Many people have been surprised and unprepared by the events in 2020. If you’ve been reading this blog, you would’ve been fine cause Pup’s been telling you about this for a while now. While Pup’s been known to be overly pessimistic about humans, 2020 has gone a long way in proving him right in a lot of ways. So a few things we’ve learned this year.
There is massive, institutionalised racism in the US (and around the world). Once again it came to a boiling point with the completely unjustified death of several innocent men and women of color. And just like clockwork, there were mass protests and there will be no one held accountable for these murders. The African American community just has to learn to live with it. Just imagine this was happening to white suburb people. Trying to send the message that Black Lives Matter has only been faced with more violence from the police and the state. Think about that for a minute. While a group is pleading with the police to not randomly kill them, the police reacts violently in full riot cosplay gear.
This stayed on the news for a few weeks, but like before,
nothing significant will be done. Those in power will do a few token things and
pat themselves on the back, but none will make the hard decisions to do
anything that will prevent unnecessary violence by the police to minorities. We
will continue to live in a 2-class citizen system in the US.
While it wasn’t the zombie apocalypse, a global pandemic is
probably the next closest thing. At the writing of this post, there are over
19.5 Million cases of Covid-19 in the US and 337k Americans have died. To put
it more simply, 1 in 1000 Americans have died and 1 in 30 have Covid-19. When
we lost 2606 people during 9/11, we spent trillions of dollars and killed
hundreds of thousands of people to quench our thirst for vengeance. We are having a 9/11 event everyday now, and
this administration and Republicans still refuses to do anything to help this
country. It didn't have to be this bad. We have the resources and we could've been a global leader in not only saving our own citizens, but those around the world. No, we didn't do any of that. We let the virus win. This is what it looks like for conservative man-children to be in power.
There has always been this notion that even though we disagree,
when the chips are down, and American lives are at stakes, the country would
pull together. 2020 and Covid-19 has shown that this is no longer the case.
There is a large portion of the population who doesn’t care about the country
or their fellow Americans anymore. They have been indoctrinated by a conspiracy,
fake information, death spiral cult that has become the most destructive force
against the US. This is a problem that must be eradicated. There are no middle
ground when one side is looking to take the country into fascism.
During the beginning of the pandemic, there was a rally cry that 'we're all in this together'. What utter bullshit. While the majority of people suffered, there are a lot of people that has done really well during this time. Million and Billionaires grew their wealth to obscene levels while lines for food banks drags miles long. Like other recessions, the rich concentrated their wealth further with govt back welfare (i.e. one of the first acts of the govt is to give the rich and major corporations a major $1.3 Trillion blank check). Meanwhile, conservatives are arguing that $600 over the last 6 months is too much.
It’s been pretty quiet on the personal front this year. There
were plans for a European and US trip, but of course that wasn’t possible. There
have been a few local trips which has been nice. The lockdown here in Australia
has been probably one of the toughest in the world. State borders are closed
and even visiting regional areas have been difficult. This tough lockdown might
be the reason the Covid-19 rates are so incredibly low. We’ve seen from other
countries (e.g., US, UK) who have refused to lock down and what has happened
this year.
Now that there are multiple vaccines out there, there is
hope that we might be turning the tide. Even if we do, there’s been so much damage done in 2020. There is so much crap to sort out in 2021.
It’s not going to be easy and we won’t go back to normal anytime soon. I would
also argue that a lot of things shouldn’t go back to normal. We need new ideas
and new ways of working. A silver lining from 2020 is that it’s given us an
opportunity to try something new, something different, and move on from many of
our antiquated ways.
On the positive side of things, I'm very excited about the Zoomer population. These kids (they're prob not kids anymore, but I'm super old) seem to have a fire and sense of urgency to fix this world. I'm really rooting for them as our generation and the millennials have failed miserably to turn back the doomsday clock that the boomers have accelerated.
Will we step up and make these changes? Or will we simply go back to how we were, living as drones in an aimless world? Time will tell.
Don’t ask Pup though, you won’t like his answer.