Well, congratulations! If you are reading this, you have experienced and survived the worst pandemic since the 1918 Flu.
It was a truly lousy year. Nearly 350,000 Americans died because of the coronavirus. Millions of people lost their jobs, their homes, their security. Countless numbers were evicted because they couldn’t pay their rent or their mortgage. Hundreds of thousands of small businesses closed permanently because they couldn’t survive without revenue. The damage to our society and our economy has yet to be fully calculated. The damage to our lives has been incalculable.
The pandemic was certainly made far worse because of the absence of leadership from the top. The president should have worn a mask and reminded his fellow Americans to follow his lead. Instead, he avoided being seen in public wearing a mask, and he mocked people who followed the science and wore a mask. He inspired an anti-mask movement that cost many thousands of lives. He held rallies where few people wore masks; his rallies were super spreader events, as was his gathering at the White House to celebrate the appointment of the Supreme Court of Amy Coney Barrett.
His followers swaggered around without masks. The governor of South Dakota applauded those who refused to wear them. She allowed a motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota, attended by thousands of bikers, that turned into a super spreader of COVID for the region. “Within weeks of the gathering,” the Washington Post reported, “along with Wyoming, Minnesota and Montana, were leading the nation in new coronavirus infections per capita. The surge was especially pronounced in North and South Dakota, where cases and hospitalization rates continued their juggernaut rise into October. Experts say they will never be able to determine how many of those cases originated at the 10-day rally, given the failure of state and local health officials to identify and monitor attendees returning home, or to trace chains of transmission after people got sick. Some, however, believe the nearly 500,000-person gathering played a role in the outbreak now consuming the Upper Midwest.“
When governors tried to impose restrictions on movement to slow the spread of the disease, Trump mocked them. He called on protestors to “LIBERATE” their states from the public health restrictions. He cheered on the armed thugs who tried to gain entry into the Michigan State House. He was silent when the FBI arrested a group of thugs who were planning to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who was trying to protect Michigan citizens.
It was profoundly discouraging that 74 million Americans voted to maintain this low-class, no-class, crude, ignorant, foul-mouthed con man as the president. It was heartening that 81 million Americans voted to replace him with a man who has been in public life for half a century and is known for courtesy, compassion, and competence.
So we can count our blessings.
Four years of the worst, most malicious, most demagogic, most crooked, most lying president in American history will come to an end in less than three weeks.
Joe Biden will be inaugurated as the 46th President of the United States on January 20 at noon EST.
We will have a President who has pledged to assume leadership in ending the pandemic and getting vaccines to the American people.
Our nation will resume membership in the Paris Climate Accord and the World Health Organization.
Our government will be led by people who are dedicated to the mission of their agencies, not to destroying their agencies from within.
We can return to thinking about solving problems instead of warding off the evil created by our president and his sycophants.
We can turn out attention as a nation to the festering problems of racial injustice, economic inequality, and public health.
We must give attention to the fact that almost half the people in this country voted for a man whose wife’s jacket summed up his attitude and hers and theirs: “I Really Don’t Care, Do U?”
We have to care.
We can return to debating the best ways to educate all of our children.
We can resume the democratic practice of agreeing to disagree.
We can revive the norms of civility and the norms of democracy.
Our common enemies must be injustice, disease, inequity, malice.
It is time for a new beginning and a new commitment to making our nation live up to its ideals.
Great. I’d reblog if I knew how.
The best of New Years to you and all the people who try to turn the education reform movement back to the path of reason. May educators continue to benefit from the pressure all the voices in this blog exert against the hole in the levee.
Meanwhile, we mourn the departure, generally pre-mature, of so many of a generation that were good to us. It is now clear that the group most hurt in the pandemic has been the group that would have listened to leadership that approached the problem in a systematic and logical way.
Hopefully, your desire for civility within the framework of disagreement will be realized in the coming years. Hopefully.
Well said.
Great post! Add to the “common enemies” list: Ignorance, brainwashing, and internecine quarreling.
We’re in this together!
Wishing the world a better New Year!
Ain’t it the truth.
Amen.
Happy New Year…Thank goodness…
Buon anno a tutti! From an aesthetic point of view, I did like the symmetry of the numerals 2020 or even MMXX and the link to 20/20 vision. As for the actual year, YIKES! Thank goodness enough Americans came to their senses and voted for Biden though it is quite disturbing that 74 millions voted for the sociopath on steroids. The nay sayers will say that Biden is just as bad as Trump and that the parties are the same, both beholden to the capitalistic pigs. Nope. One political party has gone berserk and fallen off the charts into crazy psychotic Trumpism. That’s significant. Joe McCarthy may be dead but McCarthyism is alive and well and thriving in the the GOP. They are still screaming socialism, socialism, communism, commie, commie, Marxism/Leninism/Stalinism.
So true! I was in high school during the original McCarthyism. It’s back like a zombie. Socialism, shout those who depend on Medicare! Communism, shout the illiterate!
SO true!!!
Red baiting wherever and whenever the GOP can fool the most amount of people for the longest amount of time. Although, Pelosi was also very intentional and articulate when she said, “Well never have a single payer healthcare system. We’re not a socialist country.”
That’s the dark side of the D party, corporate Democrats like Pelosi. She’s great on some things though and she does support the ACA which is better than the the GOP health care plan (don’t get sick and if you do, then DIE, DIE, DIE already). The hope is that the progressive Dems will challenge Pelosi and maybe replace her….some day, fingers crossed.
Pelosi also said, “We all share the value of health care for all Americans — quality, affordable health care for all Americans. What is the path to that? I think it’s the Affordable Care Act, and if that leads to Medicare for All, that may be the path.” Maybe she’s just throwing out a phony bone to the progressives, actions would speak louder than her words.
Joe from New Jersey, I agree. Joe Potente?
https://giphy.com/gifs/bernie-sanders-socialism-xTcnSPpiTnnvizsouc
Here’s hoping that 2021 is EVEN BETTER than 2020 was!!!!
–Satan
Who let the Church Lady in here?
I would like to wish you, Diane, and everyone else a very Happy and Healthy New Year.
2021 offers us all a new opportunity, a rebirth, to try to bring the country together in a way that can benefit us all.
For for years, we have lived under a president who championed division and hatred, and pitted Americans against one another. We have had to endure under a man who desired more than anything else to be president, but never learned, nor had any interest in being presidential. He lacked a vision for this country, and had no goals or dreams to leave America in a better place for his four years in office. Fanning the flames of hatred, bigotry, all that is wrong in society allowed him to take the spotlight of his ineptitude and inability to be a leader for all.
The 74 million Americans who voted for him are our brothers and sisters, our neighbors and our friends. Whether we voted for Biden or Trump, it should be a wake up call for all of us. He represented the worst of what humans can be.
Seven weeks after the election, he still sees only himself and his ambitions and self-needs, rather than the good of the nation. The jacket that his wife wore, stating “I Really Don’t Care, Do U?”, embodies the thought process of all that was, is, and always will be Trump.
The American people deserve better. His election in 2016, and the temper tantrums of 2020 gather audience and attention because the people want and demand something better.
We must restore the faith in the public good. The incoming Biden administration has an opportunity before it that it must not squander nor take for granted. If it remains “business as usual” in American politics, catering to special interests instead of the well-being of the American people, it will unfortunately transcend into every aspect of our lives. And if this happens, we may one day find ourselves in a similar situation, 4, or 8, or 12 years from now with someone wearing a hat claiming to want to make America great again, and taking us further into a dangerous abyss than what we can possibly imagine.
A solid foundation to rebuild all that is America would be on Public Education. Provide the opportunity for all Americans to have a path true and honest path toward success in their lives, and people will more likely reject future self-serving, incompetent, and destructive “want-to-be’s”, rather than embracing them.
Diane’s list is very meaningful:
“We have to care.
We can return to debating the best ways to educate all of our children.
We can resume the democratic practice of agreeing to disagree.
We can revive the norms of civility and the norms of democracy.
Our common enemies must be injustice, disease, inequity, malice.
It is time for a new beginning and a new commitment to making our nation live up to its ideals.”
Perhaps significant investment in children and young people, as shown through Diane’s writing, will be part of the long term solution of lessening the divide and helping the nation live up to its ideals? That is the hope that I am exploring, too, in 2021: https://aschoolnewsletter.substack.com
Hopefully we will never see a public figure again wearing a message like Melanie did:
“In June, first lady Melania Trump took a trip to McAllen, Texas – one of the epicenters of the family separation crisis occasioned by the policies of her husband’s administration. Getting on and off the plane, she wore an army-green jacket with these words written on the back in white: “I really don’t care. Do U?””
(from https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/13/politics/melania-trump-jacket-i-really-dont-care-do-u/index.html)
Like Diane wrote, “We have to care”.
Mary Trump appeared on The View a few weeks ago and explained how it’s “impossible” for DT “to believe that he lost” the election.
And, during that interview, Mary also said Trump’s legal battles could prevent a 2024 Presidential Run
Happy new Year everyone. Get ready to roll up your sleeves!
https://www.auroraadvertiser.net/opinion/20201228/landgren-cartoon-new-guy-in-2021
I’m calling 2021 the Year of the Testing Waiver.
We won’t get waivers from federal testing without massive protests.
Figures, keeping testing in 2021 is like my apartment next door neighbors having a two-day-and-night New Years party, continuing right now, while Los Angeles area ICUs are past capacity. The California SBAC can’t be administered at home. It requires a “secure” app download that affects all other apps. It must be given at school. They have to get us back in school to give the test, so lives will be jeopardized to do so. $$$$$