Total Household Wealth (THW), over the reported time span. Even the bottom tier of the top 10% – the 90-99% group, representing 90% of the top 10% group – saw their share decrease during this timeline of wealth redistribution. While the aggregate group of the top 50% of households saw an increase, those gains were largely distributed to both the top 99-99.9% group, the bottom 90% of the top 1% households, and the top 0.1%, the top 10% of the the top 1% households. By dissecting the numbers in this way, we can see that the wealth is being concentrated even at the top end of the elite groups. Only the groups in the top 1% of households, 99-99.9% and top 0.1%, saw gains in wealth distribution, since the 1989 data recordings. This is telling.

It should not be this way. Because without labor, no wealth can be generated. What we need is a new way of viewing the economy and its inputs and outputs. This re-envisioning should entail an ideological necessity that the economy service the majority of the populace, not the other way around. However, our elected officials have not seen fit to serve the people in this regard, for decades.

In Summary

The economy is in a state of rapid decline for most Americans, who cannot afford to live without incurring large amounts of debt.

Those we have elected – on both sides of the aisle – are not putting The People first.

About Time

It has become obvious that neither of the major political parties is interested in serving the will of The People. Politicians do not care about us, as is clear from the results that they provide. Both parties seek only to pilfer the power of The People, under false pretense. Their concerns are for their asset-holding donors and the wealth that they can accumulate while holding office. What good is it for the Democrats to win in 2026 and 2028, if they do not adhere to the will of The People? Therefore, we must build community through common purpose, aligned political agenda, and communal solidarity so that we can leverage the one power that supersedes the money of the wealthy: our votes.

The Republicans seek to undermine the rights of The People, while enriching themselves via the authority entrusted in them by their constituency. The Democrats offer scant push-back against Republicans, arguing that they don’t have the Congressional votes to battle the conservatives. However, we also see that they do not fight with all of the tools that they do have, such as Chuck Schumer not leveraging the cloture vote in July 2025. There are procedural tools that the Democrats could use to block many authoritarian moves by the Republicans, but they don’t. We don’t need to know why. We just need to know that they don’t, when they easily could. 

In the end, we are left with a decision to choose the lesser of two evils, in a sinister “Bad Cop, Worse Cop” scenario. One party wants to actively hurt us. The other party tells us to vote for them and accept benign neglect as an acceptable trade off to replace outright violence. If a Child Protective Services caseworker had a client who was being beaten by one parent, while the other parent did not hit the minor, but refused to feed or clothe the dependent, then the counselor would undoubtedly work to remove the adolescent from the abusive home. In this case, both parents are harmful, and they are causing trauma to the youngster in their care, yet in different ways.

If we, The People of the United States, wish to preserve both our democracy and our Constitution, then we will have to do the hard work of governance for ourselves. Our elected officials have abdicated their sworn duty, in favor of serving themselves and the wealthy elites.

They are not true to us.

We must both build community and hold to solidarity with one another. If we can unite under our shared vision for this country, then we can overcome these challenges together. I know that this is not a simple task, given our proclivity toward hyper-individualism, but it seems that this is truly our only hope. The wealthy have bought our government representatives. It is unlikely that legislators and policymakers will obey our orders without significant, collective action from us. Indeed, they have already proven their unwillingness to act based on clear polling on the desires of the citizenry.

If the current economic trajectory continues, then the country, and everyone in it, could likely become debt-strapped paupers, beholden to the corporate elite and the oligarchs. We need to accept a harsh truth: Nobody is coming to save us, not even those we elected to do so. We have to act, while we still can. We must gather in our communities, form chambers of parliament, plan appropriate responses to a broken political system, and resist.

We must be true to each other today. Because there is no tomorrow.

Solidarietas Populi