I am shirking snow management tasks. Sitting at the dining table, placidly observing slabs of fresh snow gradually sliding off the roof while enjoying a particularly well-brewed mug of Peet’s Major Dickinson’s blend. Trying to think of what to say on this very last day of a very long year.
Trying to gin up my hopefulness. Trying to look on the bright side. Trying to temper whatever remarks about 2020 I have in store.
I can’t do it.
America is doing a godawful job battling this pandemic. That colors everything. We were meant to be one of the best prepared nations in the world and, as it turns out, we were one of the worst.
An autocracy run by a germaphobic control freak who has the eyeballs, ears and hearts of Fox News viewers would have been better than the autocrat who eschews science, role models idiocy and knows nothing about government and everything about money laundering. America needed the forced-birth, anti-choice deplorables to be on board with public health initiatives surrounding the coronavirus outbreak and our president made sure that was not going happen. As a consequence, we’re approaching 400,000 dead, small businesses have been hobbled, sidelined for the duration or destroyed, and health care workers are being exhausted as hospitals are being overwhelmed across the nation.
As a small business owner myself, I am hopeful I can have - at least - as successful a year as I had last year despite having no idea what’s to come, or what to expect. I want to be confident, especially with a ‘new sheriff in town’, but I need to be realistic as well. After all, Joe Biden has been preparing us for things to get worse before they get better.
Because that is what leaders do.
As you would expect with a less-is-more view of government, the rollout of the coronavirus vaccines has not been stellar. Fewer people than expected have been vaccinated so far, supply lines are not as efficient as we need them to be and the chain of command is as clear as mud. In less than three weeks, we should get a boost of confidence and a boost in urgency when the new administration takes control.
The Senate runoff in Georgia is key to the future. I hope you have been doing whatever you can to send two highly qualified Democrats to Washington, D.C. a reality - donations, postcards to voters, encouraging Georgia voters, phone banking. The fight over a second round of stimulus checks highlights how constipation-choked the Senate is due to one wrinkled, jowly old man. One wrinkled, jowly old man who will have a drawdown of power if we can assist in getting those Democrats into office.
Many of you have been posting and spreading around the historian Heather Cox Richardson’s viewpoint of the last 50 years which affirms much of what I have been shouting into the whirlwind all these decades. Where my eyes have been opened much wider is the role systemic racism and institutionalized misogyny has played. I tend to focus my energy and disgust on America’s caste and class system.
As Ronald Reagan famously chortled during a debate, “There you go again!” I see I have devolved into my usual miasma of negative thoughts. Reagan sold his destructive policies by being sunny. Perhaps I should try that instead.
I would like to conclude my writings of 2020 by thanking health care workers, semi-truck drivers, delivery drivers, mail workers, grocery store clerks and essential workers of all kinds - seen and unseen - who did everything in their ability to keep our society functioning. They have been on the front lines throughout this pandemic risking their health and security. Making it possible for privileged folks like myself to remain safely at home, avoiding crowds and not making matters worse.
Their jobs, and the risks they take, are not yet done.
I’d like to praise everyone directly involved in the election - poll workers, poll observers, election officials, et. al. - doing everything within their power to make our democracy operate as smoothly as possible through a difficult election process. Having witnessed firsthand the inner workings of vote recounts, I have an appreciation for the messiness of elections as well as the integrity of those who conduct them.
With a balanced Senate, we will have a much better chance to improve voting rights going forward. Something essential for the partisan fights and struggles ahead.
This has been my message over the past nine to ten months for those of you who have slogged through my non-edited, non-vetted material:
We need to be better citizens.
We need to be more involved, more engaged, with politics on every level.
We need to be informed.
We need to pay attention.
We need to call out injustices.
The world we yearn for, the world you wish for your children, or grandchildren will not just magically come to fruition without ALL of us being willing to get into some “good trouble”.
As I’ve said numerous times, you could run for office, you could actively support others who are running for office, you could write letters to the editor, you could donate to the ACLU, the Southern Poverty Law Center, Doctors Without Borders, you could vote with your money by supporting local businesses or businesses that are making an effort to do the right thing, you could march, protest, be civilly disobedient, you could contact your representatives early and often - whether they are friend or foe, make sure they know where you stand on all the major issues of the day.
The new administration are friendly to our causes but that does not mean we can switch on autopilot like we did when Barack Obama, the community activist and constitutional scholar, took office.
If you read Heather Cox Richardson and Letter From an American today, you know that we have a long way to go. None of the forces that were arrayed against us over the past fifty years, and that were exposed in the beams of a gigantic spotlight over the past four years, have been vanquished.
But we have identified them and that is the first step on a long road to recovery.
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You need this article. I have not even read it yet, but I know IT is the antidote to everything 2020. It’s an article by Dave Barry. One of my favorite humor writers. I used to read Dave Barry’s columns around campfires and half the time I was giggling and laughing so hard I couldn’t complete them. Full on tears in my eyes and everything.
No shit, I sent Dave Barry an invitation to go rafting once. I got a postcard in the mail in response. It read (in sharpie hand writing): Thank you for the offer, but no thanks. Signed, Poor Swimmer, Dave Barry.
That was very much a Dave Barry-like response.
Also, if you like cats, you’ll love this brief video.
Happy New Year - all of you cloistered science-believing civic-minded readers! “May the best of your past, be the worst of your future!” Salud! - JLM
