A sentiment I'm hearing a lot toward the year soon ending: Fuck you, Year! I'm hearing it on the left, on the right and in the middle. I have some sympathy for the thought, but probably not as much as I could. I am lucky to have a job that can be done anywhere, including from home. Here I've been since March, which is kind of where I've always wanted to be. Not everyone in my family has been as lucky with their livelihoods. The youngest and oldest especially. But together, we've managed.
Life in America is so cruel usually. It was unusual to say the least that even in this cruelest of eras, presided over by a petty mean small band of know-nothing thugs, the structure of so many workplaces, so many lives, was rearranged so quickly in the service of human safety. Not as thoroughly as it could and should have been of course. Not without a toll for many; not without empty gesturing and divisive posturing on the part of those in a position to help people shelter in place, but whose aid to those most in need of it was stingy when it came at all; not without knee-jerk resistance; not without the already financially bloated managing to profit excessively from the new circumstances (disappointingly typical for them). This is America after all.
But looking back over the course of the year, it's astonishing that human society the world over was rejiggered so violently in the service of protecting the species from a new sudden threat to its mortality. You could argue (and you'd be correct) that we humans had it coming -- we made the threat by the way we exploit animals to keep our vast impoverished global labor force alive. For decades, we denied or ignored that our activity was causing the warming of the planet and could also be marshaled to mitigate it until it was too late to make a difference; but you have to hand it to us, we responded to a virus many of us never saw with astonishing swiftness. (Leaving aside those who exploited and exacerbated the situation as a gamble for their own political gain. The worst offender ultimately lost the bet in November.)
It's unimaginable that there won't be some permanent change, but humans will be humans so who knows. What we need more than anything to combat this and future threats to our health is universal healthcare, but our stagnant ideology prevented the implementation of even that small obvious measure this year. The string pullers are used to exerting their influence while quarantined from us in the best of times anyway. Physical separation of the rest of us from each other is an obstacle to solidarity which poses an extra challenge to the advancement of change; but observing the immediate impact of the nationwide protests that erupted following the police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor largely without further spreading of the virus was inspirational. If we haven't learned anything from this sequestration about how to be disposed toward each other, let alone about how rapidly and thoroughly drastic change can happen, I'll be pissed.
The year started for me on a note of hope, in the form of the Bernie Sanders campaign, which coincidentally with the novel coronavirus was gaining momentum throughout the winter. Its emergence and spread in the early primaries too was met with swift, sudden, well-coordinated countermeasures that succeeded in nipping it in the bud before it threatened to completely infect the electorate, almost as a throat clearing exercise on the part of the professional managerial class for the public health crisis that erupted at nearly the same time. How differently would the crisis have been managed if Bernie Sanders had been the Democratic counterpoint to Donald Trump throughout the spring instead of the hibernating eventual nominee, who was too wise to botch things for himself by appearing in public in those early months of the crisis. His career was built on letting things happen, and with his opponent Donald Trump predictably unable to stifle himself when checking out might have served him better, it worked for him again this time. No question that the infection rate and death toll in the US would have been lower with someone else at the helm of the opposition, and without the president and his party aggravating the situation. I think Bernie Sanders as an opponent might have inspired Trump to step up in response (a possibility we might be catching glimpses of on his approach to the exit ramp as he shames congress to up the stimulus payments to $2000 from the measly $600 that it had been barely able to muster without his input), and it might have done him as much good as the country. But in spite of the obstacle that the Trump administration was to public health, a sane swath of the country fell in line to help stem the spread until a vaccine could be found.
I cringe a little when front line workers are thanked for their service. It's a bit too easy for a conglomerate of any kind to promote the practice in advertising or on TV, but for those regular people who take them up on it, it's surely heartfelt, well intended, and may strike the thanker as the least that can be done. Many on the front line, to be sure, particularly in health care are called to their work; mere thanks are inadequate when supplies to do the work and for their safety are not forthcoming. As for essential retail, food and factory workers, if my circumstances forced me into front line exposure to the virus on a daily basis for almost certainly not enough pay, at risk to myself and to my family I don't know that thanks would make up for it. But thank you all anyway.
For myself, a natural hermit, I can't deny that 2020 with its enforced separation has had its perks. It's been something of an antisocial dream-come-true to see myself being universally avoided in public nearly to the extent that I have spent a lifetime avoiding others. Nevertheless, I am looking forward to my daughter's generation getting another chance at living life as adults among each other. I will not miss not shaving. I will not miss masks. I will not miss Zoom. I will look forward to seeing family in person and to traveling freely and to getting haircuts when necessary and to indulging occasionally in public entertainment. But while I don't wish ill on my fellow humans, if and when we re-emerge from this episode, truth be told, I will sort of miss the distance.
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