A New Year's Wish

Remember when the atrocious 2020 came to an end and we all breathed a collective sigh of relief? Remember telling everyone that 2021 would be better because things couldn't possibly get any worse than 2020?

Fool me once, bla, bla, bla.

Honestly, I think everyone was hopeful and cautiously optimistic for 2021. We had to be to maintain a semblance of sanity.  Of course things got off to a rather poor start when Trump rallied his good ol' boy troops to go storm the capital and hang Mike Pence. While kinda entertaining in a train wreck sorta sense, I lamented to my wife that we'd picked the wrong month to have a "dry month."

Thing didn't stop there. In fact, the insurrection was sort of the turning point, with Trump making it "cool" to lie, buck our democratic system, and while you're at it, offend as many people as possible and bring racism and hatred to the forefront! 2021!

Let's see... we had one guy making murder anime videos, another guy telling mothers to force their sons into savage rapists, some nutty woman spouting off about Jewish lasers in outer space,  another woman dropping racist statements everywhere she went because she was a "patriot," some knucklehead up on charges of underage sex trafficking, and the list goes on and on. Did I mention this "A-Team" is our politicians? The people tasked with taking care of us, their constituents? No thank you.

Naturally all of these stellar all-stars have been endorsed by Donny Trump.

Speaking of which, let's see a show of hands of who's sick of hearing about The Big Lie.  Lemme count... Quite a few. Trump is like a scratched up record (ask your parents, kids) that refuses to get off the same, tired phrase over and over and over and...   Zzzzzzzzz. Wake me up when he quits making headlines.

2021 also brought about a huge swelling of hatred for current president Biden. I'm just waiting for a grocery store clerk to mention the vile and disrespectful "Let's Go Brandon" to me. There shall be such a righteous hailstorm in the Piggly Wiggly that they'll need more than one sacker to clean up aisle 13. 

It's no secret that Trump wasn't my favorite president but I don't recall any of his critics ever being that disrespectful to him when he was in office. And of course Biden's numbers are failing. You got Trump over there in Mar-a-Lago sucking down shrimp cocktails, conning the rubes, and bad-mouthing Biden every chance he gets and how he could do a better job.

And the grift continues! For a small fee of $10,000, you can go to a Mar-a-Lago Christmas party and have one picture taken with Trump! Cool! Where do I sign up? How presidential.

I won't get into the pandemic because everyone's sick of that, too. Alright, never mind, it's impossible to talk about 2021 without mentioning it. You guys remember that three week or so period at the beginning of Spring when it looked like the dark cloud of Covid was finally moving on? A ray of hope shone down upon us as we slowly reawakened to life as we knew it. My wife and I actually ventured into a (gasp) theatre and restaurant! Without masks! Once you got over the initial shock of being maskless, it felt liberating.

Then Delta came roaring through the world like a rabid lion, shuttling the smarter people back into masks and relative isolation. And now Omicron is moving in. Granted the jury's still out on how intense this variant will be, but if Delta taught us nothing else, be prepared.

Which finally, FINALLY brings me to my new year's wish. I wish we could all work together as a united world to end the pandemic. It's the only way we'll ever conquer it. The variants are self-creating in third world countries because the richer countries aren't sharing vaccines (although apparently South Africa turned down the United State's offer for vaccines). Within our country alone, the highly divisive politicization of Covid is keeping it alive and prosperous. Honestly, folks, shouldn't life be the most important thing to all of us? And for all the cries of FREEDOM to not wear masks, you're keeping the other half of the US captive to the pandemic. The part that really gets me is some people still deny Covid as real. Some so-called "news" anchors have even dropped the despicable theory that Democrats made up Omicron to garner votes. Or something.

It's ridiculous. And discouraging.

We've gotta band together 'cause we're in it together. Once we get through this, then all of you politicians can get back to yelling and name-calling at one another and leave us mere regular people alone.

Happy 2022, everyone. Keep those fingers crossed it'll be a better year.