2020 Hindsight

What kind of year was it?  I can sum it up with a few simple words.

Partisan politics – homelessness – Social upheaval – Pandemic – Economic meltdown – Partisan politics.

Those few words spell out what kind of year 2020 was.  You don’t need to read any further, unless you want my take on what those words represent.

The year started out with the impeachment of President Donald Trump.  With minor exceptions, all Democrats voted to kick the lying, ignorant, egotist out of office.  Republicans with some minor exceptions voted to support the leader they felt was being flayed, fried and fricasseed by the national media working for Democrats who were suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome.

The issue of homeless seemed to be under control until a Federal judge in California ruled that “homeless is not a crime” and you couldn’t kick them out of public spaces unless there were other accommodations for them.  That’s when our drug and alcohol problems became a homeless problem.  Local politicians became a afraid to face the issue of minor criminal offenses over concern for violating the civil rights of the homeless.

Several well-publicized actions of police shooting and killing black men and women set off a firestorm of protest around the country, forcing the general public to gain a better understanding of racism in America.  It morphed into protests about historical racism and brought about efforts to erase 250 years of American history.

When the Covid 19 Pandemic reached the shores of the United States, first noticed in a nursing home in King County and later washing up in New York City, a quarantine was declared by the city’s mayor in an effort to flatten the curve of patients filling the city’s hospitals.  As the Pandemic spread, more and more governors and mayors declared a quarantine and shut down local businesses – forcing bankruptcy and unemployment to its highest ever.  Never mind that 99.6 percent of all people who get the virus survive.

The economic meltdown continues.  The federal government – in its wisdom – threw trillions of dollars at the problem while the banknote printing presses continue to roll out a long future of significant inflation.

And of course, we ended the year with another round of politics as the Democrats searched high and low for the person that could defeat that tyrant in the White House.  They found their savior in a man who had sought that office at least four times in the past.

That wraps up 2020.  With the exception of no presidential election next year, and maybe a vaccine that works, I suspect that the problems of this year will continue into 2021.  Unemployment, homeless, social upheaval and partisan politics will continue as usual.